And yet we allow extravagant malls all over France to light and heat 24/7 with open doors and no accountability. All streets are filled with large high-definition ad screens & computers that cool and heat all day long. Restaurants and bars can just heat the outside terrace air, etc...
And the liberal take has been: This is fine as long as they're paying their bills.
Blackouts are a solution to consumption surges. We are not seeing surges right now so there is no reason to restrict anyone. We can’t store electricity after all. In case of a surge, the commercial sector is the first being hit, long before houses. Plus the issue is mostly heating, lights consume next to nothing.
France electricity is mostly clean by the way.
> Restaurants and bars can just heat the outside terrace air. etc...
That's not what they announced, the day before an area code will be revealed, and all electricity will be cut (including schools, public utility and telephone towers)
> That’s been illegal for more than a year
There is an exception if terrace area is "covered". Guess what everyone installed in the past year?
What they announced is in addition to what’s always done. The commercial sector has always been the first to be cut. Some companies actually have special contracts which mean they can be cut with barely any notice.
If they do large scale blackouts it’s that they can’t manage the load without cutting normal customers so obviously it’s going to hit everyone.
France's energy production is not as clean as one may think. There is considerable damage to the environment in countries in Africa, where Uranium is mined/extracted. Probably still better than lots of CO2 output, but not actually clean.
Most uranium comes from Kazakhstan. Australia and Canada are also major producers. Namibia produces some, but far from the majority. This isn't exactly a "western countries dumping environmental problems in Africa" story.
The uranium used in France comes in part from Niger. The mines in Niger are operated by Orano, a mining company whose main shareholder is also France. There have been controversies about France using foreign aid to pressure the Niger government for more favorable mining contracts.
In Australia at least most of it comes from a copper mine that happens to intersect a uranium vein, so as long as the demand for copper exists its extraction is essentially environmentally free
I don't think it's particularly bad per GWh of energy produced. You just don't need that much uranium. Compare coal (still being actively mined and burned for energy!), natural gas, exotics for batteries/solar.
(Good luck finding one that supports your position).
FWIW: yes, mining is bad. But uranium is unbelievably energy-dense and the amounts are ridiculously small compared to any other source of energy. All things considered, nuclear causes fewer emissions per MWh than most solar panels (which are not radioactive but still need heaps of metals and semiconductors). Also, there is no contest with coal, oil, and gas, which is the thing that is actually used when you don’t have nuclear energy available.
Here you go. But really, if you had done a simple search of something like "france uranium africa" you would likely have found this yourself. If you only ever search for things supporting your position, but not the opposite position, you are prone to being in a bubble, never seeing contradicting information.
No energy production is clean. Actually, I'd be curious to compare the damage to the environment caused by uranium extraction vs producing batteries and solar panels.
Nuclear and solar panels are about the same. Better than wind and hydro. But all of these are very similar, and are miles better than fossil fuels. It’s difficult to have accurate projections for batteries because the technology that can be used at these scales is not clear (though he vast majority of them need cobalt, which is a huge issue on several levels).
What are you talking about? Did you forget to update your talking points when everything you're complaining about changed?
Stores, including malls, are mandated to shut down lights and screens after hours. Christmas lights and the Eiffel tower shut down at 22:00. Restaurants and bars have been forbidden from heating up terraces for more than a year.
Same stuff in Germany. We ask households to save energy, but at the same time store windows and malls and whatnot are lit up all night long. Maybe it needs a separate higher energy price for businesses to change that behavior.
While I'm sure there's a ton of possible places for commercial use to optimize that aren't being done yet, stores leaving signs on all night was banned by the EnSikuMaV back in August.
Covid taught us that Germany loves to pass laws that it does not enforce at all. Germans are astonishingly compliant, but it still sucks to follow the law only to enable those who don't.
Half of Germany has asthma, I guess, which is why they do not need to wear masks properly in public transport. Who would have guessed, that the pandemic brings so many health problems? The amount of asthma patients must be what they are talking about when they say "long covid". How else can we explain people's behavior?
It is really ridiculously selfish how people act here. As if one couldn't see, that they did not properly fit their mask to the back of their noses in so many cases, if they wear a mask at all. Or those people, who continuously lift their mask when breathing out ... How much must one not understand?
In absolute terms I wouldn't say that Germany is very compliant. Maybe 50% compliant in public transport, if I count the people who really wear FFP2 masks properly, as is the rule. There are even signs there and frequent announcements, that you must wear an FFP2 mask in public transport.
Compared with other countries I see, that people in Japan and South Korea have more insight and behave less selfish, more caring about the person next to them than they do in Germany. But that is merely a media impression I got from some news reports and interviews of people on the streets, which might have been highly selective. So comparatively Germany might be above average of compliance with the law, but I don't think Germany is on a very high level in that regard.
I guess the take on that is, that there is no good regulation for it. If it can be one way in one city, for some of the shops, and different for other cities or other shops, then the measures/policies are not really reaching the target. Apparently one cannot rely on people doing the right thing, especially not, when they are in some kind of loosely associated group like a business, where no one feels responsible at the end. It might be a topic which needs intervention by the state to get the desired effect.
And the liberal take has been: This is fine as long as they're paying their bills.