7 ms·

Renewables overtake coal as Germany's main energy source

78 points by philipkglass 8y ago

rossdavidh 8y ago
For Germany, renewables is not just an environmental issue, it's a national security issue. Being dependent on, say, Russia and Ukraine agreeing on how to send natural gas to Germany, is not something you want to rely on.
- llukas 8y ago
  Nordstream pipe fixed that issue few years ago.
  - indemnity 8y ago
    Not if you regard Russia as an unreliable energy supplier.
not2b 8y ago
While nuclear power has its problems (particularly for waste disposal), they should slow down the phasing out of nuclear and speed up the phasing out of coal: coal burning is much more of an environmental threat than nuclear power is.
- nicodjimenez 8y ago
  This is the common dogma but I'm not so sure. Assume it takes 50 years to figure out how to get infinite solar power in space. In the meantime, would you prefer higher temperatures and more fires, or a lot more nuclear waste? C02 levels and global temperatures will be easily reversible once we have infinite energy. However even in a world with infinite energy, nuclear waste will still be extremely dangerous, for basically an indefinite amount of time.
  - FreakyT 8y ago
    Nuclear waste can be buried away (relatively) harmlessly, while higher global temperatures and the extreme weather + fire they cause represent a large-scale potentially irreversible environmental alteration. I know which I'd pick.
    - melling 8y ago
      Does Bill Gates’ TerraPower use nuclear waste? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
      - justin66 8y ago
        Depleted uranium is waste or otherwise a byproduct of production of enriched uranium, yes.
    - ascar 8y ago
      I'm no expert on the issue, but the decades lasting and still ongoing discussions about a atomic waste location in Germany seem to contradict your statement. Burring something for a few years is easy, but what about hundreds, thousands, ten thousands? The earth moves and this stuff is way more concentrated than anything found naturally. What if it hits ground water?
    - chmod775 8y ago
      Except that Germany has exactly zero suitable locations to bury nuclear waste safely for a few thousand years. Many would have a danger of contaminating ground water or have some other issue. They have been trying to find something for decades and come up empty.
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    More nuclear waste please! Nuclear waste is comparatively easy to handle. A single country is capable of handling its own nuclear waste and keeping it safe (as France does, for example). The same is not true of CO2 emissions and global climate, which require transnational concerted effort to manage.
- ummonk 8y ago
  Waste disposal is basically a nonissue for nuclear power. The amount of waste is minuscule, and there are ways to break it down to generate power as well using a fusion-fission hybrid.
_rpd 8y ago
*main electrical energy source. Like other developed nations, electricity is < 15% of Germany's primary energy consumption.
xupybd 8y ago
How are they dealing with energy storage and peak demand. I don't see how they are going to get there with solar and wind. Without some kind of big buffer in the system to smooth out the peaks in demand and the lows in production.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Now: natural gas Future: batteries, including those in electric cars, smart grid (appliances and factories) Now & improving: pan-European grid averting our local fluctuations
- standardUser 8y ago
  Thermal energy storage will almost certainly play a big role. Germany constructed a test facility in 2017 focused on reducing the cost of these types of plants, and there are already dozens in operation in other countries. Germany is also making a major push for in-home battery installations (recently surpassing 100k units, up from around 5k units in 2013).
- wsy 8y ago
  Hydroelectric power stations are already used as environment-friendly energy storage: if there is a surplus of energy, water is pumped into the reservoir. During peak demand, the power station provides additional electric energy. There are long-term considerations to increase this capacity significantly by including hydroelectric power stations in Scandinavia, as part of a European grid.
xvilka 8y ago
They should have invested in new nuclear research too. Too bad that populism efficiently killed any future of nuclear power in Germany. I hope that France will be wiser.
philipkglass 8y ago
I agree with the commenters saying that Germany should have prioritized coal for retirement before nuclear. Nonetheless, I'm impressed with what Germany has achieved within its self-imposed constraints. Germany's trying to decarbonize its electricity sector via renewables while having poorer onshore wind resources than the US. And much poorer solar resources. And much higher population density. And it's retiring nuclear power at the same time. Finally, it started deploying solar PV by the gigawatt in 2007 (!), when the equipment was very expensive compared to now[1]. Germany is attempting decarbonization on Nightmare Mode difficulty, so I find it impressive that they're actually making progress. It's also frustrating because they're giving up several years of forward progress on emissions by shutting down working nuclear reactors. It's doubly annoying that Germany's determination to pioneer solar has provided a canned "bad example" for solar foes elsewhere. "Look how expensive solar made German electricity. I don't want that disaster in Texas." Of course new Texan solar plants will never cost as much as German plants built last decade, and they'll get far more sunlight. But that's not as pithy as "just look at Germany!" [1] Germany's pioneering large-scale PV deployment may well have been a driver for the much larger, much more economical PV manufacturing base that exists today. It's still surprising to me that solar didn't first grow big in somewhere much sunnier like Australia.
- GuB-42 8y ago
  > I agree with the commenters saying that Germany should have prioritized coal for retirement before nuclear. Coal (actually lignite) is a major part of Germany's plan. I don't expect them to abandon it anytime soon. Solar and wind power are inherently variable, they can't really work by themselves, they need to be backed by hydro (which is limited), storage (still not viable on a large scale) or easily adjustable power plants. And that's where coal comes in. Germany is actually building new throttlable coal plants in order to complement their renewables. It is a good economic choice: they have a lot of locally available lignite, and it has little export value, so they might as well use it for themselves. It is also good for national sovereignty because they don't depend on imports. Unfortunately, it is also the worst possible fuel when it comes to CO2 emissions, that's why they fare rather poorly despite all their renversables. Nuclear has no place in their strategy. With their renewables+coal, they don't really need the base load capabilities nuclear powers. Nuclear plants can be throttled to some extent but in order for them to be economically viable, they need to be as close to 100% as possible due to their high capital costs.
gok 8y ago
This is kind of goofy accounting. They clump all hydroelectric, solar, and wind together into one category, then split up brown coal, black coal, and gas into individual categories. Still, well done, Germany.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Yeah, it's really difficult for people to understand how much fossil fuel is still used today with all the headlines of 100% renewable here and there. Even that almost always means 100% of electricity, which is generally 40% of total energy, the rest being heating and transportation (very fossil dominated). This is great progress but we're not out of the woods. We need all the low-carbon energy we can get, and quite urgently. This leaves no room to rule unpopular but quantifiably safe and clean sources like nuclear.
Lurkars 8y ago
Problem here is, that it is 40% of German customers using renewable energy, but the overflow in energy produced in Germany is simply exported, so you can not calculate that less non-renewable energy is produced. It's the same with diesel cars, you can sell your old car with bonuses etc in Germany, but the car don't get off the road, it gets sold to other countries and drives there with same pollution. So Germany is lowering it's own emissions by just export them. Globally seen, nothing improves.

78 points by philipkglass 8y ago

For Germany, renewables is not just an environmental issue, it's a national security issue. Being dependent on, say, Russia and Ukraine agreeing on how to send natural gas to Germany, is not something you want to rely on.

llukas 8y ago
Nordstream pipe fixed that issue few years ago.
- indemnity 8y ago
  Not if you regard Russia as an unreliable energy supplier.

not2b 8y ago

While nuclear power has its problems (particularly for waste disposal), they should slow down the phasing out of nuclear and speed up the phasing out of coal: coal burning is much more of an environmental threat than nuclear power is.

nicodjimenez 8y ago
This is the common dogma but I'm not so sure. Assume it takes 50 years to figure out how to get infinite solar power in space. In the meantime, would you prefer higher temperatures and more fires, or a lot more nuclear waste? C02 levels and global temperatures will be easily reversible once we have infinite energy. However even in a world with infinite energy, nuclear waste will still be extremely dangerous, for basically an indefinite amount of time.
- FreakyT 8y ago
  Nuclear waste can be buried away (relatively) harmlessly, while higher global temperatures and the extreme weather + fire they cause represent a large-scale potentially irreversible environmental alteration. I know which I'd pick.
  - melling 8y ago
    Does Bill Gates’ TerraPower use nuclear waste? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
    - justin66 8y ago
      Depleted uranium is waste or otherwise a byproduct of production of enriched uranium, yes.
  - ascar 8y ago
    I'm no expert on the issue, but the decades lasting and still ongoing discussions about a atomic waste location in Germany seem to contradict your statement. Burring something for a few years is easy, but what about hundreds, thousands, ten thousands? The earth moves and this stuff is way more concentrated than anything found naturally. What if it hits ground water?
  - chmod775 8y ago
    Except that Germany has exactly zero suitable locations to bury nuclear waste safely for a few thousand years. Many would have a danger of contaminating ground water or have some other issue. They have been trying to find something for decades and come up empty.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  More nuclear waste please! Nuclear waste is comparatively easy to handle. A single country is capable of handling its own nuclear waste and keeping it safe (as France does, for example). The same is not true of CO2 emissions and global climate, which require transnational concerted effort to manage.
ummonk 8y ago
Waste disposal is basically a nonissue for nuclear power. The amount of waste is minuscule, and there are ways to break it down to generate power as well using a fusion-fission hybrid.

_rpd 8y ago

*main electrical energy source. Like other developed nations, electricity is < 15% of Germany's primary energy consumption.

xupybd 8y ago

How are they dealing with energy storage and peak demand. I don't see how they are going to get there with solar and wind. Without some kind of big buffer in the system to smooth out the peaks in demand and the lows in production.

matt4077 8y ago
Now: natural gas Future: batteries, including those in electric cars, smart grid (appliances and factories) Now & improving: pan-European grid averting our local fluctuations
standardUser 8y ago
Thermal energy storage will almost certainly play a big role. Germany constructed a test facility in 2017 focused on reducing the cost of these types of plants, and there are already dozens in operation in other countries. Germany is also making a major push for in-home battery installations (recently surpassing 100k units, up from around 5k units in 2013).
wsy 8y ago
Hydroelectric power stations are already used as environment-friendly energy storage: if there is a surplus of energy, water is pumped into the reservoir. During peak demand, the power station provides additional electric energy. There are long-term considerations to increase this capacity significantly by including hydroelectric power stations in Scandinavia, as part of a European grid.

xvilka 8y ago

They should have invested in new nuclear research too. Too bad that populism efficiently killed any future of nuclear power in Germany. I hope that France will be wiser.

philipkglass 8y ago

I agree with the commenters saying that Germany should have prioritized coal for retirement before nuclear. Nonetheless, I'm impressed with what Germany has achieved within its self-imposed constraints. Germany's trying to decarbonize its electricity sector via renewables while having poorer onshore wind resources than the US. And much poorer solar resources. And much higher population density. And it's retiring nuclear power at the same time. Finally, it started deploying solar PV by the gigawatt in 2007 (!), when the equipment was very expensive compared to now[1]. Germany is attempting decarbonization on Nightmare Mode difficulty, so I find it impressive that they're actually making progress. It's also frustrating because they're giving up several years of forward progress on emissions by shutting down working nuclear reactors. It's doubly annoying that Germany's determination to pioneer solar has provided a canned "bad example" for solar foes elsewhere. "Look how expensive solar made German electricity. I don't want that disaster in Texas." Of course new Texan solar plants will never cost as much as German plants built last decade, and they'll get far more sunlight. But that's not as pithy as "just look at Germany!" [1] Germany's pioneering large-scale PV deployment may well have been a driver for the much larger, much more economical PV manufacturing base that exists today. It's still surprising to me that solar didn't first grow big in somewhere much sunnier like Australia.

GuB-42 8y ago
> I agree with the commenters saying that Germany should have prioritized coal for retirement before nuclear. Coal (actually lignite) is a major part of Germany's plan. I don't expect them to abandon it anytime soon. Solar and wind power are inherently variable, they can't really work by themselves, they need to be backed by hydro (which is limited), storage (still not viable on a large scale) or easily adjustable power plants. And that's where coal comes in. Germany is actually building new throttlable coal plants in order to complement their renewables. It is a good economic choice: they have a lot of locally available lignite, and it has little export value, so they might as well use it for themselves. It is also good for national sovereignty because they don't depend on imports. Unfortunately, it is also the worst possible fuel when it comes to CO2 emissions, that's why they fare rather poorly despite all their renversables. Nuclear has no place in their strategy. With their renewables+coal, they don't really need the base load capabilities nuclear powers. Nuclear plants can be throttled to some extent but in order for them to be economically viable, they need to be as close to 100% as possible due to their high capital costs.

gok 8y ago

This is kind of goofy accounting. They clump all hydroelectric, solar, and wind together into one category, then split up brown coal, black coal, and gas into individual categories. Still, well done, Germany.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
Yeah, it's really difficult for people to understand how much fossil fuel is still used today with all the headlines of 100% renewable here and there. Even that almost always means 100% of electricity, which is generally 40% of total energy, the rest being heating and transportation (very fossil dominated). This is great progress but we're not out of the woods. We need all the low-carbon energy we can get, and quite urgently. This leaves no room to rule unpopular but quantifiably safe and clean sources like nuclear.

Lurkars 8y ago

Problem here is, that it is 40% of German customers using renewable energy, but the overflow in energy produced in Germany is simply exported, so you can not calculate that less non-renewable energy is produced. It's the same with diesel cars, you can sell your old car with bonuses etc in Germany, but the car don't get off the road, it gets sold to other countries and drives there with same pollution. So Germany is lowering it's own emissions by just export them. Globally seen, nothing improves.