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Germany to close all of its coal-fired power plants over the next nineteen years
- asutekku 7y agoFinally. The coal plants in germany were pretty unfortunate considering how much EU cares about the environments (even if some people don’t agree with it that much)
- tannhaeuser 7y agoThe EU as such doesn't care that much about coal. For example, Poland, Germany's neighboring country, has a high percentage of it's power come from coal, and no short-term plans to change that/no alternative energy source. The flip side of Germany abandoning coal is that energy has to be imported, and energy prices are among the highest (or actually the highest) in Europe.
- adrianN 7y agoBy 2038. That's incompatible with the Paris agreement. As a reaction to ongoing protests the government has started a so-called Climate Cabinet, that's working on plans to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently to limit warming to below 2°. They're supposed to present their results in about a month. Incidentally, Friday's For Future is calling for a global climate strike on September 20th. Probably there is a demo in your city too. Join if you can.
- quonn 7y agoWe (the people of Munich) tried to get our local coal plant to close in 2022. We voted last year and the outcome was essentially ignored. Now it will shut down in 2030. Too little, too late. And Munich could have afforded it easily.
- tjansen 7y agoBut to replace it with what? I assume not with solar and wind, as that would mean that you won't have electricity on windstill nights.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> That's incompatible with the Paris agreement Honest question: is this still seen, internationally, as a serious agreement?
- ThePhysicist 7y agoDeciding to turn off all nuclear power plants within a few years as a response to the Fukushima accident was probably the biggest mistake the German government made in the last decade, and one of the reasons we're reliant on coal so much right now. The decision was purely emotional as well, as unfortunately much of the environmental politics here is. It's sad that we lost our position as one of the leading countries in Europe regarding renewable engergy (baring smaller Skandinavian countries with lots of natural energy resources) and are now a laggard that's reliant on brown coal for our energy needs. Addendum: I'm not against turning off nuclear power plants (I think we should eventually), I just don't agree with the time frame we chose for this. Letting plants run for a few more years wouldn't significantly increase cumulated accident risk and would have a significant effect on our CO2 emissions.
- ec109685 7y agoWhy couldn’t something like Fukushima or worse happen to Germany’s nuclear plants?
- adrianN 7y agoThere are no tsunamis in Germany.
- lnsru 7y agoThere are no “real” earthquakes too.
- Griffinsauce 7y agoThere are real earthquakes in the Netherlands. Are you sure?
- dr_dshiv 7y agoReally? I would think they'd be incredibly destructive, if they ground liquified...
- derekdahmer 7y agoIn 2016, nuclear + coal made up 30% of their energy production (including exported energy) so that’s a pretty big chunk to replace in 20 years. https://energytransition.org/2017/01/renewable-energy-production-stagnates-in-germany-in-2016/ https://energytransition.org/2017/01/renewable-energy-produc...
- goatinaboat 7y agoNo, but it can be powered by importing coal and nuclear power from its neighbours. Edit: An unpopular fact it seems but Germany imports over half its power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany
- Bud 7y agoYes. Easily.
- adrianN 7y agoWell, not easily. It's pretty expensive to build all the wind turbines and solar panels and storage. And insulate homes, and replace oil heating with heat pumps and replace ICE cars with electric cars. It's just that we have no other choice.
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoWhy is nuclear energy never mentioned as a remedy to global warming? It doesn’t have any of the problems renewables have, is safe enough in its current incarnation and research is looking promising enough that one can reasonably expect the waste problem to get taken care of properly. Plus we won’t run out of fuel for like 1000 years.
- quonn 7y agoGermany had a 30-year long public discussion on nuclear. There is an overwhelming majority who rejects it. And for good reasons, too. If there is no other way to achieve our goals, we may have that discussion again, but I doubt it.
- louwrentius 7y agoRenewable is not stable, what do they add to offset this risk, gas powered plants?
- avip 7y agoEU grids are interconnected. They will buy electricity from neighbors.
- realusername 7y agoThe neighbors generally have very similar wind/solar patterns so that's not going to help much. Currently when that happens, they just buy electricity from France at a high price like the other neighbors.
- lixtra 7y agoDupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19007493
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lnsru 7y agoSo now will Germany depend on Russian gas, coal power imported from Poland and nuclear power imported from France? Can an industrial nation depend on imported electricity? For me this looks like pipe dream. I can guarantee, after this insanity Germany will have most expensive electricity in EU (after much richer Denmark as it is now): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... Edit: typos
- adrianN 7y agoOr, you know, we could build wind turbines and solar panels and reduce our dependence on foreign fossil fuels.
- dgellow 7y agoGermany already does that quite a lot (>30% of their production in average come from renewable), but there is a distribution issue. The north generates a lot of electricity using a combination of windmills and solar panel, but the south doesn’t for some reasons (I guess the environment isn’t adapted? Not sure why). And there are a lot of problems (not necessarily technical) to bring the electricity from the north to the south. As far as I understood, the government need to get the authorization from each land owner on the way to be able to install new cables and infrastructure, and that takes crazy amount of time. Nobody want to have this going through their property.
- lota-putty 7y agoMore Coal stats: https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2019-coal.pdf https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c... PDF Germany best coal reserves have depleted; 20 years is a long time.
- esotericn 7y agoGreat news, but 19 years. Man. Things take time, I get that. But we're getting close to human lifespans there. The world in the year 2000 was such a different place in so many ways. It's difficult to imagine what 2038 looks like. Nineteen years ago, top end computing hardware was something like a Pentium III. Windows XP had not yet been released.
- sawaruna 7y ago> JAN. 26, 2019
- trilila 7y agoThis is potentially good news for Europe, as I am sure Germany will force other countries to follow suit. Most likely using a diktat given via the EU commission.
- eecc 7y agoOh stop and for a moment think at the effort to rebuild all our homes to highly energy efficient standards. Replace all conventional heating systems with heat pumps. Redesign cities to remove sprawl and car-centered lifestyles in favor of public transport, disseminated centers. Reorganize consumer supply chain around home delivery and less wasteful routes. I see plenty plenty GDP coming from all this work, perhaps the only problem is that it wouldn’t land in the pockets of the current lobbyist crop
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- donmb 7y agoThat article is from January 2019 and it's not correct. There are no plans in Germany to shut down coal power plants completely.
- abhikarthick 7y agoOn the other part of the world -> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/climate/coal-adani-india-australia.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/climate/coal-adani-india-...