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by Isolus 1343 days ago
I don't know anyone in germany who thinks gas is "clean". New buildings are built with heat pumps. They are considered clean if used with renewable energy.

But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based on fossil fuels.

2 comments

Germany literally got the European Commission to label gas burning as "green energy" (!).

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ger...

https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-declares-nuclear-a...

(Does that count as gaslighting? Sorry.)

The cited article says "a bridge for a limited transition period" and not "green energy".

So no, they don't want to label it green energy, they only prefer it to other fossil fuels and nuclear but the goal is to phase out natural gas as well.

The DW headline is "European Commission declares nuclear and gas to be green".

Is the state-owned DW/ARD not a trustworthy news source?

The article cites "gas and nuclear were labeled as "transitional" energy sources in the taxonomy".

So the news itself is correct but the headline abbreviates this very badly.

Heat pumps are amazing and a big step forward, but Germany's electricity is energized by natural gas peaker plants when there is not enough wind or solar generation operating.

Even if every German building was using heat pumps, they would still be burning TONS of natural gas to keep the electricity flowing consistently, because they have no long term energy storage solution to pair with renewables, especially through the long, dark winters when the sun rarely shines.

You imagine there is no plan because you do not know about the plans.

It would be stupid to build storage there is not renewable generating capacity to charge. When there is such capacity, they will then build out storage. In the meantime the correct place to spend is on generation. Which, in fact, is what they are doing.