5 ms·

Anyone here from Poland or Germany and know what those governments are going to do about brown coal?

lnsru 6y ago
Continue using coal and buying green electricity certificates from Norway? Because local green nuclear energy is devilish in Germany and can’t be produced locally anymore.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  It sounds like both countries are going to do some horse-trading then to do their part.
- freeflight 6y ago
  As a German it's a bit annoying to keep reading this kind of stuff when it's just flat out wrong. Right now there are still 6 commercial fission reactors running in Germany [0]. They are slated to phase out at the end of 2021 and 2022, but I really wouldn't be too surprised if they reinstate the running-time extensions that were revoked after the Fukushima disaster. The nuclear phase-out, that was decided and ratified back in 2001/2002, was backed by the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world. In major parts responsible for Germany's massive renewable capabilities because it also utilized Germanys leading position in renewable tech back then. Germany is also a major player in nuclear fusion research, being home to the largest and most advanced stellarator [1] and a major contributor to ITER [2]. It's also been at the forefront for hydrogen research and application, which has very real potential to be the green fuel of the future: Using the abundance of renewable energy for electrolysis of hydrogen, which can then be stored. Yet whenever "German energy" comes up, all that's brought up is this flat out wrong "Germany doesn't do nuclear! It's all coal or Russian gas!" meme. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
Tade0 6y ago
Polish person here. Likely nothing until the current deposits are depleted, which is poised happen in the next 20 years: https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel_brunatny_polsce_2015.png https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel... Brown coal is only commercially viable if it's not transported too far, so it's been in steady decline for years now(yellow line - brown coal production in Poland over the years): https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydobycie_wegla_kamiennego_w_polsce_prognoza.png https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydoby... To my knowledge no large new mines were opened in the past decade. All this brown coal will likely be replaced with imported hard coal, gas and electricity - currently 8% of the electricity consumed in Poland is imported - mostly from Germany and Sweden - at an average total rate of 1.2GW.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks.
- oblio 6y ago
  I guess if green energy provided by your neighbors becomes super cheap, you might just import it and shut down the coal plants. Should be feasible for 2025 - 2030.
  - ed_balls 6y ago
    That will never happen for national security reasons. Even in 2050 I'd imagine 10% of the energy will come from carbon sources. You want to keep one gas plant open and one coal ready to start quickly. There could be war, natural disaster like volcano eruption that blocks the sun etc.
  - Tade0 6y ago
    Imported energy is already cheaper than the one generated by coal plants - the only limiting factor is the capacity of connections. Meanwhile there's currently over 2.5GW of solar capacity in this country - most of which was built during the last two years when a subsidy program for residential installations was introduced. It so happens that coal plants cannot operate at full capacity during the summer due to cooling issues, so having more solar is actually pretty beneficial.
ed_balls 6y ago
PL: 2 nuclear plants (one in place of old brown coal mine). There could be one left which won't be economical in the near future. The rest of coal is getting to expensive to extract.
skrause 6y ago
For Germany check out the graph on this page (grey is black coal, brown is brown coal): https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/nationale-klimapolitik/fragen-und-antworten-zum-kohleausstieg-in-deutschland/ https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/national... It will be reduced to half by 2030 and phased out completely by 2038. That's the worst case by law, in practice coal might be phased out faster.
imtringued 6y ago
Germany already pledged to shut them down. The problem is that the timeline is stupidly long. The country is also in the process of introducing a minimum CO2 price that is going up year by year. Hopefully that will convince the operators of the coal plants to turn their plants down because of economics instead of a direct ban.
option 6y ago
Germany prefers to shut down nuclear instead

Continue using coal and buying green electricity certificates from Norway? Because local green nuclear energy is devilish in Germany and can’t be produced locally anymore.

DrBazza 6y ago
It sounds like both countries are going to do some horse-trading then to do their part.
freeflight 6y ago
As a German it's a bit annoying to keep reading this kind of stuff when it's just flat out wrong. Right now there are still 6 commercial fission reactors running in Germany [0]. They are slated to phase out at the end of 2021 and 2022, but I really wouldn't be too surprised if they reinstate the running-time extensions that were revoked after the Fukushima disaster. The nuclear phase-out, that was decided and ratified back in 2001/2002, was backed by the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world. In major parts responsible for Germany's massive renewable capabilities because it also utilized Germanys leading position in renewable tech back then. Germany is also a major player in nuclear fusion research, being home to the largest and most advanced stellarator [1] and a major contributor to ITER [2]. It's also been at the forefront for hydrogen research and application, which has very real potential to be the green fuel of the future: Using the abundance of renewable energy for electrolysis of hydrogen, which can then be stored. Yet whenever "German energy" comes up, all that's brought up is this flat out wrong "Germany doesn't do nuclear! It's all coal or Russian gas!" meme. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deutschland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Tade0 6y ago

Polish person here. Likely nothing until the current deposits are depleted, which is poised happen in the next 20 years: https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel_brunatny_polsce_2015.png https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/wegiel... Brown coal is only commercially viable if it's not transported too far, so it's been in steady decline for years now(yellow line - brown coal production in Poland over the years): https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydobycie_wegla_kamiennego_w_polsce_prognoza.png https://wysokienapiecie.pl/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/wydoby... To my knowledge no large new mines were opened in the past decade. All this brown coal will likely be replaced with imported hard coal, gas and electricity - currently 8% of the electricity consumed in Poland is imported - mostly from Germany and Sweden - at an average total rate of 1.2GW.

DrBazza 6y ago
Interesting, thanks.
oblio 6y ago
I guess if green energy provided by your neighbors becomes super cheap, you might just import it and shut down the coal plants. Should be feasible for 2025 - 2030.
- ed_balls 6y ago
  That will never happen for national security reasons. Even in 2050 I'd imagine 10% of the energy will come from carbon sources. You want to keep one gas plant open and one coal ready to start quickly. There could be war, natural disaster like volcano eruption that blocks the sun etc.
- Tade0 6y ago
  Imported energy is already cheaper than the one generated by coal plants - the only limiting factor is the capacity of connections. Meanwhile there's currently over 2.5GW of solar capacity in this country - most of which was built during the last two years when a subsidy program for residential installations was introduced. It so happens that coal plants cannot operate at full capacity during the summer due to cooling issues, so having more solar is actually pretty beneficial.

ed_balls 6y ago

PL: 2 nuclear plants (one in place of old brown coal mine). There could be one left which won't be economical in the near future. The rest of coal is getting to expensive to extract.

skrause 6y ago

For Germany check out the graph on this page (grey is black coal, brown is brown coal): https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/nationale-klimapolitik/fragen-und-antworten-zum-kohleausstieg-in-deutschland/ https://www.bmu.de/themen/klima-energie/klimaschutz/national... It will be reduced to half by 2030 and phased out completely by 2038. That's the worst case by law, in practice coal might be phased out faster.

imtringued 6y ago

Germany already pledged to shut them down. The problem is that the timeline is stupidly long. The country is also in the process of introducing a minimum CO2 price that is going up year by year. Hopefully that will convince the operators of the coal plants to turn their plants down because of economics instead of a direct ban.

option 6y ago

Germany prefers to shut down nuclear instead