Buy EuropeanEurope has survived 3 energy shocks in 4 years. The only way out is to stop buying power from its enemies | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2026/03/25/europe-3-energy-shocks-in-4-years-what-to-do-next/
The enemies of europe (and any other country) are billionares and politicians.
100%, especially from Poland perspective
- More nuclear power plants
- more renevables
- more public transport and evs
The technology is there. We need solar, wind, batteries, hydro-storage and nuclear, which is hold back by fear and costs driven by bureaucracy. What we lack is political capital and supranational coordination. We need to scale up production and learn from the Chinese. The demand for batteries is there.
In Denmark, we have been investing heavily in solar panels and windmills the last few years, which is awesome! Electric car purchases have also exploded.
Now we just need to do away with out pig production and we will have more fields to place solar panels on and there will still be plenty of space to turn former pig feed fields into wildlife reserves so our nature can recover from the damage these pig farmers have done to our country. It'll take time, but I'm optimistic about our green policies in the future. We are heading in the right direction.
Exactly, don't buy from the usa, our once allie has shown open hostility.
Its pretty funny how little that narrows down your nationality
Non-usians is a pretty wide nationality.
Nah, we'll just buy gas from US and postpone electrification of transport couple decades. What could go wrong?
I would electrify my transport in a heartbeat, if only it wasn't so fucking expensive. Like ~30k€ for cheapest Kia BEV? Not even speaking about more "premium" brands. How tf should I get that with mediocre eastern european salary?
Yup, but in Poland there are still small fraction of evs…
Revault is government company, why they dont want to sell evs cars cheaper? Is it really necessary to make bigger profit than from ice?
Thank you! We just do not do enough fracking here yet.
I feel like it should have been clear to everyone since at least 9/11 and the aftermath but no one in leadership has made the obvious case that renewables are great for national security and not just the environment. Really shameful loss for humanity.
I was of the opinion that after 9/11, if the USA was actually interested in security, we would have invested in alternative energy.
Instead we invested in death and oil. Like always.
Or, ya know, build on self-sustainable sources.
But nuclear is so bad!!1! Better burn coal and oil and "clean" gas!!
Renewables FTW, with a nuclear backdrop til we can phase out that too is the way forward IMO.
You know nuclear isn't self-sustainable? Uranium is mined in only a few places.
So you advocate for coal, gas and oil until we can be 100% reliant on renewables?
There's no option. Transitioning to nuclear will keep you burning stuff for 10-15 years whilst they're built. Even SMRs will be 5-10. Renewables come online with a much smoother transition curve. You reduce burning stuff sooner, and we need whatever is quickest.
This is the correct answer. Nuclear is not a perfect energy source, but it fills one big gap that we currently have with the renewable energy sources.
I would also say that gas can be an ok alternative in some situations. For example as replacement of a coal power plant if it is built together with solar and/or wind power. The gas power plant can increase the power when the renewables does not produce energy and be turned off during sunny or windy days.
The volume of uranium used is so low that is feasible to store years of supply; this is not possible with gas.
But it should be noted as a risk, of course.
Uranium-based nuclear power isn’t ideal, but thorium-based nuclear power shows a lot of promise, because thorium is both way more common than uranium, and way harder to weaponize.
And? You're trying to argue it's like oil?
Yes, but unless we figure out how to store a ton of electric energy, renewables are limited in use and somehow counterproductive as it makes energy cheaper during sunny days and thus making nuclear even more expensive (due to the fact that nuclear can't be easily throttled). 🤷
Storing a ton is easy. It's storing gigatons that's hard.
Uranium is one of the most dense elements. It's like 30x more dense than gasoline.
That's happening but moving to renewable isn't something you can just magically do
Unless we figure out energy storage, it will never be a solution.
Energy storage is slowly being figured as battery prices drop year by year
That's nowhere near enough. It's magnitudes away.
Nah, if you assume 6-12h of storage needed it's close to break even. I'd say if prices of batteries get halved again, it's solved
Stop buying gas from the enemy after 4 years of war? Preposterous!
The EU has reduced Russian gas imports from 45% of the total gas imports of the union before the invasion of Ukraine to 13% at the end of 2025 and will be at 0% by 2027.
Coal and oil are already at 0%.
It's not like you can just switch off 150bn cubic meters of gas overnight
The problem is that they replaced most of it with the 3 times more expensive USA's LNG.
That was the point of the whole war and why Biden sabotaged Stoltz and Macron.
This is an outrage!
And who would those be? Renewable energy independence is the only way.
Nuclear is a much better option in the short and medium term.
And renewable doesn't solve the supply chain issue, a lot of materials for construction and maintenance need to be imported as well.
Nuclear is a much better option in the short and medium term.
Nuclear is not a good option at all if you want to stop buying energy from the "enemies" such as the billionaires and politicians who will be in charge for it.
Nuclear is part of the solution. We shouldn't rely on a single source of energy.
Nuclear isn't a option in the short term at all, simply because you can't build it fast enough.
It's also too damn expensive. And please tell where in germany we get the uran and the building materials for nuclear.
True but dont forget. If you will buy it from France, you will leave money locally :) and economy will get this money back
Canada. SMRs and uranium.
Ein von der Firma NuScale Power zusammen mit dem Energieversorger Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) geplantes Projekt in Idaho (siehe auch das Idaho National Laboratory) sollte Stand Anfang 2023 USD 102/MWh erreichen, wenn man die Subventionen herausrechnete.[17] Das Projekt wurde im November eingestellt, weil die ursprünglich für die Errichtung geplanten Kosten von 5,3 Milliarden Dollar auf bereits 9,3 Milliarden Dollar gestiegen waren.[18] Zum Vergleich der Stromkosten: Nach Schätzungen aus dem April 2023 erreichen Solarfreiflächenanlagen Stromgestehungskosten von USD 24 bis USD 96/MWh
zu teuer.
It is much faster to build nuclear power plants that can cover a country's needs than to fully transition said country to renewable.
It's expensive upfront. But it is cheap to operate afterwards, and cost efficient to renew. Look at France.
Germany made a major, major mistake when then phased out of nuclear energy.
We have uranium in Europe. We just don't exploit it. But even if we did not, there is plenty of countries in the world exporting uranium, on all continents. It's much less of a strategic issue than relying on rare materials for renewable, or on gas/oil.
I present Exhibit A, the new Reactor Flamaville in France. Construction took 17 years and 12 billion Euros.
Exhibit B, solar panels I can mount on my roof for a few thousand that run for 20 years without maintenance.
I rest my case.
EDIT: I did some estimating and figured that instead of building a NPR, France could have supplied around 500.000 households with solar and storage instead. That would be the populations of Lyon, Toulouse and Nice combined. And they would have around 65% of their power for free.
I am not sure if you mean it that way, but I will take this comment as a good joke!
Tell that to Georgia Power. And while you're at it, pay my electric bill for me if it's so damn cheap!
What are you talking about? Building new plants takes decades. Renewables are much faster to build and are even cheaper than keep running existing nuclear plants
No, what are you talking about? A nuclear power plant takes less than a decade to build.
Renewable energy at the scale of a country is impossible to achieve in such a short time in Europe. We dont have huge geothermal taps, which countries having achieved 100% renewable energy have, and we consume a lot more energy.
Cheaper is great, but it's not continuous, it's not scaleable in a short period of time, and requires a fuckton more maintainance capability than a dozen nuclear power plants.
I will reiterate: A full renewable energy grid in Europe is impossible with our current tech, especially in a reasonable timeframe. That's why instead of solar power plants, countries prefer to subsidies local, individual solar panel installations, for instance.
I agree with @knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de, everything about nuclear technology involves cost and time overruns. A nuclear power plant would ultimately take a decade or more to complete. Even the newer developments of SMRs or Thorium require real world experience and expertise that limit the number of countries who can explore this technology.
While countries are quick to make claims that they unlocked commercial thorium reactors, I'd say the only superpower realistically on track is China.
China hopes to complete the world's first commercial thorium reactor by 2030 and has planned to further build more thorium power plants across the low populated deserts and plains of western China, as well as up to 30 nations involved in China's Belt and Road Initiative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
A nuclear power plant takes less than a decade to build.
This is demonstrably a lie. The most recent nuclear power plant built in the US took 15 years to complete.
And the power plants in china took 6, with some that took 4 year. You can make nuclear faster if you want to. This is not a technology problem (or at least, not only), but a bureaucratic one. Chinese are building plants based on the AP1000, the same the US are building. It is a US design.
Is nuclear really cheaper than renewables + batteries nowadays? I wonder if there are recent studies looking into it
Quick search points to this:
Levelized Cost of Electricity: which is a measure of the total cost of building and operating a power plant over its lifetime and expressed in dollars per megawatt-hour. [...] LCOE serves as a comprehensive metric that consolidates all direct cost components of a specific power generation technology. This includes capital expenditures, financing, fuel costs, operations and maintenance, and any expenses related to carbon pricing. However, LCOE does not account for network integration or other indirect costs
LCOE for advanced nuclear power was estimated at $110/MWh in 2023 and forecasted to remain the same up to 2050, while solar PV estimated to be $55/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $25/MWh in 2050. Onshore wind was $40/MWh in 2023 and expected to decline to $35/MWh in 2050 making renewables significantly cheaper in many cases
[...] Global weighted average levelized cost of electricity for newly commissioned utility-scale solar photovoltaic, onshore wind, offshore wind, and hydropower projects experienced a downward trend. The most notable drop occurred in utility-scale solar PV, which saw a 12% decrease from 2022 [in LCOE costs][...]
In contrast, nuclear power continues to face cost overruns and long construction timelines [...]
Source: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-Of-Nuclear-Vs-Renewables
[Caveat: Below numbers are most likely not using LCOE]:
[...] In 2025, developers added 87 gigawatts of combined solar and storage, delivering power at an average of $57/MWh
By contrast, benchmark cost of a typical fixed axis solar farm increased 6% compared to 2025, hitting $39/MWh, while onshore wind reached $40/MWh and offshore wind climbed to $100/MWh globally [...]
Source: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/battery-storage-costs-hit-record-lows-as-costs-of-other-clean-power-technologies-increased-bloombergnef/
If we aren't there yet, I still think we might see renewables + batteries as cheaper options in the short term.
I'd really like to see an LCOE analysis including batteries. If we naively assume LCOE costs for PV+batteries is the same as PV, we might already be there
My focus isn't on which type of energy is cheapest. An energy grid that is not predictable is worthless. Wiknd power, solar power, are great complements, but a grid using only those is not viable. Hydroelectric is great, but limited. Geothermal is not really viable in mainland Europe.
I'm worried about a realistic transition from fossile fuels to non fossile fuels. Nuclear is realistic, renewable as a main source in Europe is utopic and unrealistic.
You must hate nuclear then, it has awful synergy with renewables since you can't turn it off and on again quickly. Just overproducing with renewables and using batteries + gas plants for the few days the wind doesn't blow enough is much more realistic.
This is just..wrong. an unpredictable grid is perfectly fine for almost everything we currenty use it for, it just requires a very small amount of moving usage around and feedback on pricing/demand.
I'm not sure we define unpredictable in the same way. I mean not being able to rely on a continuous source of power (batteries mitigate but don't solve this issue) is problematic.
Where do you store the waste? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables. Where do you get the nuclear material for the plants? Where do you get enough professionals to man these new plants? How to ensure the new plants you've build (fastly) are safe? How to ensure the plants are not easy targets for enemy attacks and sabotage?
It's not a perfect solution, and ideally we would all be on renewable, I am not disagreeing with you there.
But a full renewable grid in Europe is simply not realistic with the tech we have now. A full nuclear grid is.
Keep researching renewable and nuclear (fusion would be the ideal option, even above renewable), but use the best we have now.
We have uranium in Europe. But we can also import it from many countries all around the globe, ao strategically much more diversified than rare materials needed for renewable.
Educate new professionals. Build them securely, not fastly. Still a better time perspective than a full renewable switch. Plants will always be easy targets, nuclear or not. Modern plants do not catastrophically fail like Chernobyl. Do yoh really think France has not thought of the security implications with their plants all over the country?
Now for nuclear waste... Yeah, it's a problem. Also being researched. But it is little waste. It's manageable until we have the right renewable tech or nuclear fusion.
As for the cost, again, it is expensive upfront, cheap to operate, cost efficient to renew.
Stop with the lie that it's cheap to operate it's not true at all wind and pv already beat it and are still on a downward trend
Yes, don't buy from Russia, the U.S., and China. It wouldn't make sense to replace dependence on fossil fuels by dependence on renewable technology from the regime in Beijing. The is often forgotten imo.
Still way better to depend on someone for renewables rather than fuel. This way, the already installed capacity will keep on working.
China also doesn't seem to be the conflict type. You want solar? You'll get solar.
What an absurdly weird comment. You want oil? You get oil.
China is not only a decisive supporter of Russia in its war against Ukraine, it's been bullying practically all its neighbours in Asia. Beijing's envoys have openly threatened foreign government officials (as Japan's PM) and other countries' populations (Japan, Australia), and threatening Taiwan. A Chinese envoy in Europe claimed that former Soviet-states (like Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and all others) have 'no effective status' in international law. And this is just a TINY sample of what China stands for.
Saying it's not a 'conflict type' is absurd. China isn't a reliable partner, and it doesn't get better because the U.S. gets worse.
We're comparing bullying to actively commiting war crimes. Those are leagues apart. There's nuance to these conversations. One buy it and forget it while you prop up manufacturing is infinitely better than being dependent on war criminals.
I meant that from the position of energy security. Sure, China doesn't always play nice politically, and there could be reasons to avoid Chinese imports. However, China is not particularly known for sanctioning its trading partners, so you can be reasonably sure that the supply will be there.
china may not be a reliable partner, but what was said is true. Solar is not fuel. There is zero fuel cost involved. Once it is installed it is there until you need to replace the panels, decades in the future. Same with batteries. And arguably the same with nuclear, given the low amount of uranium and the refueling cycle every 2 years.
laughs in Icelandic
Do Icelandic people power their cars with electricity from geothermal? I'm not in Europe but where I live 94% of our electricity is hydroelectric, yet the vast majority of cars are still using gas/petrol. So even if we are independent on electricity, and it's somewhat clean, we still import oil to power cars and trucks.
We fucking did stop buying from Russia. That caused the previous shock.What else do you want?
Start buying more solar panels and batteries instead of oil and gas. Even if China (or whoever else you're buying from) goes to shit at some point, those things will last you decades while you figure out what to do next. Fossil fuels can only be used once and you can't even stuff a single year's worth of them into reserves.
EU is alredy on the forefront of moving into renewables - almost half of electricity is from green sources. You can't speed up the transition to be any faster.
You can't speed up the transition to be any faster
China has moved far far faster. I understand they're a bit of a rough comparison wise, but it CAN happen, just not under the European capitalistic model.
We shifted to importing a bunch of LNG I think. It just takes time to build up new infrastructure
No, we stopped importing oil and coal completely. And we reduced LNG imports to absolute minimum.
LNG from USA they meant
Stop buying solar panels anf wind turbines from China, then? I‘m afraid things really aren‘t that simple but I agree we need a long term plan yesterday.
Well, we actually produce our wind turbines - and most wind turbines outside of China (https://sopuli.xyz/post/30659580).
And it is different with solar panels than with oil & gas. If China stops exporting the panels today, well, the ones we bought will continue working for decades. If oil and gas stop flowing, we will run out of them in months, if not weeks.
You seem to be conflating energy with energy generation/conversion equipment, one of these is a consumable they are not the same
You seem to think there is absolutely no reliance on China by buying and relying on their tech. Or that it doesn‘t fuel their next invasion all the same. It does.
Besides, if you think buying turbines, panels and storage systems from China in 2026 is a one and done deal you‘re mistaken. They know how they work. They can shut them off if we sanction them. And they will give us many reasons to sanction them sooner rather than later.
And yet I still think we should buy them because we simply are out of alternatives. I also feel confident we can eventually turn them on again if they press the kill switch. And on top of that we will re-develop a domestic renewable energy industry that will make us much more independent.
But it will be painful. We will supply our enemy with money for their next war until then. I have no illusions about that.
Even if that was the only option, which it is not; a tank of gas is used up and must be replenished constantly, a solar panel is like a free gas station that lasts a really long time. Like a really long time. Gas? Use it and there is no gas no more, and you have to buy more gas, again and again and again.
So if china one day stops selling solar panels, we'll have decades of time to figure out what to do, not days or weeks.
I see two options for EU: either stop being hostile and make partners, or revert to primitive communism.
EU isn't the one being hostile, tho?
Not hostile to russia but hostile to Iran
Well, hostile not in a directly violent way, but they act stupid, arrogant, and aggressive.
Do you have a favourite country that doesn't act like that?
This guy might just speak French. When he says "EU" he actually means "États-Unis"
Nope, I do not have a favorite country at all. Unfortunately, we live in a world where might makes right. The problem with the EU is that it lacks the any strength to play this game but tries hard.
You watched way too much Russian propaganda. What are you even doing here? You are supposed to watch Russian TV
Go suck Putin's cock, ruski
Communism has never solved any problems though, only made everything worse.
The same could be said of capitalism. The reality is that both systems, in a purist sense, are ridiculously naive. Lots of problems have been solved through decommodification and common ownership of public goods, just like lots of problems get solved by markets. The trick is knowing how and when to use each.
You're not wrong but that's a big old whataboutism IMO. Or switching goalpoasts (I'm not here defending capitalism) or similar.
Common ownership of goods, like we have in europe (schools, hospitals, roads, and so on) are not inherent to communism and are very good IMO.
Your ancestors would strongly disagree with this opinion.
Calling that communism really doesn't work. Family groups of a few dozen people sharing things doesn't just scale up to modern societies.
Communalism was succesful in history and scalable
What examples of post Industrial Revolution communism are you thinking of?
I specifically say post Industrial Revolution because the societal changes brought about at that time and since pretty much invalidates earlier examples. The genie is out of the bottle and there's no way that the global society is going to go back to being mostly agrarian.
The ottoman communal system worked post the industrial revolution. The system collapsed not because the system was flawed but because the Ottoman was over militarizing . I do not advocate for a complete communism system either but rather an hybrid
It's called primitive communism. But you can call it primal society.
It's so primitive you can call it whatever. Just as you call it primitive communism, someone could probably argue it is primitive feudalism, capitalism, anarchy, or whatever else.
If anything, this is closer to anarchy. Certainly not communism. But it's neither.
I'm not sure what a modern day picture of russia has to do with our ancestors.
Frienemies....like if you teleported directly from Europe into any given US street nobody would say "hey, that guy is an enemy". We in the US have a problem, an idiot is driving.
I have to come clean. I am also an idiot. But I am working thru my problems. The idiots driving our country may, hopefully be replaced. One day. Hopefully while I'm still alive and not 89 years old.
like if you teleported directly from Europe into any given US street nobody would say “hey, that guy is an enemy”. We in the US have a problem, an idiot is driving.
I think that what you find will actually happen is that they will get held at gunpoint by ICE, be unable to show identification, get beaten up for talking back, and get thrown in a concentration camp for a couple months, where if they can't prove European citizenship in time they get deported to a death camp in El Salvador.
Though to be fair, that's if they hit the bad luck of being stopped by cops for engaging in the suspicious activity of walking, or ringing the doorbell of a Republican, or ringing the doorbell of someone who calls the cops when someone is at the door with an implausible story asking to use their phone.
Basically they would have to rely on the kindness of strangers to avoid the militarised police and to get in contact with their country's embassy for extraction. The only benefit over Iran or Russia is that they might speak the language.
Though to be fair, that's if they hit the bad luck of being stopped by cops for engaging in the suspicious activity of walking, or ringing the doorbell of a Republican
That's not entirely fair. Sometimes when you ring the doorbell of a Republican they just shoot you through the door.
But that's still not us. That's the king and his followers doing that.
Ok, I would like to buy a million barrels of crude oil, can you set that up for me without involving "the king and his followers?"
Nope. Again, please point your pointy bits to the real perps, not the American people who like me are happy to help others.
This post is about "not buying oil from your enemies" and you're like, "But I'm not your enemy! Also, I don't have any oil!"
I don't really understand your point. Which nationalities / races would be identified as an enemy if teleported into a US street ?
As individuals, Americans might be nice well meaning people just trying to get along.
As a nation, the USA is a hostile trading partner, an inept negotiator, and a heavy handed aggressor.
As an individual you don't need to apologise, but as a nation it's not enough to say "the driver is an ass".
As a nation we are basically hostages. There's nothing in our legal power to do that can bring back our troops or deploy them. We don't vote to deploy troops or start wars. Its the idiot king that the electoral college picked who is doing all that. I'm just saying the rest of us are powerless but welcome people from anywhere if it was up to us. Ofcourse there are exception to this as there would be in any nation. But that's Normal. You wouldn't want a sudden invasion. But you'd be okay with tourism. Tourism can get out of hand too but you know, you go to a mall and you year people talking a different language, that's okay by me.
