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Before you continue to so giddily bash Germany, I would consider that the US in 2020 generated 60.3% of electrical energy from fossil fuels (19.3% of the total

• cerved 5y ago
  People make a point about Germany because they made a populist political decision to close nuclear plants in 2015. At a point where it was evident that there future needs to be fossil free and with no real alternatives they decide to shut down their reactors. In contrast, the US seized civilian nuclear power plants after three mile island, fifty years ago.
  • rndgermandude 5y ago
    >People make a point about Germany because they made a populist political decision to close nuclear plants in 2015. Well, in 2002. Really long before that, because nobody was allowed to build new ones in ages already. But 2002 formalized the ban into law. Then came Merkel and reversed the shortened service life times for existing reactors. And then in 2011 after Fukushima, she re-reverse it. (No idea where you got the 2015 from). Germany still has running reactors, by the way. We did not just shut them all down, as you say. We shut down the very oldest ones still in operation, then shut down more and more in the time frame we originally planned to shut them down before Merkel's initial reversal and kept doing that for the last decade. The six remaining facilities will be gone by end of next year, tho. They will have been in production for at least 33 years each, at that point. So we had a decade to get our shit together and replace the nuclear with something else sustainable. We fell short, but not that short. >with no real alternatives There are alternatives, real ones, proven working ones. A mix of less consumption, driven by more efficient tech, wind/solar/water as the work horse and biomass to compensate for "bad" weather and some storage for the worst case. We could be emission-neutral and nuclear-free now, while not significantly more expensive (we'd have had costs regardless of what we built, building new nuclear plants isn't free either, and we would have needed new ones if we went the nuclear route instead). If there had been the political will to actually do so in the Merkel government... And that doesn't even take into account the European grid and how European nations could bridge temporarily increased demand/temporarily lower productions of individual members. Germany invested heavily into renewables at first, but this got more slow-paced recently, again thanks to some of Merkel's people, in particular Peter Altmaier who was "Secretary of the Economy" and considered his job to be a fulfillment center for old garde lobbyist needs. Regardless, over half the electric energy production is now from renewables. So I guess, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
    • cerved 5y ago
      Nuclear is being phased out by 2022. Coal by 2038, the majority of which is brown coal. The problem is Germany is phasing out nuclear power when they should phase out coal and its reliance on natural gas.
      • rndgermandude 5y ago
        Yes and no. Yes, coal and other fossil fuels would be far more important to phase out in general than nuclear. But the problem with the German nuclear plants is that they are old, old builds with old tech, and way past their expiration dates, even with the constant upgrades they received over the years. Every inspection in the last decade raised serious "wtf" moments (and inspections are rather lax and even more so before Fukushima). Nuclear can be reasonably safe if you take the time and money to make it so and don't build them in earthquake alley, but these particular ones stopped being safe a decade or more ago. So you either have to spend serious coin (billions) to modernize the still existing ones, all the while you take them off grid for extended periods of time, or you have to spend serious coin (billions) to build new ones, which will take you like a decade before they go into production anyway. Nuclear is too expensive, frankly. Renewables today are already cheaper, if you also account for all direct, indirect and hidden subsidies each receives. New or upgraded nuclear is not seen favorable by most (according to polls) Germans, me included. I'd rather see that money go to installing renewables capacity instead, and investing into renewables tech research. But sure, if we actually had new-ish and safe reactors that could be safely operated for another 10 or 20 or whatever years, I'd personally say: go for it, keep them running for that time instead of coal and gas plants.
        • cerved 5y ago
          So modernize them. Germany is obviously unable to produce sufficient renewable energy. It's far too inelastic. It's Germanys fault the electricity is so expensive.
        • shapefrog 5y ago
          They saw fit to bring online a new Coal plant, replacing existing coal plants that they are old, old builds with old tech, and way past their expiration dates at a cost of serious coin (billions). Billions quickly become very abstract things. As part of its stimulus package, Germany intends to expand the role of green hydrogen to help end the country's reliance on coal. The government agreed on a plan on how to spend the €9 billion earmarked for the project.The plan, which could see hydrogen eventually make up about 10% of the country's total electricity capacity, was unveiled as part of a €130 billion ($147 billion) stimulus to help reboot the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. The hydrogen commitment is part of some €40 billion earmarked for climate-related spending.
• shapefrog 5y ago
  Whatabout the starving children in africa?
• marbu 5y ago
  The question is what will happen when the nuclear power plans are decommissioned. Keeping nuclear running and expanding it's role further could be used to replace fossil fuels while expanding renewables at the same time. In the long run, energy storage technology will improve, which will help overcome problem with unstable renewable sources, but I don't believe we will be there soon.
  • rndgermandude 5y ago
    Nuclear isn't really good at covering temporarily for less production by solar and wind, because increasing and decreasing output levels of nuclear has a lot of latency... you cannot just flip a switch. The answer to that could be burning things, along with better storage tech that you mentioned. Not necessarily fossil fuels, but biomass and gas (e.g. "cow farts"). Burning biomass, you can still stay neutral if done right, as the mass will use carbon when growing. Things like algae farming as a fast growing source of biomass may become important. With some additional tech you could filter out some carbon and other emissions and store what you filtered out, and have a negative emission balance considering the whole process. Biomass and other renewables generally have the other positive aspect that research, development and installation is relatively cheap and quick compared to nuclear. Another part of the solution surely will be to just use less energy, by investing in more efficient tech. Reducing energy consumption by merely 10% would essentially cover what nuclear in Germany produces now[0]. A lot of companies in Germany already started investing heavily into modernization to reduce their energy need, and this process is speeding up now. A lot of this effort is driven by public policy - from tax incentives to negative incentives in higher energy prices - but a lot is also driven by the realization of management that modernization efforts like this can massively drive down costs mid and long term while also ensuring the production facilities stay competitive with tech upgrades. Another way of policy incentives e.g. are the mandatory labeling of consumer goods in regard to energy consumption and efficiency, as consumers will use this information to buy stuff that's not only "better for the environment" than the competitor but also saves money on the electric bill. Right now, within the EU, such labeling is mostly for electric appliances, but it could be extended further to other areas like food or services, and could cover the entire life-cycle of a product including production and disposal, not just the time consumers operate it. By the way, I am not generally opposed to nuclear, just opposed to nuclear how we do it now and did it in the past. For one, it's artificially made cheap by subsidies everywhere you look, and that artificially cheap price does not even include the additional costs of long term waste management. And then the plants are rather unsafe, not because they have to be, but because of policy failures. Things like building nuclear plants in regions prone to earthquakes and/or tsunamis, the French having to shut down a lot of their reactors every few summers because they'd be boiling their rivers if they didn't and of course incidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island (thank the Air Force for having an airbase nearby which lead to TMI being build more sturdy than usual thus probably avoiding a really bad outcome), Windscale, etc... all that does not inspire confidence in me that humans and in particular politicians can manage the technology. When Belgium discovers "micro cracks" in high pressure boilers in nuclear power plants, and then their politicians almost immediately declare the plants to be still safe - in a timeframe where they surely cannot have thoroughly evaluated the findings - then that's not great already, then when I consider some people want to build massive nuclear power plants in areas of the world with far less stable societies than Belgium, I want to facepalm. And on top of that nuclear is not renewable. The fuel has to come from somewhere, which doesn't bode well for energy independence. Right now, a forth of uranium is mined by Kazatomprom a quasi-state-owned company in Kazakhstan, which Freedom House rates a "consolidated authoritarian regime". Being dependent on Russia for gas isn't great; being dependent on Kazakhstan for nuclear full isn't great either. PS: I would agree that getting rid of (most) fossil fuel energy production is more important than getting rid of nuclear.