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Germany aims to get 100% of energy from renewable sources by 2035

197 points by 0xedb 5y ago

mishftw 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20220228142759/https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-aims-get-100-energy-renewable-sources-by-2035-2022-02-28/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220228142759/https://www.reute... Additional details: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-aims-100-green-power-2035-will-present-gas-reduction-plan https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-aims-100-green-... For those interested in this topic further, Our World in Data project has an energy profile for the country: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
Are there any decisive moves planned for the next 2 years?
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  Yes, to assign an additional 100.000.000.000 € to the military budget, as well as increase in additionally in the future. Let's hope at least a part of that amount would be used for achieving an energy independence, as the military goal number one.
- k__ 5y ago
  Good question. I hope they make sure, municipalities can't wiggle their way out of building windparks anymore.
  - VaxWithSex 5y ago
    Legislative work is already on its way. 2% of land area is reserved for wind power stations.
iso1631 5y ago
Should have set a 13 year timeline after Crimea, it would only be 5 years away now.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lopis 5y ago
No new information in the article that would make this prediction any more likely. We're gonna need real measures if we want to cut use of gas and coal. Extending use of nuclear a bit more would be one. Cutting down subsidies to the meat and dairy industry is another. We need radical measures if we want radical results. But no one is willing to take then, not at a personal level (go vegan) and for sure not at a corporate level.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  I would be curious how the meat and dairy production depends on gas and especially coal :p. But indeed, a lot of things have to be changed quickly to achieve the desired results, but recent events have given a lot of motivation to do so even with those, who are not so much concerned about the environment. Now even the industry is driving this, as they are impacted with high electricity prices and possible shortages.
  - lopis 5y ago
    Do you think cows survive the winter without heating? Weeks and months at sub zero temperatures? It can only partly be covered by biomass for the farm itself. And even indirectly, all energy markets are connected.
lampe3 5y ago
I live in Germany and this to me sounds like a bad joke... In the last years: - Harder laws to build renewable energy source - windmills that create electricity are banned and protested against in villages. - solar parks are not build because they look bad - EEG-Umlage which should be a tax to create more renewable sources will be terminated this year - RWE is destroying villages to mine coal - north stream 2 needed a war to not be finished Hope this explains why it sounds like a joke
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - sabjut 5y ago
    This and the widespread tradition of german NIMBYism do that to your power infrastructure.
- sarsway 5y ago
  - dumping 150 bil into war machines in a knee-jerk reaction, subsidizing a useless polluting industry (but we just print the money so no worries)
  - dageshi 5y ago
    If Germany had funded it's military in the way a nato country should (2% of gdp per year) it would not now suddenly have to play catch up.
    - sarsway 5y ago
      It should be 0%. Catch up to what - for what? So we can go do some drone bombing in Africa like a proper western nation? Is that the plan? I guess it's easier to give the guys with the big guns what the want, instead of actually staying true to the values of demilitarizatizing the planet.
      - 5y ago
sremani 5y ago
Germany has a lot of Renewable already built out and today they are burning lignite to keep lights on. I do not know what they mean renewable here -- unless they are going to do a France w.r.t Nuclear. This is a pipe-dream.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  It's calculated through. It will work.
3D30497420 5y ago
I think one of German's most significant mistakes of the past decade was the decision to phase out their nuclear power generation.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  I think one of Germany's most significant mistake of the past decade was destroying its own energiewende and not creating incentives to invest in long term storage.
lelag 5y ago
I guess their plan is to count on the french being able to sell them power when the wind does not blow hard enough...
- iso1631 5y ago
  Across the entire of Europe there should be enough tidal, offshore wind, solar to provide plenty of power. It's rare that the north, baltic, biscay and med are all becalmed For storage, there's overbuilding capacity and using excess to generate hygrogen (and thus convert it back), storage from cars, potential for hydro storage in the alps and pyrinees, and in the short term gas provision from UK/Norway for top up, should be more than enough to maintain independence and resilience. But there's more money in burning fossils.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  The plan is to use the overshoot energy to electrolyze hydrogen and store it via pressure increase in the extensive German gas network… for use during the "Dunkelflaute" in the gas plants.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  No, that is a myth which is repeated frequently. Germany is still a net exporter of electricity and all plans require to be at least neutral in production. Of course, Germany is part of the European electricity market. This means, in day to day business, there is a lot of electricity exchange. Germany might buy nuclear power from France in the morning and France might buy German solar power over noon or wind power in the evening. How electricity is produced and distributed in Europe solely depends on the momentary balance between consumption and production. The grids are interconnected from Norway to the north and Spain and Italy to the South. Also including the UK and of course the whole central Europe.
tomschlick 5y ago
Kind of insane that they started shutting down nuclear power plants earlier this year and are now more reliant on Russian gas because of it. How is that more green? https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-germany-nuclear-shutdown-story-82051054 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-ge...
- leeoniya 5y ago
  the whole nuclear paralysis because of fukushima is rather insane. location & reactor design make a giant difference in risk profile and outcomes. IMO nuclear is the only real way out of the current mess. any idea why we dont have several operational MSRs at this point? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor EDIT: i guess MSRs' structural components are subject to extreme corrosion from heat, salt, and radiation that makes them impossible to build for long-term continous operation.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    It's not that straightforward unfortunately. Let's leave the whole waste deposal issue aside for now, it seems to be still the case that the free market considers nuclear power plants too risky. What I mean by that is that no operator can currently afford to get private insurance for their plants, which is why plants are insured publically. Markets are not omniscient of course, and they might be ineffective, but it's something to think about when discussing nuclear energy.
    - leeoniya 5y ago
      > the free market considers nuclear power plants too risky the free market is made up of people who primarily watch sensational evening news and follow clickbait social media. the actual statistics are still well on the side of nuclear in terms of safety and externalities (as far as i understand)
      - ahelwer 5y ago
legalcorrection 5y ago
It's so cheap to make unrealistic promises to accomplish things by a date long after you are out of power.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  > It's so cheap to make unrealistic promises to accomplish things by a date long after you are out of power. The previous chancellor was in power for more than 16 years.
insickness 5y ago
"Germany’s pledge to shut down all coal-powered plants by 2038, and a decades-old decision to aggressively phase out nuclear energy, have made the country reliant on Russian gas, which has been cheaply flowing toward German shores for decades. Natural gas makes up 25% of Germany’s total energy consumption, and the country relies on Russia for 55% of its gas supply. If these imports were to suddenly cease, the EU’s largest economy and most populous country would find itself in dire straits." https://fortune.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-invasion-russia-germany-natural-gas/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-invasion-russia-germa...
- draw_down 5y ago
hedora 5y ago
Yeah right. Let me guess. The current politicians will have retired by then. This is a worse joke than nuclear fusion being 10 years out. They should be aiming for zero new installs (including ICE cars) by 2025, and zero emissions by 2030. Any idea how to set up a ballot initiative like that in California? We’ve also pushed the internal combustion engine to zero emission vehicle transition out to 2035.
shimonabi 5y ago
The German economist Hans-Werner Sinn made a presentation a few years ago in which he shows how crazy and futile Germany's mad embrace of renewables really is. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9h0MJ2swo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9h0MJ2swo (in German) Germany needs to start building nuclear TODAY. But good luck trying that with the Greens in the government coalition.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  No we don't. We need to build storage and electrolyzers.
- JanisErdmanis 5y ago
  Don't understand German. What are the main points? What does he say about energy storage and hydrogen produced from renewables which have gained hype in recent years?
  - shimonabi 5y ago
    He addresses all of those points. I won't go into details. The math simply doesn't add up, not technological and not economy-wise.
qiskit 5y ago
In other words, they are going to offshore most of their energy-intensive manufacturing to china, india, ASEAN, etc. Just like how europe "recycled" their garbage by shipping it to china who just probably dumped it god knows where. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash-ban-forces-europe-to-confront-its-waste-problem/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash... Just like how norway is "environmentally friendly" because they buy so many electric cars, but they are just behind saudi arabia in oil production on a per capita basis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... One thing european countries excel at is producing great PR. Saudi arabia's PR campaign should be : "Saudi Arabia, we are just as environmentally friendly as Norway".
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > they are going to offshore most of their energy-intensive manufacturing to china, india, ASEAN, etc. Why? A watt is a watt, and renewables are cost-competitive with carbon even before taking into consideration geopolitics. But, more importantly, renewables don't even have to be cost competitive to keep manufacturing in Germany while transitioning to renewables. Ukraine has opened up political space for subsidy that may not have existed a year ago. Germany just doubled their defense spending. To say that this was unimaginable even three weeks ago, if anything, under-states the case. I highly doubt there is political will in Germany to offshore manufacturing, and I'm pretty sure there is newly found political will to transition off of natgas. In particular, subsidizing energy prices to keep German manufacturing competitive while weaning off of RU natgas is likely an easy sell. I think it's much more likely that Germany shifts off of natgas and in the meantime subsidizes energy for manufacturing, than that Germany allows manufacturing to offshore as a result of energy price spikes due to renewable transition. > One thing european countries excel at is producing great PR. Not at all surprising when you realize that the entire political economy of the west -- democracy and consumer/financial capitalism -- is almost by design dominated by people and institutions who are good at PR. A major geopolitical theme in the 2010s was the fact that open societies have major weaknesses in open information warfare. The next decade of the global info war will be interesting. I think we'll learn that, although you can easily cause petty chaos and divisiveness in the west, the institutions and core values are very robust. After all, those institutions and values are subject to -- and always have been subject to -- constant and open assault. I think we'll also learn that authoritarian states have almost a mirror opposite dynamics of the west -- fueling petty divisions in much harder, but once you gain a foothold the whole system is much less robust to total collapse.
draw_down 5y ago
anovikov 5y ago
As always, it has to be noted that pertains to ELECTRICITY only. Quitting fossil fuels for all other uses is decades away, at least 2060. It will still go a long way though and probably bring TFS share of renewables from ~19% today to about 45%, so shouldn't be discounted, but it is not in any way "quitting fossil fuels" as the article says.
- megaman821 5y ago
  It will be a slow grind to electrify everything. The technology exists but virtually no one is going to rip out their perfectly functioning gas heating for a heat pump or electric water heater. Trade-in their working combustion engine car for a new electric one. The move to electric-only versions of these things will take decades, so maybe Germany can ban the sale of all consumer gas-burning equipment by 2035 but there is no way energy use will be 100% renewable by then.
  - VaxWithSex 5y ago
    Gas heating for residential homes is scheduled to be band in 2023. New buildings have to use heatpumps or alternatives. Adding isolation and making buildings energy efficient buildings are subsidized with up to 45%. Replacing oil heating is subsidized by 45% Replacing gas heating is subsidized by upto 30%.
    - anovikov 5y ago
      In new residential homes. Homes have about 50 years half-life...
ck2 5y ago
The world is going to need some low-cost energy breakthroughs by 2035 if mere existence is going to be affordable, imagine the cost of living. Housing, food, medical, etc. I assume Germany/Europe is having or will have the same housing rental/ownership price explosion as USA? Or is this just a US money-grab kind of thing? I can't see what will change that cost spike except cheap energy.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >I assume Germany/Europe is having or will have the same housing rental/ownership price explosion as USA? Ha, joke's on you. Home ownership in Germany (and most of the developed EU) is far more expensive than in the US when you factor median wages to median real estate prices ratio. Americans complain a lot but real estate there is far more in reach for the average skilled worker than it is in Germany for example. The price per square foot/meter in Munich or Paris is nearly the same as in the Bay Area yet wages here are half to a quarter of that of the US workers. It's insane. Rentals in Germany are more affordable, but that's only if you get a place in the 80 person queue who signed up for the apartment viewing within the first hour since the listing went up online. Apartment hunting in places like Germany or Sweden is a meme on its own.
- iso1631 5y ago
  In England and Wales the median house price was 3.5 times median pre-tax earnings in 1997 By 2007 this had increased to 7.1, then the crash happened. It had bounced back to 7.7 by 2020 and it's well over 8, maybe 8.5 today. A US house is of course far larger. An average European house is about 1000 square foot. An average American bathroom is about that size* * slight hyperbole
throwawaygh 5y ago
The plan is to double onshore wind, build more offshore wind, and triple solar. That can certainly offset a lot of nonrenewable production and seems entirely possible in the given time-frame. But what gets offset? Before last week, I would've assumed coal/lignite/oil. The real development is a shift in priorities -- namely, from decreasing GHG to weaning off of Russian natgas. What I don't quite understand is how all of this additional renewable energy production is supposed to offset natgas... electrifying the entire country's HVAC infrastructure seems like almost a bigger hurdle than increasing renewable production?
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  Use the overshoot energy to produce hydrogen en mass. store it in the German gas grid. Use the "hydrogen-ready" gas plants (only they are considered "green" btw).
edhelas 5y ago
Not gonna happen - Law of physics
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  All fossil power was once generated by the sun. Law of physics.
s_dev 5y ago
We've all raised our concerns about the opinions of Germans before on these threads. A brilliant scientific nation that seems to have become recently confused. Sort of like the British. Green Gas? Nuclear is bad because it produces waste despite that waste often being the size of a can of coke after a year of service? Buying Russian gas is actually making Russia more democratic and drawing it in to the West? The past week will have a lot of Germans revising many silly opinions they were originally able to afford but not anymore -- so I'm going to wait for that tide of opinion change rather than try to persuade anymore. Being naive sometimes is a luxury some can simply afford while others can't afford it. Climate change is happening and it's not going to wait for Germany, Russia has always been like Russia -- corrupt and unreliable. Amazing that Germany have considered the US a poor partner under Trump but a reliable one with Russia/Putin. France seems have better answers on how to solve energy problems than Germany.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  France doesn't have any good answer on how to solve energy problems. Yes, they currently have a large amount of nuclear reactors - probably the most nuclear industry nation on the planet. However, most of them are aging and so far they fail to build new plants at a rate to sustain their production long term. They have 1 in construction, much delayed and with huge cost overruns. Even if they build another 10 that only delays the switch, they would have to replace 50 nuclear power plants. Their nuclear future so far depends on prolonging the run times of the existing plants.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    France has 50 plants? They need to go headfirst into modular reactors. Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just displace purchasing solar/wind/storage. But with that big of an extant installed base, with approved/regulated sites and various other infrastructure, they may be the only country that can save money staying nuclear. Of course, being a LFTR stan I would push for mass manufactured LFTRs the size of a couple shipping containers that can be decommissioned on a regular basis. 50 big nuclear plants replaced with about 1000 or more shipping container sized reactors on a replacement schedule. LFTR would reduce waste, and separation of other fission products could be done elsewhere. WHat is the French resistance to LFTR? I know that the US has strange bureaucratic resistances to LFTR built into academic funding and their regulatory agencies as an artifact of the ORNL reactor vs PWR reactor politics from the 1950s. If France just piggybacking on the solid fuel rod reprocessing industry of the US and its same resistance to new reactor designs?
traveler01 5y ago
Ah yes, the country that closed nuclear plants to buy natural gas from Russia is now giving our fancy headlines again.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  If everyone would switch to nuclear, the fuel would be gone in 50 Years.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    This is a lot of time to develop nuclear fusion and improve renewables, isn't it?
    - goombacloud 5y ago
      See how well IPv6 adaption worked ;)
  - isomel 5y ago
    I believe you're orders of magnitude off.
  - traveler01 5y ago
    At the current rate of technology improvements, 50 years isn't very concerning...
hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
They really need to invest more into nuclear energy IMHO.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  They really need to invest more into longterm storage IMHO.
andy_ppp 5y ago
I read that methane can be produced at about 60% efficiency - if that’s true can’t we just accept that and build the required storage and enough extra renewable capacity?
- _ph_ 5y ago
  That is basically the plan. Build up renewables, and as soon as there is enough capacity, produce "green" gas - either methane or hydrogen (personally I think methane wins, because it is easier to handle). Which also was the point why there was such a large push for gas in recent years. Not only is it cleaner than coal, but facilities built up for gas can be used for green methane and also possible use with hydrogen was considered.
  - andy_ppp 5y ago
    Okay so it’s just capacity and will to do it? Should be relatively straight forward no? It’s not like we don’t have the technology or does it need too much capacity?
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Right. If the previous government had not throttled down the built-up of renewable sources, we probably would be close to phasing out coal already. The technology is fundamentally there, we just need to build way more wind generators and set up solar cells. Germany installed 10GW of solar peak power in 2012 and 5 GW of wind peak power in 2016. Compare that to a grid load of up to 80 GW. The technology to produce green gas is existing too, but not rolled out widely - which hangs on having enough renewable electricity.
piokoch 5y ago
Yes, yes, we've heard that, let's close all nuclear plants, buy gas from Russia and planet will be saved. Great time for this post, indeed. Energiewende is an extremely expensive project that is simply not going to work, what is clarify to some extent for example here [1]. It is economical absurdity, it is as if someone would try to built Perpetuum mobile, but breaking laws of economy. In fact, anyone can find in the internet sunny days stats for Germany and check by themselves if this has any chance to work on a truly large scale without existing efficient energy storage. In addition Energiewende considers gas as green energy source, what is a joke, and, what is even more ridiculous, "biomas" is also green energy source, no idea how burning wood and corn is not emitting CO2, but, hey, ecologist are not doing something totally nuts for the first time, so not a big surprise. Fighting nuclear energy for last 60 years worked so well for Greenpeace and others that we are in the today's crappy situation, but still nobody is saying, hey guys it seems you were dead wrong about nukes, it seems that's the only clean and practical, CO2 emission free energy source, isn't it? If Germany didn't waste all those trillions of dollars for Energiewende of solar and wind power plants, but built reactors instead, they would have practically CO2-free economy now, but former chancellor, Mr. Gerhard Schröder, would not get a nice job in Gazprom in that case. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06...
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  The sun is the biggest reactor in the solar system and does not send an invoice. All fossil power was once energy given by the sun. Gas is only considered green when the generators can be used for hydrogen later. The hydrogen will be produced by electrolyzers using overproduction of renewable energy. Gerhard Schröder is an idiot, we agree.
bedhead 5y ago
Religions are belief systems that cause all sorts of wacky outcomes in the real world because the beliefs are based on the way they wish things were instead of the way things are. If more people understood that this is simply a novel religion, this would at least start making more sense.
- sjg1729 5y ago
  Is the novel religion you’re referring to the belief in climate change? Not sure I understand your comment
jokoon 5y ago
I wish I could invest in nuclear... Remember that renewables are promoted by the fossil fuel industries, because it gives them more business.
oliwarner 5y ago
Can't read past the paywall but this looks to be unsatisfactory. Generating as much electricity as the total electricity they use is not the same as having renewably generated energy stored and ready to use at all times of day, around the year, and for purposes that would have historically used fossil fuels. If you're burning fossil fuels for heating and transport and even electricity, that's not "100% renewable energy". It requires degassing heating infrastructure and dealing with the massive increase in power demand that causes. As well as making it cheaper. It has to half in price to avoid heating inflation. Electrification of transport will take decades to complete. To reiterate, I'm not saying that Germany is aiming in the wrong direction, it's just hard to grok what they actually mean. Having seen British politicians screw this up for a quick win, I'm not optimistic.
nedpat 5y ago
Nice! From what i remember, India was the first in the UN to state that it will be carbon negative by 2035-2050

197 points by 0xedb 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20220228142759/https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-aims-get-100-energy-renewable-sources-by-2035-2022-02-28/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220228142759/https://www.reute... Additional details: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-aims-100-green-power-2035-will-present-gas-reduction-plan https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-aims-100-green-... For those interested in this topic further, Our World in Data project has an energy profile for the country: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

Are there any decisive moves planned for the next 2 years?

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
Yes, to assign an additional 100.000.000.000 € to the military budget, as well as increase in additionally in the future. Let's hope at least a part of that amount would be used for achieving an energy independence, as the military goal number one.
k__ 5y ago
Good question. I hope they make sure, municipalities can't wiggle their way out of building windparks anymore.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  Legislative work is already on its way. 2% of land area is reserved for wind power stations.

iso1631 5y ago

Should have set a 13 year timeline after Crimea, it would only be 5 years away now.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lopis 5y ago

No new information in the article that would make this prediction any more likely. We're gonna need real measures if we want to cut use of gas and coal. Extending use of nuclear a bit more would be one. Cutting down subsidies to the meat and dairy industry is another. We need radical measures if we want radical results. But no one is willing to take then, not at a personal level (go vegan) and for sure not at a corporate level.

_ph_ 5y ago
I would be curious how the meat and dairy production depends on gas and especially coal :p. But indeed, a lot of things have to be changed quickly to achieve the desired results, but recent events have given a lot of motivation to do so even with those, who are not so much concerned about the environment. Now even the industry is driving this, as they are impacted with high electricity prices and possible shortages.
- lopis 5y ago
  Do you think cows survive the winter without heating? Weeks and months at sub zero temperatures? It can only partly be covered by biomass for the farm itself. And even indirectly, all energy markets are connected.

lampe3 5y ago

I live in Germany and this to me sounds like a bad joke... In the last years: - Harder laws to build renewable energy source - windmills that create electricity are banned and protested against in villages. - solar parks are not build because they look bad - EEG-Umlage which should be a tax to create more renewable sources will be terminated this year - RWE is destroying villages to mine coal - north stream 2 needed a war to not be finished Hope this explains why it sounds like a joke

VaxWithSex 5y ago
[flagged]
- sabjut 5y ago
  This and the widespread tradition of german NIMBYism do that to your power infrastructure.
sarsway 5y ago
- dumping 150 bil into war machines in a knee-jerk reaction, subsidizing a useless polluting industry (but we just print the money so no worries)
- dageshi 5y ago
  If Germany had funded it's military in the way a nato country should (2% of gdp per year) it would not now suddenly have to play catch up.
  - sarsway 5y ago
    It should be 0%. Catch up to what - for what? So we can go do some drone bombing in Africa like a proper western nation? Is that the plan? I guess it's easier to give the guys with the big guns what the want, instead of actually staying true to the values of demilitarizatizing the planet.
    - 5y ago

sremani 5y ago

Germany has a lot of Renewable already built out and today they are burning lignite to keep lights on. I do not know what they mean renewable here -- unless they are going to do a France w.r.t Nuclear. This is a pipe-dream.

VaxWithSex 5y ago
It's calculated through. It will work.

3D30497420 5y ago

I think one of German's most significant mistakes of the past decade was the decision to phase out their nuclear power generation.

VaxWithSex 5y ago
I think one of Germany's most significant mistake of the past decade was destroying its own energiewende and not creating incentives to invest in long term storage.

lelag 5y ago

I guess their plan is to count on the french being able to sell them power when the wind does not blow hard enough...

iso1631 5y ago
Across the entire of Europe there should be enough tidal, offshore wind, solar to provide plenty of power. It's rare that the north, baltic, biscay and med are all becalmed For storage, there's overbuilding capacity and using excess to generate hygrogen (and thus convert it back), storage from cars, potential for hydro storage in the alps and pyrinees, and in the short term gas provision from UK/Norway for top up, should be more than enough to maintain independence and resilience. But there's more money in burning fossils.
VaxWithSex 5y ago
The plan is to use the overshoot energy to electrolyze hydrogen and store it via pressure increase in the extensive German gas network… for use during the "Dunkelflaute" in the gas plants.
_ph_ 5y ago
No, that is a myth which is repeated frequently. Germany is still a net exporter of electricity and all plans require to be at least neutral in production. Of course, Germany is part of the European electricity market. This means, in day to day business, there is a lot of electricity exchange. Germany might buy nuclear power from France in the morning and France might buy German solar power over noon or wind power in the evening. How electricity is produced and distributed in Europe solely depends on the momentary balance between consumption and production. The grids are interconnected from Norway to the north and Spain and Italy to the South. Also including the UK and of course the whole central Europe.

tomschlick 5y ago

Kind of insane that they started shutting down nuclear power plants earlier this year and are now more reliant on Russian gas because of it. How is that more green? https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-germany-nuclear-shutdown-story-82051054 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-ge...

leeoniya 5y ago
the whole nuclear paralysis because of fukushima is rather insane. location & reactor design make a giant difference in risk profile and outcomes. IMO nuclear is the only real way out of the current mess. any idea why we dont have several operational MSRs at this point? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor EDIT: i guess MSRs' structural components are subject to extreme corrosion from heat, salt, and radiation that makes them impossible to build for long-term continous operation.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  It's not that straightforward unfortunately. Let's leave the whole waste deposal issue aside for now, it seems to be still the case that the free market considers nuclear power plants too risky. What I mean by that is that no operator can currently afford to get private insurance for their plants, which is why plants are insured publically. Markets are not omniscient of course, and they might be ineffective, but it's something to think about when discussing nuclear energy.
  - leeoniya 5y ago
    > the free market considers nuclear power plants too risky the free market is made up of people who primarily watch sensational evening news and follow clickbait social media. the actual statistics are still well on the side of nuclear in terms of safety and externalities (as far as i understand)
    - ahelwer 5y ago

legalcorrection 5y ago

It's so cheap to make unrealistic promises to accomplish things by a date long after you are out of power.

matthewdgreen 5y ago
> It's so cheap to make unrealistic promises to accomplish things by a date long after you are out of power. The previous chancellor was in power for more than 16 years.

insickness 5y ago

"Germany’s pledge to shut down all coal-powered plants by 2038, and a decades-old decision to aggressively phase out nuclear energy, have made the country reliant on Russian gas, which has been cheaply flowing toward German shores for decades. Natural gas makes up 25% of Germany’s total energy consumption, and the country relies on Russia for 55% of its gas supply. If these imports were to suddenly cease, the EU’s largest economy and most populous country would find itself in dire straits." https://fortune.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-invasion-russia-germany-natural-gas/ https://fortune.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-invasion-russia-germa...

draw_down 5y ago

hedora 5y ago

Yeah right. Let me guess. The current politicians will have retired by then. This is a worse joke than nuclear fusion being 10 years out. They should be aiming for zero new installs (including ICE cars) by 2025, and zero emissions by 2030. Any idea how to set up a ballot initiative like that in California? We’ve also pushed the internal combustion engine to zero emission vehicle transition out to 2035.

shimonabi 5y ago

The German economist Hans-Werner Sinn made a presentation a few years ago in which he shows how crazy and futile Germany's mad embrace of renewables really is. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9h0MJ2swo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9h0MJ2swo (in German) Germany needs to start building nuclear TODAY. But good luck trying that with the Greens in the government coalition.

VaxWithSex 5y ago
No we don't. We need to build storage and electrolyzers.
JanisErdmanis 5y ago
Don't understand German. What are the main points? What does he say about energy storage and hydrogen produced from renewables which have gained hype in recent years?
- shimonabi 5y ago
  He addresses all of those points. I won't go into details. The math simply doesn't add up, not technological and not economy-wise.

qiskit 5y ago

In other words, they are going to offshore most of their energy-intensive manufacturing to china, india, ASEAN, etc. Just like how europe "recycled" their garbage by shipping it to china who just probably dumped it god knows where. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash-ban-forces-europe-to-confront-its-waste-problem/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash... Just like how norway is "environmentally friendly" because they buy so many electric cars, but they are just behind saudi arabia in oil production on a per capita basis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... One thing european countries excel at is producing great PR. Saudi arabia's PR campaign should be : "Saudi Arabia, we are just as environmentally friendly as Norway".

throwawaygh 5y ago
> they are going to offshore most of their energy-intensive manufacturing to china, india, ASEAN, etc. Why? A watt is a watt, and renewables are cost-competitive with carbon even before taking into consideration geopolitics. But, more importantly, renewables don't even have to be cost competitive to keep manufacturing in Germany while transitioning to renewables. Ukraine has opened up political space for subsidy that may not have existed a year ago. Germany just doubled their defense spending. To say that this was unimaginable even three weeks ago, if anything, under-states the case. I highly doubt there is political will in Germany to offshore manufacturing, and I'm pretty sure there is newly found political will to transition off of natgas. In particular, subsidizing energy prices to keep German manufacturing competitive while weaning off of RU natgas is likely an easy sell. I think it's much more likely that Germany shifts off of natgas and in the meantime subsidizes energy for manufacturing, than that Germany allows manufacturing to offshore as a result of energy price spikes due to renewable transition. > One thing european countries excel at is producing great PR. Not at all surprising when you realize that the entire political economy of the west -- democracy and consumer/financial capitalism -- is almost by design dominated by people and institutions who are good at PR. A major geopolitical theme in the 2010s was the fact that open societies have major weaknesses in open information warfare. The next decade of the global info war will be interesting. I think we'll learn that, although you can easily cause petty chaos and divisiveness in the west, the institutions and core values are very robust. After all, those institutions and values are subject to -- and always have been subject to -- constant and open assault. I think we'll also learn that authoritarian states have almost a mirror opposite dynamics of the west -- fueling petty divisions in much harder, but once you gain a foothold the whole system is much less robust to total collapse.

draw_down 5y ago

anovikov 5y ago

As always, it has to be noted that pertains to ELECTRICITY only. Quitting fossil fuels for all other uses is decades away, at least 2060. It will still go a long way though and probably bring TFS share of renewables from ~19% today to about 45%, so shouldn't be discounted, but it is not in any way "quitting fossil fuels" as the article says.

megaman821 5y ago
It will be a slow grind to electrify everything. The technology exists but virtually no one is going to rip out their perfectly functioning gas heating for a heat pump or electric water heater. Trade-in their working combustion engine car for a new electric one. The move to electric-only versions of these things will take decades, so maybe Germany can ban the sale of all consumer gas-burning equipment by 2035 but there is no way energy use will be 100% renewable by then.
- VaxWithSex 5y ago
  Gas heating for residential homes is scheduled to be band in 2023. New buildings have to use heatpumps or alternatives. Adding isolation and making buildings energy efficient buildings are subsidized with up to 45%. Replacing oil heating is subsidized by 45% Replacing gas heating is subsidized by upto 30%.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    In new residential homes. Homes have about 50 years half-life...

ck2 5y ago

The world is going to need some low-cost energy breakthroughs by 2035 if mere existence is going to be affordable, imagine the cost of living. Housing, food, medical, etc. I assume Germany/Europe is having or will have the same housing rental/ownership price explosion as USA? Or is this just a US money-grab kind of thing? I can't see what will change that cost spike except cheap energy.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>I assume Germany/Europe is having or will have the same housing rental/ownership price explosion as USA? Ha, joke's on you. Home ownership in Germany (and most of the developed EU) is far more expensive than in the US when you factor median wages to median real estate prices ratio. Americans complain a lot but real estate there is far more in reach for the average skilled worker than it is in Germany for example. The price per square foot/meter in Munich or Paris is nearly the same as in the Bay Area yet wages here are half to a quarter of that of the US workers. It's insane. Rentals in Germany are more affordable, but that's only if you get a place in the 80 person queue who signed up for the apartment viewing within the first hour since the listing went up online. Apartment hunting in places like Germany or Sweden is a meme on its own.
iso1631 5y ago
In England and Wales the median house price was 3.5 times median pre-tax earnings in 1997 By 2007 this had increased to 7.1, then the crash happened. It had bounced back to 7.7 by 2020 and it's well over 8, maybe 8.5 today. A US house is of course far larger. An average European house is about 1000 square foot. An average American bathroom is about that size* * slight hyperbole

throwawaygh 5y ago

The plan is to double onshore wind, build more offshore wind, and triple solar. That can certainly offset a lot of nonrenewable production and seems entirely possible in the given time-frame. But what gets offset? Before last week, I would've assumed coal/lignite/oil. The real development is a shift in priorities -- namely, from decreasing GHG to weaning off of Russian natgas. What I don't quite understand is how all of this additional renewable energy production is supposed to offset natgas... electrifying the entire country's HVAC infrastructure seems like almost a bigger hurdle than increasing renewable production?

VaxWithSex 5y ago
Use the overshoot energy to produce hydrogen en mass. store it in the German gas grid. Use the "hydrogen-ready" gas plants (only they are considered "green" btw).

edhelas 5y ago

Not gonna happen - Law of physics

VaxWithSex 5y ago
All fossil power was once generated by the sun. Law of physics.

s_dev 5y ago

We've all raised our concerns about the opinions of Germans before on these threads. A brilliant scientific nation that seems to have become recently confused. Sort of like the British. Green Gas? Nuclear is bad because it produces waste despite that waste often being the size of a can of coke after a year of service? Buying Russian gas is actually making Russia more democratic and drawing it in to the West? The past week will have a lot of Germans revising many silly opinions they were originally able to afford but not anymore -- so I'm going to wait for that tide of opinion change rather than try to persuade anymore. Being naive sometimes is a luxury some can simply afford while others can't afford it. Climate change is happening and it's not going to wait for Germany, Russia has always been like Russia -- corrupt and unreliable. Amazing that Germany have considered the US a poor partner under Trump but a reliable one with Russia/Putin. France seems have better answers on how to solve energy problems than Germany.

_ph_ 5y ago
France doesn't have any good answer on how to solve energy problems. Yes, they currently have a large amount of nuclear reactors - probably the most nuclear industry nation on the planet. However, most of them are aging and so far they fail to build new plants at a rate to sustain their production long term. They have 1 in construction, much delayed and with huge cost overruns. Even if they build another 10 that only delays the switch, they would have to replace 50 nuclear power plants. Their nuclear future so far depends on prolonging the run times of the existing plants.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  France has 50 plants? They need to go headfirst into modular reactors. Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just displace purchasing solar/wind/storage. But with that big of an extant installed base, with approved/regulated sites and various other infrastructure, they may be the only country that can save money staying nuclear. Of course, being a LFTR stan I would push for mass manufactured LFTRs the size of a couple shipping containers that can be decommissioned on a regular basis. 50 big nuclear plants replaced with about 1000 or more shipping container sized reactors on a replacement schedule. LFTR would reduce waste, and separation of other fission products could be done elsewhere. WHat is the French resistance to LFTR? I know that the US has strange bureaucratic resistances to LFTR built into academic funding and their regulatory agencies as an artifact of the ORNL reactor vs PWR reactor politics from the 1950s. If France just piggybacking on the solid fuel rod reprocessing industry of the US and its same resistance to new reactor designs?

traveler01 5y ago

Ah yes, the country that closed nuclear plants to buy natural gas from Russia is now giving our fancy headlines again.

VaxWithSex 5y ago
If everyone would switch to nuclear, the fuel would be gone in 50 Years.
- fsflover 5y ago
  This is a lot of time to develop nuclear fusion and improve renewables, isn't it?
  - goombacloud 5y ago
    See how well IPv6 adaption worked ;)
- isomel 5y ago
  I believe you're orders of magnitude off.
- traveler01 5y ago
  At the current rate of technology improvements, 50 years isn't very concerning...

hnthrowaway0315 5y ago

They really need to invest more into nuclear energy IMHO.

VaxWithSex 5y ago
They really need to invest more into longterm storage IMHO.

andy_ppp 5y ago

I read that methane can be produced at about 60% efficiency - if that’s true can’t we just accept that and build the required storage and enough extra renewable capacity?

_ph_ 5y ago
That is basically the plan. Build up renewables, and as soon as there is enough capacity, produce "green" gas - either methane or hydrogen (personally I think methane wins, because it is easier to handle). Which also was the point why there was such a large push for gas in recent years. Not only is it cleaner than coal, but facilities built up for gas can be used for green methane and also possible use with hydrogen was considered.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  Okay so it’s just capacity and will to do it? Should be relatively straight forward no? It’s not like we don’t have the technology or does it need too much capacity?
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Right. If the previous government had not throttled down the built-up of renewable sources, we probably would be close to phasing out coal already. The technology is fundamentally there, we just need to build way more wind generators and set up solar cells. Germany installed 10GW of solar peak power in 2012 and 5 GW of wind peak power in 2016. Compare that to a grid load of up to 80 GW. The technology to produce green gas is existing too, but not rolled out widely - which hangs on having enough renewable electricity.

piokoch 5y ago

Yes, yes, we've heard that, let's close all nuclear plants, buy gas from Russia and planet will be saved. Great time for this post, indeed. Energiewende is an extremely expensive project that is simply not going to work, what is clarify to some extent for example here [1]. It is economical absurdity, it is as if someone would try to built Perpetuum mobile, but breaking laws of economy. In fact, anyone can find in the internet sunny days stats for Germany and check by themselves if this has any chance to work on a truly large scale without existing efficient energy storage. In addition Energiewende considers gas as green energy source, what is a joke, and, what is even more ridiculous, "biomas" is also green energy source, no idea how burning wood and corn is not emitting CO2, but, hey, ecologist are not doing something totally nuts for the first time, so not a big surprise. Fighting nuclear energy for last 60 years worked so well for Greenpeace and others that we are in the today's crappy situation, but still nobody is saying, hey guys it seems you were dead wrong about nukes, it seems that's the only clean and practical, CO2 emission free energy source, isn't it? If Germany didn't waste all those trillions of dollars for Energiewende of solar and wind power plants, but built reactors instead, they would have practically CO2-free economy now, but former chancellor, Mr. Gerhard Schröder, would not get a nice job in Gazprom in that case. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06...

VaxWithSex 5y ago
The sun is the biggest reactor in the solar system and does not send an invoice. All fossil power was once energy given by the sun. Gas is only considered green when the generators can be used for hydrogen later. The hydrogen will be produced by electrolyzers using overproduction of renewable energy. Gerhard Schröder is an idiot, we agree.

bedhead 5y ago

Religions are belief systems that cause all sorts of wacky outcomes in the real world because the beliefs are based on the way they wish things were instead of the way things are. If more people understood that this is simply a novel religion, this would at least start making more sense.

sjg1729 5y ago
Is the novel religion you’re referring to the belief in climate change? Not sure I understand your comment

jokoon 5y ago

I wish I could invest in nuclear... Remember that renewables are promoted by the fossil fuel industries, because it gives them more business.

oliwarner 5y ago

Can't read past the paywall but this looks to be unsatisfactory. Generating as much electricity as the total electricity they use is not the same as having renewably generated energy stored and ready to use at all times of day, around the year, and for purposes that would have historically used fossil fuels. If you're burning fossil fuels for heating and transport and even electricity, that's not "100% renewable energy". It requires degassing heating infrastructure and dealing with the massive increase in power demand that causes. As well as making it cheaper. It has to half in price to avoid heating inflation. Electrification of transport will take decades to complete. To reiterate, I'm not saying that Germany is aiming in the wrong direction, it's just hard to grok what they actually mean. Having seen British politicians screw this up for a quick win, I'm not optimistic.

nedpat 5y ago

Nice! From what i remember, India was the first in the UN to state that it will be carbon negative by 2035-2050