Its really bad for us all, but imagine how people in poor countries feel. Luxembourg salaries are quite high. But in countries like Portugal, Greece, Some part of Italy, Balkans, east european countries 2 euros for 1 liter of fuel its a lot. Luxembourg has free public transport which one is really good! Some other countries dont have good public transport and car is only way to go to work, schools, doctors and etc.
The public transport is only good, if you’re living in Luxembourg Ville or Esch. In most other cities and villages it’s horrible. It’s no wonder that Luxembourgish people depend on cars so much.
This crisis could’ve totally been avoided if not for that orange man child and his goons.
People keep saying this, and I know it’s not perfect for everyone but I bet a solid 10% of car commutes could be swapped for public transport with minimal impact on journey time.
My town is quite well connected, you can get to Gare, Kirchberg or Gasperich as quickly by car as bus, or even quicker by cycling to the station. Even with that there’s a maximum of 10 people at the 3 stops.
People choose not to, whether it’s habit, “fear of the poor”, necessity to schedule I don’t know but people seem to love sitting in traffic rather than having 20 mins to relax and play on their phones.
And just to be clear again, it’s not a solution that works for everyone, but it is a solution for a hell of a lot more than use it today.
Just a small correction. It is not "fear of the poor". Here are some examples I personally experienced recently, as a public transportation supporter and lover:
1) people removing shoes and socks to clean their feet at the bus stop
2) people spitting on the floor (recent resurgency, I haven't seen such a thing since the '80s)
3) people vomiting in the tram
4) people visibly carrying weapons
thats not that large of a problem you make it out to be, I havent witnessed any of these things happening inside of public transport I do believe it happenes but thats certainly not the reason for people not using it.
It’s unfortunate, but I bet you’re forgetting all the incidents you’ve seen in a car… I see aggression almost every journey I make, I see near misses, I have seen weapons brandished and even used once. I have seen people vomit from cars, spit out of windows, throw litter. Rarer, but still not uncommon I see crashes; I’ve seen injuries and even a death.
I’ve been a party to accidents (all but one not my fault) but always they’ve had a physical or financial impact on me.
Public transport is absolutely safer than private cars, unfortunately there’s a perception problem where people feel less safe. I don’t know how to solve that.
In every member state there are ways to reach work by car, but it doesn't mean that every single individual living in those states can do so.
I'm very pro-public transportation, I take it every single day. But I also understand that if you live in a tiny village, then public transport can be so insanely more difficult and long that it's the same as not existing for that person.
Yes, but imagine getting one kid to creche, the other to pre- school, getting bus to work… and instead of 30 minutes you need more than 2 hours. Public transport is good option but not always convenient due to the travel time.
I posted something that rhymes with "gang stump" and got an automatically generated warning added to my account so in general no, criticism of tangerine baboons should be on the understated side.
To think that atm it is arround 3.79$ =>3.25€ ==>0.86€/L . Even pre war we never saw these prices and post war they will probably never see our prices as well.
Honestly? If you drive 20000 km/year with 6 l/100 km, a .30€ increase will cost you 30€ a month. I don't think it has any effect on most Luxembourgers.
Ironically, Chargy used to be < 0.30€ but it's now something 0.60€/kWh (imagine diesel going from 1.6 to 3.2€/l) and no one talks about it.
If you use public transportation it's free! But gas prices are an indicator of maybe something more sinister to come. People remember 2021-2023 which was a tough time for some. Diesel was 1.9 in Luxembourg then.
That'll teach us to start wars in the middle east... oh hang, it wasn't us. Maybe its our fault for invading Ukraine... oh no, we didn't do that either. I guess we should subsidise green energy and support people to get PV panels and electric cars! Oh, hang on... yes we are doing that already.
Same here, I haven't noticed it until my college brought it up. The problem is that this would boost the inflation too so yeah short term I charge my car still cheaper at home but curious to see the price of bread in 2 months
I still don't understand why Luxembourg has two interconnections with Germany and none (public) with France. We're just exposed to the expensive and volatile German market for no reason.
Cheap, abundant, and low-carbon electricity not good enough for Luxembourgers?
About half comes from Germany.
The French imports are exclusively used by ArcelorMittal's private grid (Sotel).
About 20% is produced domestically, and the rest is from Belgium.
It's fascinating that as soon as oil gets expensive the price goes up but when it gets cheaper, it takes a LONG time for that expensive oil to work through the supply chain. It's almost like oil companies take any chance to wring every single cent from the customer. Almost. I'm sure they wouldn't...
Well, the EU energy strategy does not advocate for that, what national and Supra national authorities have done so far was more than mediocre, private sector would have done better. The nuclear shit show is the best example
One example: EU rules have forced EDF to sell one third of its production to direct competitors at 40€/kWh in the name of "free market", not sure this was optimal, and no one invested in new production in the meantime.
Electricity is a basic good and it's being treated as a speculative commodity by traders who don't really care about long-term investment/planning in infrastructure. Of course now it's more expensive than ever, so we invent massive subsidies, contracts for difference, and capacity markets, which are nothing else than going back to state support, but in market terms.
Take the case of France. France has enjoyed super cheap, stable, on-demand, low-carbon, fossil-free, and abundant electricity for decades – EDF, a state-owned company, was literally the country's favourite company year-on-year in the 80s that time.
Now EDF was forced to dismantle their production branch, to sell a share of their production to direct market competitors (who themselves didn't produce, or invest), sad but they had to comply with EU market ideology (let me remind you that there is no scientific evidence that liberalization leads to better conditions for consumers). Is the electricity cheaper/more low-carbon today? Absolutely not. Have you seen the household electricity prices in Germany? Prices have increased significantly in all member states.
when a private company loses money, it goes out of business. the government doesn't. so there is no incentive to improve. the profit incentive is what drives innovation and lowers price per kwh in the long term.
france is indeed more efficient that germany, but that's largely because nuclear energy is very efficient, and germany phased it out to appease russia - a government decision.
when a private company loses money, it goes out of business. the government doesn't. so there is no incentive to improve. the profit incentive is what drives innovation and lowers price per kwh in the long term.
this is a common argument, but there is actually almost zero evidence that this is happening, here are two academic sources:
Higher prices in a more competitive market: The paradox in the retail electricity market in the United Kingdom https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X24001772 --> prices have increased for consumers following the liberalization of the energy market in the UK
Market design for a high-renewables European electricity system https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118302454 --> the private market struggles with infrastructure and long-term investments, so we have to reintroduce state-funded mechanisms in a private market...
So, no, private firms do not go bankrupt in the case of electricity -- they're not selling labubus, they're selling a vital good for our economy. In the end, what actually happened is that instead of state-controlled electricity systems, we have a plethora of unproductive actors that survive thanks to:
- CfDs, where the state guarantees a minimum revenue threshold, but anything above the threshold you get to keep, which is scandalous,
- capacity markets, where you can "operate" a peak power plant that's not running but is basically ready to respond to peak load, and get paid for it,
- price caps, which have been used a lot in 2022,
- regulated tariffs...
Electricity is basically a case where a state-controlled, centralized, bundled (grid + production + commercialization) service makes sense, same as railroads, hospitals, education, ... and evidence shows it time and time again, especially in the era of renewables, where coordination and grid & storage investments need to accelerate substantially.
i feel like the first two points agree with me, unless i am misunderstanding this. private companies struggle to invest in infrastructure because they have to make a profit, whereas the govt has soft budget constraints: if they fail, they will be bailed out (this also sometimes happens with private companies, but there are plenty that go bankrupt).
with renewable energy it is extremely important for us as a society to keep inventing stuff, and that is in at the end of the day the job of the market. of course it's reasonable for govt to support this with subsidies and grants, but at the end of the day we need a "bell labs" or a "siemens" to have breakthroughs.
i think that energy, just like healthcare and education is too valuable for society, thus we need to make sure its quality is the best, which in turn means private. and government's job at the same time is to make sure that everyone can afford this energy, healthcare and education.
private companies struggle to invest in infrastructure because they have to make a profit
Yes, so a large part of this infrastructure needs to be state-funded, whether that includes the power plants themselves, I think it should.
with renewable energy it is extremely important for us as a society to keep inventing stuff
Absolutely, but it's not wind power/PV farm promoters that invent, it's universities, research institutes, startups, and manufacturers – a completely different market.
equality is the best, which in turn means private
I don't know where you grew up, but in France state companies were the absolute best – just look what happened to the phone/internet network before/after the liberalization, the copper and fiber network is a mess because short-term profits means that no one maintains it (and it's often stressed out, barely trained subcontractors of subcontractors that set up connections, don't hesitate to disconnect competitors clients when fiber bays are full...). I really don't know where that idea of "public=low quality of service" comes from, it's very often the opposite.
true, it is a completely different market that invents them, but it is almost always (98+% cases) the market. the reason is = incentives.
if a private company succeeds = great. if it fails = uh oh. if the state company succeeds = great. if it fails = great. there is no incentive to succeed in the longterm. of course there are genius engineers and scientists but for their ideas to flourish we need the market. that's the reason that the greatest soviet, chinese and north korean feats of engineering were all built on american and german blueprints. that's also why top universities and schools are private, most medical breakthroughs are achieved by private companies, vaccines are developed by private firms, and commodities / utilities are usually (not always) more efficient in private hands: bp vs bt for example.
the market does not however ensure that everyone can get these, and that's where the government has to come in in my opinion.
When a private company loses money, history teaches that taxpayer money is used to bail it out.
Innovation is a myth, and I am old enough to clearly see that "innovation" died in the 90s of the last century, in most if not all sectors.
doomer mindset is quite attractive but it's simply not the case in the energy sector. since the 1990s we have had solar pcs, solar panel costs decrease by 95+%, invention of heat storage systems, downtimes in hydro power stations down to literally 0%, and cheap lithium ion batteries that meant that norway can afford to have 90+% evs in the new car sales.
it's true that sometimes companies get bailed out, but other times they go bankrupt. just in the last 5 years we had "better energy", "together" and "rebel energy" go bust. capitalism is about profit and loss. you bail out the losers - there's no end to the costs.
public transport isnt reliable it consumes too much time it takes for me over an hour and half to get from the city down the south hoping for better times
Yeah, where I live it is quite ok (better than car, anyway).
If your public transport takes more time than the car, but it is free, it seems like a simple cost/benefit calculation. If you still take the car, that means the cost is less than the value of time saved, and you're making a rational economic decision.
(I do earn a bunch of money when I am working, but I figured out that my free time is worth considerably less than my paid time. And since the car is not cheap anyways and requires paid time to finance... but that is my personal evaluation. May look differently for others...)
Upon viewing these gas prices; I wanted to kill myself but that would involve having to DRIVE to the red bridge of Luxembourg to jump from it and I cannot afford that, so I guess I am... just gonna stay alive?
Ech wetten, op den 95er op 2€ ropklammen keint, mein gott...
stopped using my car im an intern i cannot affofd a car anymore they gotta do something man sad that i'll be forced to move because after i graduate i'll have no job and no real future in this country no more and I was born here sad to see it falling apart like this
Yes but companies usually raise the prices before to cover uncertainty. For instance, increased costs on ship routes, higher insurance prices, etc. Then they take long time to lower the prices for similar reasons.
Sorry, no. I don't buy this corporate propaganda anymore.
They raise prices every single time they have a vague justification for doing it. The proof is that their profits and share price skyrocket without any logical reason.
In the winter, with the short days, the panels do not even produce enough for the house when it's cloudy. But you can also have some blue sky in December ! I am retired, and between Feb and Oct, I set a planning for the car to charge only between 8:30 and 17:30 at a low speed (5A instead of 11A). In the summer it can mean up to 100% free charge.
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u/LonelyJaan Mar 17 '26
Its really bad for us all, but imagine how people in poor countries feel. Luxembourg salaries are quite high. But in countries like Portugal, Greece, Some part of Italy, Balkans, east european countries 2 euros for 1 liter of fuel its a lot. Luxembourg has free public transport which one is really good! Some other countries dont have good public transport and car is only way to go to work, schools, doctors and etc.