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> The reason why Germany hasn’t stopped buying gas from Russia is The reason why Germany hasn't stopped buying gas is because there are 12 million gas heaters

> The reason why Germany hasn’t stopped buying gas from Russia is The reason why Germany hasn't stopped buying gas is because there are 12 million gas heaters spread across the country, heating 20 million homes (nearly 50% of housing). We currently bring up 150k heat pumps a year (mostly in new developments). At that rate it takes some 60-80 years to convert all existing gas guzzling real estate over to electric heating. > because, despite being a massive (the most massive?) solar and renewable economy, those don’t work very well during the winter. Last I checked it's winter and we just broke wind power records, multiple times in a row. Wind power has approximately the same installed capacity as solar (60GW each). But it still doesn't help those gas heaters keep people warm.

lazide 5y ago
Another reason why those gas heaters are still there is because even with those wind and solar numbers, it can’t replace the amount of energy those gas heaters are using - and Germany is already charging insane rates for electrical power. And those numbers are peak, during good conditions. There will be lulls in the wind, clouds, etc. coming over and over again. What then?
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  The main reason _this_ house (in Germany) still heats with gas is because it's nigh-impossible to book the professionals who can install a heat pump and modernize the rest of the heating system in a sensible time frame. As mentioned by another comment: even if we were to send all that gas used for heating into gas turbines instead and use the generated electricity to operate the heat pumps, we'd use less gas (because it's using environmental heat energy in addition to the intrinsic energy of the gas). That brings the bonus that we could look into alternative power sources (of whatever kind: I'm sure France would be more than happy to assist bringing up nuclear reactors again, although that's unlikely to happen in Germany for a whole bunch of reasons) when gas is difficult to obtain because electricity is electricity. But apparently we don't have a sufficient number of people who could do the installation, plus it'd be expensive, and even discounting that, I'm not sure if "We need 12 million heat pump systems. Next quarter?" is something that could _possibly_ work even under normal circumstances (nevermind the supply chain issues we're currently dealing with globally). That's why I brought up the 150k installed units per year: There's probably room for improvement (I've been thinking that there must be a very profitable career in heating installations), but even if we can install 600k a year, we're still looking at 20 years before we get all the old cruft converted.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Let’s say all non-trivial natural gas usage (for simplicity) is heating, and due to heat pumps you could reduce energy required to 1/3 of the energy currently provided by burning natural gas (and at 100% efficiency) you’re still looking at about 4 trillion kWh of energy/yr (possibly a month - hard to get good data) that would be needed to do that switch. most of it during winter. Germany currently produces a little over 500 billion kWh of electrical energy a year. So to replace natural gas for heating in this scenario, Germany would need to produce 9x the electrical power it currently produces. Most of it during the winter. And not having enough production would kill people. It isn’t a matter of not having enough heat pumps or people to install them, that’s just the immediate road block if you individually wanted to switch. It’s a fundamental economic issue that would require investment on a scale heretofore not considered outside of world wars. And maybe not even then. Right now, we don’t even know of a storage technology that could even work at that scale, let alone what it would cost to do it. And depending on which way climate changes go, the size of storage needs to be potentially arbitrarily large. The more uncertainty you have, the larger it needs to be. Unlike a fossil fuel, we don’t have (essentially) arbitrarily large reserves we can pull from, it all has to be made and stored in advance by the same infrastructure that produces your normal production.
    - pgeorgi 5y ago
      As I wrote: Even turning gas into electricity would reduce the amount of gas required. Which might make buying from other suppliers more realistic. Or reduce the amount of cash sent towards Russian military spending. Plus, no matter what is ultimately done, we'd gain flexibility. The "gas boiler in every second home" scheme locks us into gas to a degree that even "a natural gas burning turbine in every city" wouldn't. But locked in we are. The push for renewables or the rejection of nuclear power plants is orthogonal to why Germany is stuck with Russian gas.
      - lazide 5y ago
        It would trade gas burned with capex - and that capex is very, very high, as you’d need to spend more on turbines and electrical transmission gear than all of Germany’s existing electrical grid. Many times over most likely.
tempnow987 5y ago
There is absolutely no chance you can heat germany on solar in the middle of a cold night in winter. None. According to the analysis, the price of electricity in Germany, adjusted for purchasing power, is 45-dollar cents (39-euro cents) per kilowatt-hour. This not only puts German electricity costs as the 15th highest of all the countries included, but it also means Germany has the third-highest electricity prices in the EU... The data included in the study refers to the second quarter of 2021, and so does not take into account the surge in prices consumers in Germany are currently facing. or look here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- pgeorgi 5y ago
  As mentioned in the other follow-up: Even using gas turbines + heat pumps would reduce the required amount of gas due to using environmental energy. And then there's wind (as mentioned: we just broke records. In winter. At night.), and water (to some minor degree). And theoretically a comeback of nuclear (won't happen). Or hydrogen storage. Or fusion, or whatever. The good thing about electricity is that it doesn't care where it comes from, and there are many different kinds of sources. On the other hand: Natural gas boilers require natural gas, and so far we don't have methods to synthesize it from electricity - or anything else - at scale. The main argument in their favor is that they're installed: a pretty important argument though.
  - lazide 5y ago
    Peak production (broke a new record) != worst case production. When the consequence of not having enough production is people literally freezing to death, worse case production matters.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Germany is actually a world leader in making climate friendly biogas. https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/WBA-Germany-4ppa4_.pdf https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/20... But yeah, big picture, gas is a poor choice for home heating, and should be phased out for health, cost and carbon reasons.
sneak 5y ago
There is also (last I looked, in Berlin) a double digit percentage tax on electrical power usage. Not sure what the tax is on gas, because my building didn't have it.

lazide 5y ago

Another reason why those gas heaters are still there is because even with those wind and solar numbers, it can’t replace the amount of energy those gas heaters are using - and Germany is already charging insane rates for electrical power. And those numbers are peak, during good conditions. There will be lulls in the wind, clouds, etc. coming over and over again. What then?

pgeorgi 5y ago
The main reason _this_ house (in Germany) still heats with gas is because it's nigh-impossible to book the professionals who can install a heat pump and modernize the rest of the heating system in a sensible time frame. As mentioned by another comment: even if we were to send all that gas used for heating into gas turbines instead and use the generated electricity to operate the heat pumps, we'd use less gas (because it's using environmental heat energy in addition to the intrinsic energy of the gas). That brings the bonus that we could look into alternative power sources (of whatever kind: I'm sure France would be more than happy to assist bringing up nuclear reactors again, although that's unlikely to happen in Germany for a whole bunch of reasons) when gas is difficult to obtain because electricity is electricity. But apparently we don't have a sufficient number of people who could do the installation, plus it'd be expensive, and even discounting that, I'm not sure if "We need 12 million heat pump systems. Next quarter?" is something that could _possibly_ work even under normal circumstances (nevermind the supply chain issues we're currently dealing with globally). That's why I brought up the 150k installed units per year: There's probably room for improvement (I've been thinking that there must be a very profitable career in heating installations), but even if we can install 600k a year, we're still looking at 20 years before we get all the old cruft converted.
- lazide 5y ago
  Let’s say all non-trivial natural gas usage (for simplicity) is heating, and due to heat pumps you could reduce energy required to 1/3 of the energy currently provided by burning natural gas (and at 100% efficiency) you’re still looking at about 4 trillion kWh of energy/yr (possibly a month - hard to get good data) that would be needed to do that switch. most of it during winter. Germany currently produces a little over 500 billion kWh of electrical energy a year. So to replace natural gas for heating in this scenario, Germany would need to produce 9x the electrical power it currently produces. Most of it during the winter. And not having enough production would kill people. It isn’t a matter of not having enough heat pumps or people to install them, that’s just the immediate road block if you individually wanted to switch. It’s a fundamental economic issue that would require investment on a scale heretofore not considered outside of world wars. And maybe not even then. Right now, we don’t even know of a storage technology that could even work at that scale, let alone what it would cost to do it. And depending on which way climate changes go, the size of storage needs to be potentially arbitrarily large. The more uncertainty you have, the larger it needs to be. Unlike a fossil fuel, we don’t have (essentially) arbitrarily large reserves we can pull from, it all has to be made and stored in advance by the same infrastructure that produces your normal production.
  - pgeorgi 5y ago
    As I wrote: Even turning gas into electricity would reduce the amount of gas required. Which might make buying from other suppliers more realistic. Or reduce the amount of cash sent towards Russian military spending. Plus, no matter what is ultimately done, we'd gain flexibility. The "gas boiler in every second home" scheme locks us into gas to a degree that even "a natural gas burning turbine in every city" wouldn't. But locked in we are. The push for renewables or the rejection of nuclear power plants is orthogonal to why Germany is stuck with Russian gas.
    - lazide 5y ago
      It would trade gas burned with capex - and that capex is very, very high, as you’d need to spend more on turbines and electrical transmission gear than all of Germany’s existing electrical grid. Many times over most likely.

tempnow987 5y ago

There is absolutely no chance you can heat germany on solar in the middle of a cold night in winter. None. According to the analysis, the price of electricity in Germany, adjusted for purchasing power, is 45-dollar cents (39-euro cents) per kilowatt-hour. This not only puts German electricity costs as the 15th highest of all the countries included, but it also means Germany has the third-highest electricity prices in the EU... The data included in the study refers to the second quarter of 2021, and so does not take into account the surge in prices consumers in Germany are currently facing. or look here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

pgeorgi 5y ago
As mentioned in the other follow-up: Even using gas turbines + heat pumps would reduce the required amount of gas due to using environmental energy. And then there's wind (as mentioned: we just broke records. In winter. At night.), and water (to some minor degree). And theoretically a comeback of nuclear (won't happen). Or hydrogen storage. Or fusion, or whatever. The good thing about electricity is that it doesn't care where it comes from, and there are many different kinds of sources. On the other hand: Natural gas boilers require natural gas, and so far we don't have methods to synthesize it from electricity - or anything else - at scale. The main argument in their favor is that they're installed: a pretty important argument though.
- lazide 5y ago
  Peak production (broke a new record) != worst case production. When the consequence of not having enough production is people literally freezing to death, worse case production matters.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Germany is actually a world leader in making climate friendly biogas. https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/WBA-Germany-4ppa4_.pdf https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/20... But yeah, big picture, gas is a poor choice for home heating, and should be phased out for health, cost and carbon reasons.

sneak 5y ago

There is also (last I looked, in Berlin) a double digit percentage tax on electrical power usage. Not sure what the tax is on gas, because my building didn't have it.