[WinstonSmith84]

fun fact for Paraguay: the Itaipu Dam is one of the largest in the world located between Brazil and Paraguay, where each country gets 50% of the production. But 50% of that production for Paraguay, a country of 7 millions inhabitants, means that it cannot consume that much, so it's essentially reselling that energy to Brazil, a country with 30x more inhabitants. Paraguay only uses about 1/3 of its share (and thus resells 2/3 to Brazil).

[perlgeek]

Another fun fact: There's a second big dam that supplies Paraguay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacyret%C3%A1_Dam

It's also a two-country joint venture, this time with Argentina. And again, Paraguay uses much less of the electricity than its bigger partner.

[neves]

And it means that it has been oil free since the 70's.

Brazil, a continental country, has more than 80% of its energy from renewables

[ptman]

Oil free for electricity generation. The media in my country (Finland) also likes to brag about 90+% fossil-free electricity generation. But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.

[ZeroGravitas]

Finland has electricified 40% of primary energy which is pretty much world leading (Sweden and Norway are 50%). European average is 19%.

Largest chunk left is transport which can mostly be electrified now. Industrial and home heat too. There are hard to electrify sections in both but overall it's fairly obvious what to do next.

And the easy parts eliminate 3 or 4 units of primary energy for every one they replace, so even 40% primary energy is way over 50% toward the finish line of electrifying all the useful stuff.

I think it's also an interesting question as to whether countries that use a lot of electricity have lower per kWh prices because they spread the fixed costs further.

[sumea]

Yes, ground transport (except long distance trucks) can be electrified now. In principle, most homes could be heated with electricity if we had means to store all the "excess" wind energy or waste heat from e.g. datacenters and use it in district heating. The technology for heat storage is mostly ready but the capacity is not.

But would it be easy or obvious what to do next? Absolutely not. Everything is simple if you have pockets full of money, live in temperate climates and do not rely on energy intensive (and hard to electrify) industries like the Nordic countries.

For example, about 25 per cent of the total energy consumption in Finland is used to heat buildings. Wood burning is about half of the total heating in distric heating systems which account about half of the total heating for buildings. Also heat-storing fireplaces are still a small but a crucial part of the total picture. A lot of extra energy capacity is needed just make sure you stay alive during the coldest months even if some of the systems fail.

Nordic countries have cheap electricity mostly for two reasons: very stable interconnected electric grid and lots of different renewable energy sources. Arguably, hydropower is the most important because it can stabilize the intermittent wind power which in many places we have more than enough already. Nuclear energy is also a major part of electricity production in Sweden and Finland.

And yet our electric grid or electricity production capacity is far from ready to handle even the more realistic dreams of "full electrification" we are told in the media. It will take many years just to get the grid ready.

And what happens if the stablest renewable, hydropower, fails? We might find it out this year as hydropower reserves in Norway are at the lowest level in 20 years. Hydro generates about 90% of Norway's total electricity.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> In principle, most homes could be heated with electricity if we had means to store all the "excess" wind energy or waste heat from e.g. datacenters

Most homes are hundreds or thousands of miles from a datacenter.

[ninalanyon]

> except long distance trucks) can be electrified now.

What do you call long distance? And why do you think it can't be electrified now. Both Volvo and Scania have electric tractor units.

Scania has trucks with over 500 km range at 42 t GTW. In Europe you can't drive more than 360 km in one go. See https://www.scania.com/group/en/home/products-and-services/t...

[mastermage]

My exact area at the moment, the problem is not the distance but recharging because the infrastructure for fast charging Electric Trucks has not rolled out broadly enough yet. Other than that the technology is completely ready its literally just missing some infrastructure that is being built right now.

[grumbelbart]

> But electricity is under half (30%?40%?) and the rest of that energy isn't fossil-free.

The trick of course is that if you electrify heating and transportation they'll need much less energy. Your average car with an ICE has an efficiency of 20-40%, electric cars have 60-80%. Heating your house with gas has an efficiency of around 100%, heat pumps have 300%-500%.

[tialaramex]

In theory gas boilers for heating are above 90% efficient. Not 100% because to achieve 100% what you'd have to do is keep the exhaust gases (which are hot) inside, where the people are, and unfortunately the exhaust gases are poisonous so that's a terrible idea.

To hit 90% the boiler needs to be designed to condense water vapour out of the exhaust gases, this way we'll get back the energy needed to turn water into a vapour which is a large portion of the energy embodied by the exhaust gas. And to do that the vapour needs to pass a low temperature fluid, so we use the input fluid we were about to heat with the boiler anyway, we want this fluid to be cooler than about 55°C but that means if we're using the boiler to heat a home with radiators, rather than to make fresh hot water for cleaning etc. we need our return temperature from the radiators to be less than 55°C which means we need our flow temperature to be lower (than the typical 70-80°C programmed by builders, not lower than 55°©) or else the radiators can't possibly radiate enough heat to hit that number, which means we're actually doing much of the same heating efficiency work we'd have to do to use heat pumps anyway...

[hunterpayne]

Not sure where you get your numbers but they are way off. Natural gas is 90% (nothing is 100%). Heat pumps are geothermal masquerading as electric. And the highest number I ever heard for a heat pump was 135% which was under nearly ideal circumstances. In Finland, heat pumps can't make nearly enough heat to handle a winter there so you need something else too or instead of.

Truth is that electricity is great for kinetic energy but terrible at making heat. Most forms of energy can be transformed into another form of energy at about 50%. Electricity is the weird one where its 90% to motion but only 10% to heat. So if you want heat, you want something that makes heat directly. That's why natural gas heating (for building and homes) is usually lower carbon any other method. When you try to switch to electric, it makes things worse because of these inefficiencies. And heat pumps are great when you are in the right environment for them (like say the UK down to say Spain or so). But in Finland, you are going to need more than just some pipes in the ground and a fan.

[sehansen]

135% is quite low for an air source heat pump. For instance a Samsung HHSM-G600005-1 [0] claims to have been tested to be 485% efficient at heating water to 35°C and 283% efficient at heating water to 55°C, both with 7°C air temperature. For Finland you'd want to find a heat pump with a datasheet specifying SCOP for specifically the EN 14825 Northern Europe climate zone. I couldn't find one with some quick googling, but I found a Swedish site selling a air-to-air heat pump[1] claiming 222% efficiency at -25 °C.

0: The Cop numbers in this product spec: https://www.snhtradecentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...

1: https://varmepumpshopen.se/luftvarmepump/panasonic-hz25zke

[stavros]

Are you saying that, for a given amount of electricity, you can only convert 10% to heat? I can't even think of a way to make this correct, since all forms of energy end up as 100% heat, the question is just whether the heat ends up in your home or not.

So, what do you mean with the 10% metric?

[grumbelbart2]

> Heat pumps are geothermal masquerading as electric

Air-to-air heat pumps are quite common 1-4 family homes. Even in Nordic countries such as Finland: https://www.sulpu.fi/heat-pump-sales-returned-to-a-growth-pa...

> And the highest number I ever heard for a heat pump was 135% [...] Truth is that electricity is great for kinetic energy but terrible at making heat. Most forms of energy can be transformed into another form of energy at about 50%. Electricity is the weird one where its 90% to motion but only 10% to heat.

Sorry but absolutely not, that's wrong on several levels. First off, in its most basic form of resistive heating, electric heating is already close to 100%. Heat pumps are even better, and I'll just quote Wikipedia

> At a cost of 1 kWh of electricity, they can transfer 1 to 4.5 kWh of thermal energy into a building.

[gaigalas]

Brazil has the most advanced biofuels program in the world, by far.

Ethanol alone accounts for roughly 1/5 of all energy in Brazil, with almost 50% of light-vehicle fuels being renewable.

For heavy vehicles, biodiesel is gaining in. Ethanol started in the 70s, the biodiesel program is much more recent (10-15% mixture in regular diesel).

It's not just electricity here, we're doing serious work on the fuel front.

[beAbU]

I presume the other half is residential heating?

[pelasaco]

Yes, https://www.iea.org/countries/brazil

Put the meme of Macron with an old picture saying Brazil is BURNING THE AMAZON