alt Hacker NewsWe had positive announcements like these 40 years ago, ways before Nord Stream was even planned, when Natural Gas was the future and households converted to Natural Gas heating.
It seems very unlikely that with sustained temperatures of -5 to -8°C in the winter months, which seem to get longer again, heating can be achieved with renewables in any way.
Heat pumps were already collapsing and making irritating fan noises at -8° this winter. Converting to heat pumps is expensive and the service costs are expensive, too.
LNG is needed for fertilizer and other chemical products, too and is hard to replace at all.
By all means, try renewables, but these enthusiasm waves leave me skeptical.
Replies
Heat: 250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073855 - November 2025 (249 comments)
Low carbon fertilizer production: Green ammonia production: Process technologies and challenges - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00162... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2024.131808 - Fuel, Volume 369, 1 August 2024, 131808
Skepticism is important, but the evidence so far proves out we have a long way to go with the "easy" parts of decarbonizing until we have to solve the last "hard" parts. Capital and cashflows saved on fossil fuels from the easy parts can be directed towards the hard parts when that time comes. Enough sunlight hits the Earth every 30 minutes to power humanity for a year; it's a capture, transfer, and orchestration story broadly speaking. We are bound mostly by the laws of physics.
If heat pumps don't work in the winter, how come Sweden has (as of 2022) 2.2 million heat pumps (209 per 1000 residents) and Finland 1.4 million (251 per 1000 residents)?
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...