this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
16 points (94.4% liked)

Europe

547 readers
508 users here now

Europe community on dbzer0. Intended to be a place to discuss European news, politics, or just general topics from a European perspective. Since this is on dbzer0 expect the community to lean more leftist-anarchist but a wide range of views are accepted here (within reason).

Rules:

1. No Bigotry or Hate SpeechAny forms of Homophobia, Transphobia, Queerphobia, Racism, or Ableism will be met with swift and harsh action and will not be tolerated here whatsoever. Bigots will be banned immediately on-sight. This includes apologia of it. Trying to be politely or intellectually bigoted i.e. "Just asking questions" won't be tolerated.

2. No ZionismAny forms of Zionism or Zionist rhetoric will not be tolerated here, this includes Zionist apologia, accusations of antisemitism towards anti-Zionists, or blatant denial or downplaying of the genocide towards Palestinians. Any attempt to uphold or prop up the IHRA definition of antisemitism, will be treated as Zionism. Anyone engaging in Pro-Zionist sentiment or apologia will be actioned in accordance with its severity.

Note: Trying to find loopholes or whataboutery to see what is or isn't genocide denial or Zionism will be treated as a violation of this rule. Don't test us.

3. Stay CivilPlease maintain civil discourse in the community. Do not engage in arguments with others, name-calling, or insults. Note that calling out bigotry or Zionism is not considered an insult. In heated arguments users are encouraged to or even required to disengage failure to do so will result in mod action.

4. No MisinformationSpreading of misinformation intentionally in this community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Spreading misinformation hurts the credibility of the community and can mislead people sometimes in dangerous ways. Users who intentionally post misinformation as articles, comment answers, or in attempt to win arguments will be actioned swiftly.

Note: This includes Russian and Chinese propaganda. Users with a history of such posting will be banned on sight.

5. No AI ContentPlease do not post articles or content primarily created using generative AI. Generative AI content may contain misinformation or be lower quality and thus is discouraged. Posts and comments featuring it will be removed. However this community does not allow or tolerate Anti-AI trolling or hostility and users who engage in such behavior will be actioned for it, additionally Anti-AI trolling violates Rule 3 and often Rule 4 so it is generally unacceptable already.

Note: Rules 1 & 2 may be subject to preemptive mod action due to their severity, and they apply to a user's entire post history. Not just this community.

founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com
Sunshine@lemmy.ca
16
After escaping Russian energy dependence, Europe is locking itself in to US LNG (davekeating.substack.com)
submitted 10 hours ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The US energy secretary says the quiet part out loud: the tributary $750 billion in energy purchases the EU has promised in its Trump deal is meant to lock Europe into "long-term" energy dependence.

top 8 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] randomname@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

This is, as it has been said several times over (including here on Lemmy if I am not mistaken), very likely unachievable.

The EU imports of U.S. energy consists currently mainly of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The EU also buys coal from the US, mainly metallurgical coal that is used to produce steel, although volumes are quite low. (Nuclear was not mentioned in this EU-US negotiation, and even if we include refined oil into the calculation, it wouldn't change much as US exports of refined oil to the EU add up to a number in the lower double-digit billions in 2024.)

Of these three relevant energy sources - crude oil, LNG, metallurgical coal - the EU's total imports reached a combined value of USD 64 billion in 2024. This is some 26% of the required USD 250 billion it should now buy from the US alone.

What is more important, however, is that US exports of these three energy sources total USD 166 billion in 2024, which is 66% of the proposed volume. This means that even if the EU bought the United States' entire export volume - and even if the US energy companies would be able to ramp up production quickly enough to meet the demand desired by Trump - it fell still short of the proposed USD 250 billion.

All analysts agree that these numbers will never show up.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago

Most commodities are traded as futures. One can buy billions worth of futures today, with delivery date far in the future?

[–] iii@mander.xyz 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

I'm confused: what alternative does this protestor imagine to natural gas, to solve the seasonality and intermittency problems of wind and solar? Or are they solely argueing russian gas instead of US gas? - neither of which we have "escaped"

[–] pipes@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

BESS, geothermal, and moar solar. And consider this: everything that burns fossil today and gets electrified (water boilers -> heat pumps, electric cars), is the equivalent of a source of energy if the same amount of fuel is put into high efficiency generators instead; what one gas boiler burns is enough for ~3-4 homes with heat pumps. One diesel car -> 3-4 evs. Which means we'll need a lot less of it overall. All this without counting the costs of pollution which are astronomical since we have socialized healthcare almost everywhere in Europe.

We still have nuclear and hydro of course, but those are kinda maxed out for our geography or they cost too much to scale up.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Even in the best case scenario of oversizing production by solar and wind generation, storage requirements are very large. It's only technically feasable with some sort of long term storage and massive interconnect investments (see 1. Section 3.6 The relevance of storage ).

But that technology doesn't exist (yet?) beyond lab scale. Our current path of investing in solar and wind thus cements the need for fossil fuels for decades to come.

Hence the question: what future is the author arguing for?

[–] Hector@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's natural gas is often extracted with fracking that permanently poisons watersheds for these oil bosses to make a quick profit and leaving those entire communities permanently damaged, areas they never set foot in.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Yes, ideally no gas would need to be bought.

The question is what would the alternative look like?

[–] Hector@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Long-term the alternative should be running turbines off of mediums with lower boiling temperatures close to Natural temperature differences we can find to boil and cool a medium with very little extra energy. But we can't do that because of oil.