16 ms·

Germany lays out a path to quit coal by 2038

205 points by cmarschner 8y ago

cmarschner 8y ago
>It would come at a heavy price to taxpayers, who would provide the 40 billion euros earmarked for investment in regions hardest hit by job losses over the next two decades, along with other costs that include compensation in amounts yet to be determined for power companies taking coal plants offline early. 2 billion a year seems extremely cheap for a measure of these proportions, especially since part of that money goes into creating new jobs in the affected regions.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  The number is really what this costs politically, I. e. to buy acceptance from the relevant regions with large lignite industries. In economic terms, it’s extremely hard to come up with any number, or even to agree on what should be included in the calculation. Since wind power will be playing a large part in the transition, and that’s investment that mostly stays in the country, one could reasonably say the whole project is net positive anyway. It obviously is if you factor in climate change and particle emissions, because otherwise it wouldn’t be done. The 2 billion / year perfectly align with existing efforts to reduce regional inequality, considering we’re mostly talking about rural areas in the east here. To the degree that they reduce other federal transfer programs, such as unemployment benefits or health care, the net difference is liable to be smaller anyway.
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
The specific end date isn’t really a meaningful measure, except for symbolic purposes. It’s area-under-curve that matters, or, inversely, how much is being left in the ground.
- xxgreg 8y ago
  Getting the big power plant and mine operators to agree to a 2038 deadline is meaningful. They were involved in the process for coming up with the phase-out path. I can't imagine Peabody or Koch signing off on a 2038 deadline in the US.
  - adventured 8y ago
    They don't need to sign off on a deadline in the US, it has been and will go away regardless. That's obviously due to the US having enormous reserves of cheap natural gas. You effectively have one big energy segment happy to squeeze another to death. Coal use will get more and more expensive in the US as its decline reaches a cost inflection point in the near future, if we're not already there now. Every aspect of coal electricity generation gets more expensive as it loses economies of scale. By 2038 natural gas + wind + solar will push coal to well below 10% in the US, without any additional government intervention. If the Feds apply pressure, it'll go that much faster / lower.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Doesn't burning natural gas produce just as much CO2 as coal?
      - Robotbeat 8y ago
        No. It can be about half as much CO2 for the same power output due to natural gas plants also being more efficient. ...this is somewhat counter-acted by accidental leakage of methane (itself a potent greenhouse gas), but not entirely.
        StavrosK 8y ago
        Oh, that's good to know, thanks.
      - _ph_ 8y ago
        No, to create the same amount of thermal energy, burning gas produces about 30% less CO2. The main reason is, that coal is pretty much pure carbon while gas is mostly CH4, so you are burning carbon and hydrogene. That is also the reason, hydrogene is mostly produced by splitting natural gas and producing CO2 along.
- jopsen 8y ago
  It's a measurable target. That's more than words. And 2038 isn't that far out in the future.
  - Pxtl 8y ago
    Any target that exceeds a term of government needs to be viewed with suspicion. This smells like kicking the can down the road to where it's no longer Angela's problem.
    - xxgreg 8y ago
      The phase-out plan was designed and signed off by a committee which involves unions, environmental organisations, and power/mining companies. Future governments can use this fact to hold the power companies to account.
      - rootusrootus 8y ago
        Unless the future gov't is run by someone like Trump.
    - patall 8y ago
      You haven't seen the union workers on friday protesting for a sensible transition. These aren't men that doubt climate change, these are men fearing about their job. If you have a house and a family to care for, change within 5 years can lead to huge political backlashes (in local elections). Also, this was the coal commission suggesting a strategy, not the government (with plenty of old ministers though). What the government is doing with this now, we'll see
dvh 8y ago
What will they do with Bagger 288?
- Pxtl 8y ago
  Yes! It's powered by pure hatred, what will they do with their surplus pure hatred?
jopsen 8y ago
> ...compensation in amounts yet to be determined for power companies taking coal plants offline early. This line struck me.. Germany have been build coal plants in the past decade as they were phasing out nuclear. And now they are planning to take them offline by 2038. Respect!
- xxgreg 8y ago
  "Germany have been build coal plants in the past decade as they were phasing out nuclear." Note that no coal plants have started construction since the events at Fukushima. (But perhaps you're referring to the original phase-out agreement from 2000.) > After 2011, when Germany decided once and for all to phase out nuclear power, a total of 6.7 GW came into service while coal plants with a capacity of some 3.8 GW were retired. Since planning and construction of a coal-fired power station takes at least three years, capacity added after 2011 had been planned before the accident in Fukushima, Japan – the event that led to Germany’s final nuclear phase-out policy. > As of 2017, no new lignite-powered stations are planned, according to the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). The possibly last new hard coal unit ever built in Germany is envisaged to come online in 2018: Uniper’s Datteln 4, with a capacity of 1,055 MW, after years of legal struggle with local environmental organisations. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany
lixtra 8y ago
I wonder if Germany will have any industry left in 50 years. The German Green Party (projected to get 20% in the next election) leader recently told in an interview that excessive electric energy can be stored in the networks[1]. [1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kandidatin-fuer-den-parteivorsitz-der-gruenen-ich-bin.868.de.html?dram:article_id=408793 https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kandidatin-fuer-den-parteivor... Edit: Concerning the interpretation of storing in the network as averaging over a huge area. I read this as: in case of need we can import nuclear power from France or coal generated electricity from Poland. On a local level the Green Party is a big player in avoiding the necessary building of network capacity. Edit 2: Concerning de-industrialization. Do my downvoters really think that energy heavy industries can be run on wind and solar with current technologies?
- halfdan 8y ago
  I don't know where you are going with this or how the first sentence is connected to the second paragraph at all. Care to elaborate?
  - benj111 8y ago
    I think they're suggesting that the Green Party doesn't know how electricity networks work, ergo aren't likely to be very good stewards of industry.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  You’re obviously trolling, but to explain it to those possibly baffled by your professed ignorance: a large grid is indeed a commonly-accepted mechanism to store local maxima of wind or solar production. As you connect more regions, father apart, simple statistics lead to averaging out of individual spikes.
  - lenticular 8y ago
    On this same topic, of course the big issue with wind and solar is that they don't generate if it is not sunny or windy. This means we still need base power generation with fossil fuels or fission. However, wind is stochastic enough that on a large grid, around 1/6 of its maximum capacity can be counted as base power.
alexandercrohde 8y ago
For those who are looking for a reason to care, this stuff does matter. For example, the reason it's unsafe to have sushi twice a week is from mercury, which comes from coal-burning. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mercury_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mer...
- benj111 8y ago
  This is something I wasn't aware of. I would question whether this in and of itself would change any bodies mind, considering all the other well publicised reasons to care.
  - mariopt 8y ago
    Coal is a relative small contaminant. Check the documentary Salmon Confidencial and you’ll find that farmed Salmon is contaminated by the food provided: contamined eels from the Baltic Sea. Even the cod has started to suffer genetic mutations. The Baltic borders 4 countries, the water takes 30 year to fully renew and it was contaminated by Chernobyl disaster. Not to mention the amount of antibiotic that can produce new resistance bacteria’s that might kill you. We’re reaching the point where aquaculture will the safe method to consume fish.
    - toxik 8y ago
      The Baltic sea is polluted due to factories on the coasts. Well-known fact.
      - llukas 8y ago
        And chemical weapons dumps after WWII
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >For example, the reason it's unsafe to have sushi twice a week This is misleading. It totally depends on what kind of sushi you have. Tuna rolls are probably the most mercury dense and you'd need to eat a lot of them to eat the equivalent of one tuna sandwich. For people not eating shark and swordfish the primary risk is albacore tuna and even then the standard deviation is very high (mostly having to do with where the fish was caught). Basically don't eat tons of "high up in the food chain" seafood while pregnant and nothing bad will happen. From a risk management perspective it's better to make sure you have working smoke detectors in your house and fire extinguishers scattered throughout your property before than to worry about mercury in seafood.
gok 8y ago
So coal will outlast nuclear by ~15 years...
- patall 8y ago
  So? Neither the US, nor China have plans of ending any of them.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The US, unlike Germany and China (which is still aggressively expanding its coal use), hasn't needed such a plan to end coal. With existing environmental restrictions and costs on coal, we've already seen a massive reduction in coal use in the US over the last ~11 years. That persistent decline continues under a supposedly coal-friendly administration. What does it mean? Nobody can stop what's happening as things are now (it would take a law requiring coal to be a minimum share of the generation base). The natural gas industry is thrilled to kill off coal and take their business. The natural gas business is far stronger than coal is now and that imbalance will get a lot worse over the next decade (especially as it's a rider on the shale oil boom).
    - gok 8y ago
      Yeah I don't fully buy that either. The US move to natural gas is mostly due to luck in the discovery of cheap gas. The negative externalities on coal are still not nearly being taxed hard enough. I just find it absurd that Germany outlawed its primary source of carbon-neutral electricity quickly but is dawdling on coal.
Pxtl 8y ago
It's absurd that such an economic powerhouse still relies on coal so much. If Germany, with all its wealth, is still dragging coal power out to 2038, how are we supposed to expect timely movement from poorer countries?
- xxgreg 8y ago
  What I find even more absurd is the United States, despite producing a huge amount of natural gas, consumes more coal per-capita than Germany. https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-consumption-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-c... Edit: sorry that link got pay walled. Try this one. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capi... This is 2015 data - and the US has narrowed the gap since.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lenticular 8y ago
    The good news is that coal is now more expensive than gas, and even more the solar and wind in high insolation/windy areas. Unfortunately, since coal is no longer competitive, the Trump administration has been talking about subsidizing it.
  - danielvf 8y ago
    Coal [electricity] in the US is down to 60% of what it was ten years ago. Since the second half of 2015, the US has been generating more electricity with natural gas than with coal. The current difference between them is larger than the entirety of US solar production. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
    - xxgreg 8y ago
      Coal isn't just used for electricity generation. If you look at the 2017 BP energy report numbers the US is still about 20% above Germany in coal consumption per capita. (Not sure when 2018 numbers come out.) I'm glad to see the US is reducing emissions. However ideally it wouldn't be due to swapping one fossil fuel for another. Makes you wonder what will happen if the prices of coal/gas flip again.
etaty 8y ago
Does that mean goods produced by coal on the other side of the border are still okay to be imported? (pointing finger at Poland, or even China)
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  Why do you feel the need to phrase your talking point in the form of a thinly veiled rhetorical question? In any case: yes, obviously. Although Germany works both within the EU and the UN climate process to find collective solutions allowing other nations to also reduce emissions. China is actually becoming a positive example these days, installing vast amounts of renewable energy. Phasing out coal in Germany obviously makes for a good argument in such talks. But even if it doesn’t, not burning coal and buying from China is still strictly better than burning coal and buying from China. It’s sort of like smoking and getting regular exercise is better than just smoking.
  - T2_t2 8y ago
    Does it though? If Germany's policies hurt the economy, at a time when the cost of energy goes up, it may threaten the plans. The last thing a costly reform needs is less money to spend. Ignoring possible second order effects is a dangerous course of action. The nuclear shutdown in Germany was so bad not just for emissions (which have gotten worse) but also, as the Marginal Revolution article above points out, geopolitically as well. One decision can have a multitude of flow on bad effects. The important part to remember is that the goal is not clean energy. The goal is for humanity to continue to exist and, if possible, to prosper. That is why climate change is awful, as it threatens our species. Not the planet. The planet will be fine. It is our species that is at risk. Decisions made for vague, second effect ignoring reasons are worrying, especially when there are known second order effect consequences.
- patall 8y ago
  From my point of view, this is only about the general electricity generation. I mean, a lot of people are still using lignite to warm their house in the winter and knowing the lifetime of personal homes in Europe, we cannot really expect that to end in the next 50 years (though not for newly build ones though).
expathacker 8y ago
2038? Does this have to do with Epoch time ending somehow?
- philwelch 8y ago
  Yeah, coal-powered computers can only handle 32-bit integers ;)
  - cozzyd 8y ago
    In 2038, the coal company clocks roll back to 1901, when all was good in the world for them.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      ...to 1970...
      - jcranmer 8y ago
        No, it rolls over to 1901. time_t is a signed value, and 2038 is when it rolls over from 2³¹ - 1 to -2³¹. That would be 2 billion seconds before 1970, or 1901.
      - est31 8y ago
        ... which was a very great year for lignite mining: https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/BET2017-Hermann-Oeko-Institut.pdf#page=2 https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/BET2017-Hermann-Oeko-I...
      - cozzyd 8y ago
        If our Unix forefathers had the foresight to make time_t unsigned, then we wouldn't have to worry about this problem until after 2100.
- 2038AD 8y ago
  I would guess, when originally suggested, it was $current_year + 2 decades.
tzs 8y ago
Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the former reaches end of life, that would be enough to hold warming to under 1.5 C. No need to force early retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you've already got a coal plant, a gasoline car, etc., it's OK to keep using it, as long as we can commit to your and everyone else's future plants, future cars, etc., being clean. That's assuming we start this immediately. If we don't get this going until 2030 the "replace at end of life" approach, applied everywhere, should keep us to 2 C warming. Here's the article, which includes a link to the research paper which is open access [1]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/how-much-will-current-fossil-fuel-tech-emit-before-retirement/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/how-much-will-curren...
- etrautmann 8y ago
  Does that included replacing all end of life vehicles with electrical alternatives? If that's the case, this seems difficult to achieve without a war-time-like mobilization to build electric vehicles and charging infrastructure (which actually sounds like a pretty good plan, though politically tough)
  - trumped 8y ago
    The war on pollution.... good idea.
- jes5199 8y ago
  this is good news! In the electric sector, this is basically already the status quo - new solar and wind is so cheap compared to everything else.
- hannob 8y ago
  > Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the former reaches end of life, that would be enough to hold warming to under 1.5 C. >No need to force early retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you've already got a coal plant, a gasoline car, etc., it's OK to keep using it, as long as we can commit to your and everyone else's future plants, future cars, etc., being clean. That is a gross misrepresentation of said research. The idea was that yeah, if in theory you don't add any new fossil generation then it might work out. Yet think for a moment what that would mean. Stopping all car production today, no new gas/oil wells, no new steel mills and cement factories (technologies where clean alternatives don't practically exist at scale). Stopping any kind of fossil fuel plant construction even in developing countries. All of that now. This isn't a plan that is realistically feasible to implement (even though it would probably be the right thing to do). So yeah, it totally makes sense to shut down existing particularly dirty fossil fuel plants, because it's not particularly realistic to completely stop the production of new fossil fuel infrastructure immediately.
patall 8y ago
Some personal notes: I am working right next to the ministry of economics in Berlin and watched the different protesters that held their rallies yesterday. First between around 8 and 10 am maybe 100 mostly men between 30 and 60 years with labeling from the union of mining, chemistry and energy industries protested for a sensible transition that helps the affected regions and especially people living their. They seemed to be good and hard working men that have to care for their families and all, all freezing in the cold (and coming into our hospital building to warm up). Note that this is a very important issue from a political view as well since this year there are regional elections in Brandenburg and Saxony and right wing (pro coal) forces are set to get more than 30% of votes, even more with a hardly acceptable plan for these regions. Than around 11 the situation changed when the school students appeared (picture 2 in the article). It was absolutely fascinating as I would guess around 2 to 3k children between 12 and 18 came (sure they hadn't to go/weren't to school but again it was cold and these kids held out for 4 hours+ in freezing temperatures) with barely any adults, chanting here and there but mostly just holding up their, in a way very obviously self-made, signs and waiting (they later marched to the chancellors palace, though). Not one of these rallies were various known parties hold up their sign to somehow also promote their agenda, just kids fighting for a better planet/future. It somehow was very impressive.
bparsons 8y ago
This isn't very ambitious. Ontario, which was pretty dependent on coal, managed to end it in less than a decade. https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal
- drpgq 8y ago
  At a pretty ridiculous cost all things considered.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bparsons 8y ago
    Every year you wait, the more expensive it becomes to do stuff like this. Solving hard problems is usually unpopular.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      > Every year you wait, the more expensive it becomes to do stuff like this. It seems like the opposite is true: Every year you wait, the upfront and recurring costs drop. Unless you have a serious near-term problem arising from the status quo (e.g. stagnant air filled with coal exhaust), and that problem can be solved altogether at a tolerable cost, there is no advantage to moving first or early.
      - onli 8y ago
        Not necessarily, if during the time you wait the energy companies build more coal power stations. Which they planned to do, despite it being obvious how bad at an idea that was. Happened over the last years often in cooperation with cities, which now have the problem of being stuck with polluting coal power stations that are not even profitable anymore. Contracts are often laid out in a manner that the cities have to shoulder the load. My sympathy is limited, they could have listened to the advocates of green energy who predicted that. Anyway, deconstructing those new coal power stations and trying to help the affected cities and regions would raise the price of moving to green energy later. I'm not sure that would be completely offset by the lower prices and technological improvements one can expect to see each year.
deleted 8y ago
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kayoone 8y ago
I am german myself and I am frustrated about this countries hate for nuclear power. In the wake of Fukushima, they shut down 12 perfectly modern nuclear power plants to rely on coal until green power can take over. We are quite behind on that too. 2038 to end coal also seems to be a quite conservative goal, but until now the government was great at missing even the most conservative goals on basically anything.
- lispm 8y ago
  The nuclear reactors were actually not 'perfectly modern'. > government was great at missing even the most conservative goals on basically anything The share of electricity from renewable energy has surpassed any goals so far.
  - woodpanel 8y ago
    You mind sharing your data? AFAIK what proponents of the German „Energiewende“ are often referring to are sometimes just superficial headlines or positive datapoints cherry picked out of a study that itself draws negative conclusions or fails to come to a postive result. The most prominent in the last years were those PR stunts, that claimed Germany is exporting more energy than it is consuming. Which frankly adds injury to insult. Because the only reason Germany is doing that is that otherwise its energy grid would collapse. Renewables (in Germany) produce energy in fluctuating rates and aren‘t suited to serve the base load. Excess energy can’t be saved so it has to be (by law) dumped somewhere, which usually means our neighbor countries. They in return, being annoyed by repeatedly having their grid brought on the brink of collapse by us started to install equipment on their borders to basically „emergency stop“ these shenanigans and cut-off our grid if they have to. Apart from the diplomatic „upside“ another side-effect said PR stunt is spin-doctoring is the fact that everytime we have to dump energy the prices go down. They even go negative. That sounds nice, but none of the German consumers will get these prices on their energy bill (if they did, they might increase consumption in those times, alleviating the grid’s pain...). It effectively means, that Germany pays other countries to take their (heavily tax-payer funded) excess energy. Which alas, gives us said PR stunt. Anyways, I honestly would be interested in your data that proves the „surpassing [of] any goals so far“.
ForHackernews 8y ago
Too little, too late, sadly.
burtonator 8y ago
We needed to quit coal in 2008... not 2038.. we're doomed. Time to start buying up as much water as possible. Bet on human stupidity.. you'll never go broke!
dwighttk 8y ago
I thought we only had 12 years

205 points by cmarschner 8y ago

>It would come at a heavy price to taxpayers, who would provide the 40 billion euros earmarked for investment in regions hardest hit by job losses over the next two decades, along with other costs that include compensation in amounts yet to be determined for power companies taking coal plants offline early. 2 billion a year seems extremely cheap for a measure of these proportions, especially since part of that money goes into creating new jobs in the affected regions.

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
The number is really what this costs politically, I. e. to buy acceptance from the relevant regions with large lignite industries. In economic terms, it’s extremely hard to come up with any number, or even to agree on what should be included in the calculation. Since wind power will be playing a large part in the transition, and that’s investment that mostly stays in the country, one could reasonably say the whole project is net positive anyway. It obviously is if you factor in climate change and particle emissions, because otherwise it wouldn’t be done. The 2 billion / year perfectly align with existing efforts to reduce regional inequality, considering we’re mostly talking about rural areas in the east here. To the degree that they reduce other federal transfer programs, such as unemployment benefits or health care, the net difference is liable to be smaller anyway.

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago

The specific end date isn’t really a meaningful measure, except for symbolic purposes. It’s area-under-curve that matters, or, inversely, how much is being left in the ground.

xxgreg 8y ago
Getting the big power plant and mine operators to agree to a 2038 deadline is meaningful. They were involved in the process for coming up with the phase-out path. I can't imagine Peabody or Koch signing off on a 2038 deadline in the US.
- adventured 8y ago
  They don't need to sign off on a deadline in the US, it has been and will go away regardless. That's obviously due to the US having enormous reserves of cheap natural gas. You effectively have one big energy segment happy to squeeze another to death. Coal use will get more and more expensive in the US as its decline reaches a cost inflection point in the near future, if we're not already there now. Every aspect of coal electricity generation gets more expensive as it loses economies of scale. By 2038 natural gas + wind + solar will push coal to well below 10% in the US, without any additional government intervention. If the Feds apply pressure, it'll go that much faster / lower.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Doesn't burning natural gas produce just as much CO2 as coal?
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      No. It can be about half as much CO2 for the same power output due to natural gas plants also being more efficient. ...this is somewhat counter-acted by accidental leakage of methane (itself a potent greenhouse gas), but not entirely.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        Oh, that's good to know, thanks.
    - _ph_ 8y ago
      No, to create the same amount of thermal energy, burning gas produces about 30% less CO2. The main reason is, that coal is pretty much pure carbon while gas is mostly CH4, so you are burning carbon and hydrogene. That is also the reason, hydrogene is mostly produced by splitting natural gas and producing CO2 along.
jopsen 8y ago
It's a measurable target. That's more than words. And 2038 isn't that far out in the future.
- Pxtl 8y ago
  Any target that exceeds a term of government needs to be viewed with suspicion. This smells like kicking the can down the road to where it's no longer Angela's problem.
  - xxgreg 8y ago
    The phase-out plan was designed and signed off by a committee which involves unions, environmental organisations, and power/mining companies. Future governments can use this fact to hold the power companies to account.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Unless the future gov't is run by someone like Trump.
  - patall 8y ago
    You haven't seen the union workers on friday protesting for a sensible transition. These aren't men that doubt climate change, these are men fearing about their job. If you have a house and a family to care for, change within 5 years can lead to huge political backlashes (in local elections). Also, this was the coal commission suggesting a strategy, not the government (with plenty of old ministers though). What the government is doing with this now, we'll see

dvh 8y ago

What will they do with Bagger 288?

Pxtl 8y ago
Yes! It's powered by pure hatred, what will they do with their surplus pure hatred?

jopsen 8y ago

> ...compensation in amounts yet to be determined for power companies taking coal plants offline early. This line struck me.. Germany have been build coal plants in the past decade as they were phasing out nuclear. And now they are planning to take them offline by 2038. Respect!

xxgreg 8y ago
"Germany have been build coal plants in the past decade as they were phasing out nuclear." Note that no coal plants have started construction since the events at Fukushima. (But perhaps you're referring to the original phase-out agreement from 2000.) > After 2011, when Germany decided once and for all to phase out nuclear power, a total of 6.7 GW came into service while coal plants with a capacity of some 3.8 GW were retired. Since planning and construction of a coal-fired power station takes at least three years, capacity added after 2011 had been planned before the accident in Fukushima, Japan – the event that led to Germany’s final nuclear phase-out policy. > As of 2017, no new lignite-powered stations are planned, according to the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). The possibly last new hard coal unit ever built in Germany is envisaged to come online in 2018: Uniper’s Datteln 4, with a capacity of 1,055 MW, after years of legal struggle with local environmental organisations. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany

lixtra 8y ago

I wonder if Germany will have any industry left in 50 years. The German Green Party (projected to get 20% in the next election) leader recently told in an interview that excessive electric energy can be stored in the networks[1]. [1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kandidatin-fuer-den-parteivorsitz-der-gruenen-ich-bin.868.de.html?dram:article_id=408793 https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kandidatin-fuer-den-parteivor... Edit: Concerning the interpretation of storing in the network as averaging over a huge area. I read this as: in case of need we can import nuclear power from France or coal generated electricity from Poland. On a local level the Green Party is a big player in avoiding the necessary building of network capacity. Edit 2: Concerning de-industrialization. Do my downvoters really think that energy heavy industries can be run on wind and solar with current technologies?

halfdan 8y ago
I don't know where you are going with this or how the first sentence is connected to the second paragraph at all. Care to elaborate?
- benj111 8y ago
  I think they're suggesting that the Green Party doesn't know how electricity networks work, ergo aren't likely to be very good stewards of industry.
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
You’re obviously trolling, but to explain it to those possibly baffled by your professed ignorance: a large grid is indeed a commonly-accepted mechanism to store local maxima of wind or solar production. As you connect more regions, father apart, simple statistics lead to averaging out of individual spikes.
- lenticular 8y ago
  On this same topic, of course the big issue with wind and solar is that they don't generate if it is not sunny or windy. This means we still need base power generation with fossil fuels or fission. However, wind is stochastic enough that on a large grid, around 1/6 of its maximum capacity can be counted as base power.

alexandercrohde 8y ago

For those who are looking for a reason to care, this stuff does matter. For example, the reason it's unsafe to have sushi twice a week is from mercury, which comes from coal-burning. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mercury_pollution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mer...

benj111 8y ago
This is something I wasn't aware of. I would question whether this in and of itself would change any bodies mind, considering all the other well publicised reasons to care.
- mariopt 8y ago
  Coal is a relative small contaminant. Check the documentary Salmon Confidencial and you’ll find that farmed Salmon is contaminated by the food provided: contamined eels from the Baltic Sea. Even the cod has started to suffer genetic mutations. The Baltic borders 4 countries, the water takes 30 year to fully renew and it was contaminated by Chernobyl disaster. Not to mention the amount of antibiotic that can produce new resistance bacteria’s that might kill you. We’re reaching the point where aquaculture will the safe method to consume fish.
  - toxik 8y ago
    The Baltic sea is polluted due to factories on the coasts. Well-known fact.
    - llukas 8y ago
      And chemical weapons dumps after WWII
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>For example, the reason it's unsafe to have sushi twice a week This is misleading. It totally depends on what kind of sushi you have. Tuna rolls are probably the most mercury dense and you'd need to eat a lot of them to eat the equivalent of one tuna sandwich. For people not eating shark and swordfish the primary risk is albacore tuna and even then the standard deviation is very high (mostly having to do with where the fish was caught). Basically don't eat tons of "high up in the food chain" seafood while pregnant and nothing bad will happen. From a risk management perspective it's better to make sure you have working smoke detectors in your house and fire extinguishers scattered throughout your property before than to worry about mercury in seafood.

gok 8y ago

So coal will outlast nuclear by ~15 years...

patall 8y ago
So? Neither the US, nor China have plans of ending any of them.
- adventured 8y ago
  The US, unlike Germany and China (which is still aggressively expanding its coal use), hasn't needed such a plan to end coal. With existing environmental restrictions and costs on coal, we've already seen a massive reduction in coal use in the US over the last ~11 years. That persistent decline continues under a supposedly coal-friendly administration. What does it mean? Nobody can stop what's happening as things are now (it would take a law requiring coal to be a minimum share of the generation base). The natural gas industry is thrilled to kill off coal and take their business. The natural gas business is far stronger than coal is now and that imbalance will get a lot worse over the next decade (especially as it's a rider on the shale oil boom).
  - gok 8y ago
    Yeah I don't fully buy that either. The US move to natural gas is mostly due to luck in the discovery of cheap gas. The negative externalities on coal are still not nearly being taxed hard enough. I just find it absurd that Germany outlawed its primary source of carbon-neutral electricity quickly but is dawdling on coal.

Pxtl 8y ago

It's absurd that such an economic powerhouse still relies on coal so much. If Germany, with all its wealth, is still dragging coal power out to 2038, how are we supposed to expect timely movement from poorer countries?

xxgreg 8y ago
What I find even more absurd is the United States, despite producing a huge amount of natural gas, consumes more coal per-capita than Germany. https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-consumption-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/604946/per-capita-coal-c... Edit: sorry that link got pay walled. Try this one. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capi... This is 2015 data - and the US has narrowed the gap since.
- deleted 8y ago
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- lenticular 8y ago
  The good news is that coal is now more expensive than gas, and even more the solar and wind in high insolation/windy areas. Unfortunately, since coal is no longer competitive, the Trump administration has been talking about subsidizing it.
- danielvf 8y ago
  Coal [electricity] in the US is down to 60% of what it was ten years ago. Since the second half of 2015, the US has been generating more electricity with natural gas than with coal. The current difference between them is larger than the entirety of US solar production. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
  - xxgreg 8y ago
    Coal isn't just used for electricity generation. If you look at the 2017 BP energy report numbers the US is still about 20% above Germany in coal consumption per capita. (Not sure when 2018 numbers come out.) I'm glad to see the US is reducing emissions. However ideally it wouldn't be due to swapping one fossil fuel for another. Makes you wonder what will happen if the prices of coal/gas flip again.

etaty 8y ago

Does that mean goods produced by coal on the other side of the border are still okay to be imported? (pointing finger at Poland, or even China)

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
Why do you feel the need to phrase your talking point in the form of a thinly veiled rhetorical question? In any case: yes, obviously. Although Germany works both within the EU and the UN climate process to find collective solutions allowing other nations to also reduce emissions. China is actually becoming a positive example these days, installing vast amounts of renewable energy. Phasing out coal in Germany obviously makes for a good argument in such talks. But even if it doesn’t, not burning coal and buying from China is still strictly better than burning coal and buying from China. It’s sort of like smoking and getting regular exercise is better than just smoking.
- T2_t2 8y ago
  Does it though? If Germany's policies hurt the economy, at a time when the cost of energy goes up, it may threaten the plans. The last thing a costly reform needs is less money to spend. Ignoring possible second order effects is a dangerous course of action. The nuclear shutdown in Germany was so bad not just for emissions (which have gotten worse) but also, as the Marginal Revolution article above points out, geopolitically as well. One decision can have a multitude of flow on bad effects. The important part to remember is that the goal is not clean energy. The goal is for humanity to continue to exist and, if possible, to prosper. That is why climate change is awful, as it threatens our species. Not the planet. The planet will be fine. It is our species that is at risk. Decisions made for vague, second effect ignoring reasons are worrying, especially when there are known second order effect consequences.
patall 8y ago
From my point of view, this is only about the general electricity generation. I mean, a lot of people are still using lignite to warm their house in the winter and knowing the lifetime of personal homes in Europe, we cannot really expect that to end in the next 50 years (though not for newly build ones though).

expathacker 8y ago

2038? Does this have to do with Epoch time ending somehow?

philwelch 8y ago
Yeah, coal-powered computers can only handle 32-bit integers ;)
- cozzyd 8y ago
  In 2038, the coal company clocks roll back to 1901, when all was good in the world for them.
  - kbutler 8y ago
    ...to 1970...
    - jcranmer 8y ago
      No, it rolls over to 1901. time_t is a signed value, and 2038 is when it rolls over from 2³¹ - 1 to -2³¹. That would be 2 billion seconds before 1970, or 1901.
    - est31 8y ago
      ... which was a very great year for lignite mining: https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/BET2017-Hermann-Oeko-Institut.pdf#page=2 https://www.oeko.de/fileadmin/oekodoc/BET2017-Hermann-Oeko-I...
    - cozzyd 8y ago
      If our Unix forefathers had the foresight to make time_t unsigned, then we wouldn't have to worry about this problem until after 2100.
2038AD 8y ago
I would guess, when originally suggested, it was $current_year + 2 decades.

tzs 8y ago

Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the former reaches end of life, that would be enough to hold warming to under 1.5 C. No need to force early retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you've already got a coal plant, a gasoline car, etc., it's OK to keep using it, as long as we can commit to your and everyone else's future plants, future cars, etc., being clean. That's assuming we start this immediately. If we don't get this going until 2030 the "replace at end of life" approach, applied everywhere, should keep us to 2 C warming. Here's the article, which includes a link to the research paper which is open access [1]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/how-much-will-current-fossil-fuel-tech-emit-before-retirement/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/how-much-will-curren...

etrautmann 8y ago
Does that included replacing all end of life vehicles with electrical alternatives? If that's the case, this seems difficult to achieve without a war-time-like mobilization to build electric vehicles and charging infrastructure (which actually sounds like a pretty good plan, though politically tough)
- trumped 8y ago
  The war on pollution.... good idea.
jes5199 8y ago
this is good news! In the electric sector, this is basically already the status quo - new solar and wind is so cheap compared to everything else.
hannob 8y ago
> Not long ago there was an interesting article on research that showed that if we simply replaced fossil fuel infrastructure with clean alternatives as the former reaches end of life, that would be enough to hold warming to under 1.5 C. >No need to force early retirement of fossil fuel infrastructure. If you've already got a coal plant, a gasoline car, etc., it's OK to keep using it, as long as we can commit to your and everyone else's future plants, future cars, etc., being clean. That is a gross misrepresentation of said research. The idea was that yeah, if in theory you don't add any new fossil generation then it might work out. Yet think for a moment what that would mean. Stopping all car production today, no new gas/oil wells, no new steel mills and cement factories (technologies where clean alternatives don't practically exist at scale). Stopping any kind of fossil fuel plant construction even in developing countries. All of that now. This isn't a plan that is realistically feasible to implement (even though it would probably be the right thing to do). So yeah, it totally makes sense to shut down existing particularly dirty fossil fuel plants, because it's not particularly realistic to completely stop the production of new fossil fuel infrastructure immediately.

patall 8y ago

Some personal notes: I am working right next to the ministry of economics in Berlin and watched the different protesters that held their rallies yesterday. First between around 8 and 10 am maybe 100 mostly men between 30 and 60 years with labeling from the union of mining, chemistry and energy industries protested for a sensible transition that helps the affected regions and especially people living their. They seemed to be good and hard working men that have to care for their families and all, all freezing in the cold (and coming into our hospital building to warm up). Note that this is a very important issue from a political view as well since this year there are regional elections in Brandenburg and Saxony and right wing (pro coal) forces are set to get more than 30% of votes, even more with a hardly acceptable plan for these regions. Than around 11 the situation changed when the school students appeared (picture 2 in the article). It was absolutely fascinating as I would guess around 2 to 3k children between 12 and 18 came (sure they hadn't to go/weren't to school but again it was cold and these kids held out for 4 hours+ in freezing temperatures) with barely any adults, chanting here and there but mostly just holding up their, in a way very obviously self-made, signs and waiting (they later marched to the chancellors palace, though). Not one of these rallies were various known parties hold up their sign to somehow also promote their agenda, just kids fighting for a better planet/future. It somehow was very impressive.

bparsons 8y ago

This isn't very ambitious. Ontario, which was pretty dependent on coal, managed to end it in less than a decade. https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal https://www.ontario.ca/page/end-coal

drpgq 8y ago
At a pretty ridiculous cost all things considered.
- deleted 8y ago
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- bparsons 8y ago
  Every year you wait, the more expensive it becomes to do stuff like this. Solving hard problems is usually unpopular.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    > Every year you wait, the more expensive it becomes to do stuff like this. It seems like the opposite is true: Every year you wait, the upfront and recurring costs drop. Unless you have a serious near-term problem arising from the status quo (e.g. stagnant air filled with coal exhaust), and that problem can be solved altogether at a tolerable cost, there is no advantage to moving first or early.
    - onli 8y ago
      Not necessarily, if during the time you wait the energy companies build more coal power stations. Which they planned to do, despite it being obvious how bad at an idea that was. Happened over the last years often in cooperation with cities, which now have the problem of being stuck with polluting coal power stations that are not even profitable anymore. Contracts are often laid out in a manner that the cities have to shoulder the load. My sympathy is limited, they could have listened to the advocates of green energy who predicted that. Anyway, deconstructing those new coal power stations and trying to help the affected cities and regions would raise the price of moving to green energy later. I'm not sure that would be completely offset by the lower prices and technological improvements one can expect to see each year.

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kayoone 8y ago

I am german myself and I am frustrated about this countries hate for nuclear power. In the wake of Fukushima, they shut down 12 perfectly modern nuclear power plants to rely on coal until green power can take over. We are quite behind on that too. 2038 to end coal also seems to be a quite conservative goal, but until now the government was great at missing even the most conservative goals on basically anything.

lispm 8y ago
The nuclear reactors were actually not 'perfectly modern'. > government was great at missing even the most conservative goals on basically anything The share of electricity from renewable energy has surpassed any goals so far.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  You mind sharing your data? AFAIK what proponents of the German „Energiewende“ are often referring to are sometimes just superficial headlines or positive datapoints cherry picked out of a study that itself draws negative conclusions or fails to come to a postive result. The most prominent in the last years were those PR stunts, that claimed Germany is exporting more energy than it is consuming. Which frankly adds injury to insult. Because the only reason Germany is doing that is that otherwise its energy grid would collapse. Renewables (in Germany) produce energy in fluctuating rates and aren‘t suited to serve the base load. Excess energy can’t be saved so it has to be (by law) dumped somewhere, which usually means our neighbor countries. They in return, being annoyed by repeatedly having their grid brought on the brink of collapse by us started to install equipment on their borders to basically „emergency stop“ these shenanigans and cut-off our grid if they have to. Apart from the diplomatic „upside“ another side-effect said PR stunt is spin-doctoring is the fact that everytime we have to dump energy the prices go down. They even go negative. That sounds nice, but none of the German consumers will get these prices on their energy bill (if they did, they might increase consumption in those times, alleviating the grid’s pain...). It effectively means, that Germany pays other countries to take their (heavily tax-payer funded) excess energy. Which alas, gives us said PR stunt. Anyways, I honestly would be interested in your data that proves the „surpassing [of] any goals so far“.

ForHackernews 8y ago

Too little, too late, sadly.

burtonator 8y ago

We needed to quit coal in 2008... not 2038.. we're doomed. Time to start buying up as much water as possible. Bet on human stupidity.. you'll never go broke!

dwighttk 8y ago

I thought we only had 12 years