[ChuckNorris89]

Same in rich Austria. I saw many apartments around the million euro ballpark in the older posh city center buildings, that are still heated by firewood stoves and many countryside houses are still heated by oil. Heat pumps? Ha! Never saw them anywhere around here.

It all feels incredibly dirty and inefficient to me for such a rich country.

[tpmx]

Well, oil is cheaper than electricity now*.

*) Depending on time and location of course, but it's the case surprisingly often.

As a Swede, the more I learn about about how central Europe has been heating their homes the more disgusted I become. Like, the way e.g. Germany seems to think of burning gas as "clean". I mean, maybe compared to coal, but... you shut down nuclear plants with a plan to replace with (Russian) gas? You do understand burning this causes CO2 emissions, right?

That was the many-billion-Euro German green energy revolution your environmentalists wouldn't stop talking about a decade ago?

And now our electricity in southern Sweden (which is what we generally use to heat our houses, in contrast to most of Europe, since it used to be very cheap and clean here, just a year ago. Most use an air-to-air/water heat pump or three) is insane costly, because of a combination of idiotic leftist politicans/voters also shutting down nuclear plants while at the same time building export power connections to Europe.

It's like everyone is doing the opposite of what's sane. /rant over

[adrianN]

Germany actually didn't plan to replace nuclear with gas, it wanted to replace nuclear with renewables+gas (later to be replaced by electrolysis). It was of course unfortunate for the climate to shut down the nuclear plants before shutting down the lignite plants.

[ChuckNorris89]

>building export power connections to Europe

Those export connections are there to benefit Germany industry who basically shut down some domestic production, because "green", and is instead importing its deficit from the others, raising the prices for everyone.

Portugal and Spain together are the only ones not connected to the shared grid and now have the cheapest energy prices in Europe, with Germany mumbling about it that this should change. Well done guys.

[tpmx]

> Portugal and Spain are the only ones not connected to the shared grid

(More believable.)

Source?

[ricardobayes]

We are connected, but were allowed to detach electricity prices from natural gas prices. It was dubbed the 'iberian exception' at the time.

[tpmx]

That would be something us in the north would need right now. Most house owners need like 1500-2000 kWh/month in the 6 cold winter months (november-april). With projected prices, we're looking at average family heating costs around EUR 1000-1500/month for 6 months. It will be extremely tough for homes with a single income. (That's about all of the average monthly pension.)

At the moment this is leading to a quite a lot of resentment towards the EU (and Germany) here amongst people.

[ricardobayes]

This comment reads weird after France just vetoed again Spain's proposal to export natural gas to Germany through France - the medgas pipeline.

[the_third_wave]

Yes, it is insane and it makes clear once more the only real solution to this conundrum it to become as much energy independent as possible. We heat our house with two wood-burning stoves - a 4.5 kW one in the kitchen ('vedspis' or wood-burning kitchen stove, another item the 'green' party wanted to ban by the way) and a 12 kW one in the living room. The large brick chimney warms up the second floor together with some venting to release warm air to move upstairs at the end of the evening. With 15 kW of solar panels on one of the barn roofs we're set for the months the sun makes itself known but in winter that doesn't help all that much which is why I'm looking into developing a combined heat-power system for small-scale (domestic, farm) use to solve the power + heat problem when there is no sun to be had.

Even if the nuclear plants the 'greens' forced to shut down were started again this probably will not bring down the power prices very much since the demand from neighbouring states will keep them up. As an aside and since you're in the south, would you have any idea why the wind park at Lillgrund (off the coast of Malmö) is not being used [1] when power costs 5.70 SEK/kWh? It is not because of a lack of wind as the linked video - which is taken from a boat sailing at ~8 knots past the wind park - clearly shows.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxOgmXJ5NiU

[ChuckNorris89]

Sorry, I got some facts wrong.