[mkeespiet]

Long showers.. in the Netherlands most of the houses are connected to natural gas for heating and showering. We installed multiple solar panels and a heat pump, so we do not use any natural gas anymore (cooking is also electrical). This means we cannot shower all day long, but it is worth it to use only electricity!

[thomaszander]

The above comment may be very weird to people not living in The Netherlands as we all know that there is nothing wrong with natural gas, its one of the most eco friendly ways to heat stuff.

But in The Netherlands some government officials have taken the point of view that natural gas is Bad, and we should all pay lots of money to move to heat pumps and similar in order to get rid of it.

The sad thing is that most people in The Netherlands are also lied to by those same politicians about how "green energy" actually is created. For instance after years of planting thousands of windmills (both on land and on sea) the wind-energy electricity generated is still around 1% (I'm actually being generous).

Similarly many farming fields have been converted to now have solar panels, and many many houses have them by default. Same here, total energy created: about 1%.

What government still calls "renewables" is biomass. Which is actually the burning of trees. This is massively bad for nature because those trees are the one thing that actually converts that bad co2 to breathable air again.

Real renewable energy we get from imports from countries like Norway: water power. Around 8%.

But, here is the fun part: the vast majority of our electricity comes from, you guessed it, burning natural gas.

People that invest €10K to have a heat pump and solar power still use a very large amount of grid-electricity, which comes from burning natural gas.

[Zababa]

> we all know that there is nothing wrong with natural gas, its one of the most eco friendly ways to heat stuff.

What do you mean by this? Natural gas is another fossible fuel, it's far from being "eco friendly". It's better than coal or oil but that's about it.

[thomaszander]

Natural gas is the most eco friendly source of energy of the fossil fuels. The push for renewables is great, and those should become a bigger percentage of our usage.

But until the day that they are, natural gas is the best one we have. Pushing people to move away from it just because its Bad, doesn't make sense. That would simply move from you burning gas to some electricity company burning gas. With huge economic impact in the mean time for all those that have to buy really expensive heat pumps.

[scotty79]

This page states that in 2020 wind provided more than 11% of consumed energy in Netherlands.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherland...

[thomaszander]

As reported by a lobbying company. Not all numbers you read on the Internet are true.

Here is another lobbying company that has nice numbers too;

https://www.nvde.nl/nvdeblogs/hernieuwbare-energie-voor-het-...

> Het verbruik van hernieuwbare energie is in 2020 met bijna 20% gestegen. Daarmee is hernieuwbare energie nu goed voor ruim 11% van ons totale energieverbruik. De groei zit vooral in de sterke stijging van wind en zon, en in meer inzet van vaste biomassa.

Which states that the TOTAL renewable energy is 11%, with biomass being the majority.

Now, both sources can't be right, can they?

[ZeroGravitas]

It actually says renewable is over 11% of total energy. Total in this context often means "not just electricity generation" and the mention of biogas suggests they're talking about that but I don't read Dutch so hard to be sure. But jumping between those numbers is a common way to make a point seem stronger/weaker as required, the first link is very specifically talking about electrical energy consumed, so the two numbers are compatible depending on various definitions.

It lines up neatly with your initial 1% claim for example, except you specifically claim that it's 1% of electrical generation, not total energy.

Worth noting too that switching to renewables and electrifying actually reduce total energy, as more than half of it wasted as heat from combustion of fuels. Another popular statistical trick to make switching to renewables seem impossible.

[scotty79]

Wouldn't the lobbying company be incentivised to give lower numbers to show more money is needed?

Besides... Is CBD Statline really a lobbying group or are you just guessing that such groups are involved because it fits your narrative?

[scotty79]

Since heat pumps are over 100% efficient it still might be (is) better to burn natural gas to produce the electricity to power heat pump than to just burn gas for heat.

[thomaszander]

> Since heat pumps are over 100% efficient

You might want to check your numbers on that. Nothing is over 100% efficient.

[scotty79]

You might want to read about heat pumps.

They pump the heat you know. From colder outside into warmer inside. And they use (electricity that is) the fraction of heat energy that they pump in.

So 100W electric heater gives you 100W of heat inside, but 100W heat pump can bring in 300W of heat from outside. So it's 300% more efficient at heating the inside of the house.

[oefnak]

Well, there's also the issue that our national gas reserves lie beneath a city in which there are already many earthquakes thanks to the gas drilling.

[thomaszander]

Notice I talked about Natural gas, not national gas.

Gas is imported. Has been for decades.