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Here's a more accessible link on the same story: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-boosts-renewables-biggest-energy-policy-reform-decades https://ww

Here's a more accessible link on the same story: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-boosts-renewables-biggest-energy-policy-reform-decades https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-boosts-renewabl... > "By 2030, installed onshore wind capacity should reach 115 gigawatts (GW), the government says. Annual capacity additions therefore have to reach 10 GW as of 2025. Solar PV installations will amount to 22 GW per year as of 2026 to achieve a total capacity of 215 GW by the end of the decade. Offshore wind additions are increased as well to reach a minimum of 30 GW per 2030 and 40 GW by 2035, and 70 GW by 2045. While the government wants to incentivise the production and use of biomethane in highly flexible plants by increasing tender volumes, the use of biomass for power production will be superseded by its use in transport and industry." In particular there's an anti-NIMBYism provision in there that makes a lot of sense. This has been a huge problem for rolling out renewables in the USA from California to New York: > "To ensure that these ambitious growth scenarios are not hampered by lengthy planning procedures, local opposition and contradictions with other protected goals, the government establishes the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved." The benefits are obvious: Germany will be able to escape the need to import Russian gas and oil - although the American fracked LNG exporters who hoped to simply seize that market from Russia are doubtless disappointed.

radicalbyte 5y ago
> American fracked LNG exporters who hoped to simply seize that market from Russia are doubtless disappointed. Germany has a huge industry which won't be able to switch away from gas that easily so I'm sure that the LNG suppliers will have a market for the next 20 years.
- adrianN 5y ago
  A much smaller market than expected if Germany manages to reduce demand for gas for electricity and heating.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- lampenrad 5y ago
  In 2021, Germany got 55% of its gas from Russia (the rest from other European countries). Depending on how much overall consumption can be reduced, European suppliers might be able to cover most/all of it.
  - freeflight 5y ago
    European suppliers will also be busy covering all the other increased demand inside from Europe [0], the demand that most people tend to forget when they act like Germany is the only country dependent on Russian energy, and resources, imports. It's also not as easily replacable as "Just go to the other gas supermarket down the street", infrastructure needs to exist and support such supply chains. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-dependence-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-depe...
  - nmehner 5y ago
    There has already been some progress (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-made-progress-reducing-russian-energy-imports-2022-03-25/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-made-progres... ): "Habeck said imports of Russian oil now accounted for 25% of German imports, down from 35% before the invasion, and gas imports have been cut to 40% from 55%. Russian hard coal imports were down to 25% from 50% before the invasion."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- weinzierl 5y ago
  I've read that short and mid term the renewables boost will increase demand for gas in Germany. This is because gas power plants can be ramped up and down very quickly. Coal and nuclear power is not very dynamic. The flexibility is needed to compensate for spikes and especially the variable output of renewables. In addition to that: My rough back of a napkin calculation[1] shows that we'd need almost tanker per day. Is this even realistic at all? [1] 80E6 m3 / 250E3 m3 = 320. Please correct me if I made a mistake here.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    To continue the napkin math and assuming your calculations check out... Lets say the distance is 7000km and the avg. speed is 12 knots. You'd need less than 30 tankers to have a daily delivery of gas.
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    Something to keep in mind: No one has done anything like this at such a scale yet and Germany has formidable resources, not just a lot of money but also a big and capable engineering base. Perhaps it's going to go like some predict and innovation isn't going to be able to solve the issues along the way and everything will effectively run on overpriced gas and coal, but it might as well become a big success story. As a species, we are in pretty dire need of such a success story, so I'm pretty stoked to see this play out. Besides, it's really nice to see Germany do something visionary and daring once in a long while. The Merkel governments have been dire in this regard.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
    They used 142 BCM in 2021. That's 339 million cubic meters per day. The biggest LNG carriers can handle 200,000+ per shipment. That's 1695 per day... there's only 170 ships active per world wide out of the 439 currently operating. I think these numbers are correct but maybe I am wildly off...
- athrowaway3z 5y ago
  Somebody commented that German fertilizer is a large consumer. I doubt it will make sense to turn gas into LNG into fertilizer.
  - namibj 5y ago
    Depends on the plant capacity available for turning the gas into fertilizer before it'd need to be turned into LNG. Those may not exist.
_ph_ 5y ago
If only those LNG exporters could offer enough LNG quickly to replace the current need of Russian gas in Germany.
- klausjensen 5y ago
  Switching to LNG requires special infrastructure (harbours attached to the gas-network) - and there is not nearly enough of that in Germany right now, and it takes a long time to build. So even if Russian gas COULD be replaced by LNG tomorrow, in terms of pure volume, it would still not possible to Germany to consume it. Germany really screwed the pooch on their energy policy for the past 15 years...
  - croes 5y ago
    Others sources have either similar totalitarian governments or human rights violations like russia or damage the environment like transporting the LNG with ships to germany. Germany could have diversified it's suppliers if the Iran deals weren't killed by Trump, but even then not a good solution.
    - klausjensen 5y ago
      Hindsight is 20-20, I know, but Russia was the worst choice there was as supplier. It was not nearly as obvious 15 years ago, as it is today, but all the signs were there. We (I include myself here) were just not listening closely enough to the countries that knew Russia the best: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine. The decision is also amplified by the meaningless end to the German nuclear program.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        German dependency on Russian gas is a lot older than that. Ostpolitik dates back to the ‘60s.
        tmerse 5y ago
thatfrenchguy 5y ago
Wind energy is nice and stuff but the moment there’s no wind you have no electricity, it’s not a good energy source if you want to actually remove gas from your grid.
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  Denmark (~1% of the world population) has been doing quite well with it's 2GW of wind, powered by "modest average wind speeds in the range of 4.9–5.6 m/s measured at 10 m height." With a mean January temp of 1.5 °C (34.7 °F), wind covered 47% of yearly electric in 2019. (71% yesterday). Plans on 84% by 2035. It also has 1GW of solar. They got started early, and it shows. Too bad for heel-dragging Texans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-production https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-pro...
- imtringued 5y ago
  Is this a joke? Throttling gas plants is much easier than throttling coal plants. If the wind blows you consume less gas. With coal you have to turn the wind plant off. Also, fossil fuels appear to be highly unreliable. The moment there’s no gas you have no electricity, it’s not a good energy source.
- atoav 5y ago
  Isn't it a bit naive to assume the planers of these expansions didn't at one point or another had that exact thought themselves? I mean it is certainly not the most far out there idea when it comes to wind power..
  - atoav 5y ago
    As a German electrical engineer that knows the rigour with which the whole electrical industry works here I am confident this will not be an issue in Germany. Cold winters are not a new thing here.
  - kodah 5y ago
    No, because that's exactly what happened in Texas during their winter storm crisis.
londons_explore 5y ago
> In particular there's an anti-NIMBYism provision The best anti-NIMBYism rule is (for example of the building of new houses): "While the number of new dwellings built is below the target X for the region, all privately-funded plans that involve the building of a new house shall be automatically approved and all relevant permits automatically granted without review". Obviously no city state or local government wants any plans to be unconditionally approved. So they'll go to massive lengths to meet the target. Allow the targets to be transferable, so that some really NIMBY place can pay someone else to to do the deed they don't want to do.
- zbrozek 5y ago
  We desperately need property rights in the US if we want to build our way out of the housing crisis.
- pydry 5y ago
  This is how you get 15,000 new 15% profit margin luxury housing units sold to Chinese investors and left empty and 0 new affordable housing units. We just need higher property taxes. This will mean that these store-of-wealth investments eat losses & stop consuming all the good land while city coffers start to fill up with money that can build public housing. If you want lessons on how to solve an urban housing crisis look to 1950s Singapore not the building developers salivating over 15% margins on newbuild luxury apartments whining about NIMBYs getting in their way.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I think the problem is generally legal, not administrative. Development in germany would typically be held up by people suing the developers to stop it from going ahead, so the city or state itself wouldn't be in a position to speed things along in a majority of cases. > the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved. would probably be something like a silver bullet, though, because if it is as strong as it sounds, any judge would basically have to agree to any reasonable planning proposal that was intended to increase renewables capacity.
jsnodlin 5y ago
lobochrome 5y ago
> "To ensure that these ambitious growth scenarios are not hampered by lengthy planning procedures, local opposition and contradictions with other protected goals, the government establishes the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved." Not exactly as clean as it sounds. They merely want to take away the burden of the developer to get comments and approval from people before they proceed with planning. Individuals can still sue and block projects. This is just talk in my opinion. Like when the government declared in 2010 that they want to have 1 million EV on the road in 2020. Or when they decided to shut off nuclear and replace it with renewables and instead built out coal and gas. Or when they decided to phase out coal by 2035…
- freeflight 5y ago
  > Or when they decided to shut off nuclear and replace it with renewables and instead built out coal and gas. The nuclear phase out was signed and ratified in 2002, since then nuclear has mostly replaced with solar and wind [0], while the share of electricity from coal has has actually gone slightly down. Germany's 40%+ renewables are an testament to Germany pioneering the sector [1], one that too often gets belittled with straight up misinformation. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... [1] https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewable-energy https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewabl...
  - TremendousJudge 5y ago
    >while the share of electricity from coal has has actually gone slightly down But the electricity generation in general has gone up since then. While total coal has gone down, gas has gone up, and therefore the total amount of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources has only changed slightly. It's clear on this chart[0]. So actual progress in reducing fossil fuel dependency in the last 20 years has been small (the chart is not properly labeled for this, but it looks like something around 50TWh less than in 2002) -- and that's not even counting non-electric heating. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021-source.png?itok=WF_6jBAP https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

radicalbyte 5y ago

> American fracked LNG exporters who hoped to simply seize that market from Russia are doubtless disappointed. Germany has a huge industry which won't be able to switch away from gas that easily so I'm sure that the LNG suppliers will have a market for the next 20 years.

adrianN 5y ago
A much smaller market than expected if Germany manages to reduce demand for gas for electricity and heating.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lampenrad 5y ago
In 2021, Germany got 55% of its gas from Russia (the rest from other European countries). Depending on how much overall consumption can be reduced, European suppliers might be able to cover most/all of it.
- freeflight 5y ago
  European suppliers will also be busy covering all the other increased demand inside from Europe [0], the demand that most people tend to forget when they act like Germany is the only country dependent on Russian energy, and resources, imports. It's also not as easily replacable as "Just go to the other gas supermarket down the street", infrastructure needs to exist and support such supply chains. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-dependence-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-depe...
- nmehner 5y ago
  There has already been some progress (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-made-progress-reducing-russian-energy-imports-2022-03-25/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-made-progres... ): "Habeck said imports of Russian oil now accounted for 25% of German imports, down from 35% before the invasion, and gas imports have been cut to 40% from 55%. Russian hard coal imports were down to 25% from 50% before the invasion."
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
weinzierl 5y ago
I've read that short and mid term the renewables boost will increase demand for gas in Germany. This is because gas power plants can be ramped up and down very quickly. Coal and nuclear power is not very dynamic. The flexibility is needed to compensate for spikes and especially the variable output of renewables. In addition to that: My rough back of a napkin calculation[1] shows that we'd need almost tanker per day. Is this even realistic at all? [1] 80E6 m3 / 250E3 m3 = 320. Please correct me if I made a mistake here.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  To continue the napkin math and assuming your calculations check out... Lets say the distance is 7000km and the avg. speed is 12 knots. You'd need less than 30 tankers to have a daily delivery of gas.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  Something to keep in mind: No one has done anything like this at such a scale yet and Germany has formidable resources, not just a lot of money but also a big and capable engineering base. Perhaps it's going to go like some predict and innovation isn't going to be able to solve the issues along the way and everything will effectively run on overpriced gas and coal, but it might as well become a big success story. As a species, we are in pretty dire need of such a success story, so I'm pretty stoked to see this play out. Besides, it's really nice to see Germany do something visionary and daring once in a long while. The Merkel governments have been dire in this regard.
- FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
  They used 142 BCM in 2021. That's 339 million cubic meters per day. The biggest LNG carriers can handle 200,000+ per shipment. That's 1695 per day... there's only 170 ships active per world wide out of the 439 currently operating. I think these numbers are correct but maybe I am wildly off...
athrowaway3z 5y ago
Somebody commented that German fertilizer is a large consumer. I doubt it will make sense to turn gas into LNG into fertilizer.
- namibj 5y ago
  Depends on the plant capacity available for turning the gas into fertilizer before it'd need to be turned into LNG. Those may not exist.

_ph_ 5y ago

If only those LNG exporters could offer enough LNG quickly to replace the current need of Russian gas in Germany.

klausjensen 5y ago
Switching to LNG requires special infrastructure (harbours attached to the gas-network) - and there is not nearly enough of that in Germany right now, and it takes a long time to build. So even if Russian gas COULD be replaced by LNG tomorrow, in terms of pure volume, it would still not possible to Germany to consume it. Germany really screwed the pooch on their energy policy for the past 15 years...
- croes 5y ago
  Others sources have either similar totalitarian governments or human rights violations like russia or damage the environment like transporting the LNG with ships to germany. Germany could have diversified it's suppliers if the Iran deals weren't killed by Trump, but even then not a good solution.
  - klausjensen 5y ago
    Hindsight is 20-20, I know, but Russia was the worst choice there was as supplier. It was not nearly as obvious 15 years ago, as it is today, but all the signs were there. We (I include myself here) were just not listening closely enough to the countries that knew Russia the best: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine. The decision is also amplified by the meaningless end to the German nuclear program.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      German dependency on Russian gas is a lot older than that. Ostpolitik dates back to the ‘60s.
      - tmerse 5y ago

thatfrenchguy 5y ago

Wind energy is nice and stuff but the moment there’s no wind you have no electricity, it’s not a good energy source if you want to actually remove gas from your grid.

8bitsrule 5y ago
Denmark (~1% of the world population) has been doing quite well with it's 2GW of wind, powered by "modest average wind speeds in the range of 4.9–5.6 m/s measured at 10 m height." With a mean January temp of 1.5 °C (34.7 °F), wind covered 47% of yearly electric in 2019. (71% yesterday). Plans on 84% by 2035. It also has 1GW of solar. They got started early, and it shows. Too bad for heel-dragging Texans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-production https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-pro...
imtringued 5y ago
Is this a joke? Throttling gas plants is much easier than throttling coal plants. If the wind blows you consume less gas. With coal you have to turn the wind plant off. Also, fossil fuels appear to be highly unreliable. The moment there’s no gas you have no electricity, it’s not a good energy source.
atoav 5y ago
Isn't it a bit naive to assume the planers of these expansions didn't at one point or another had that exact thought themselves? I mean it is certainly not the most far out there idea when it comes to wind power..
- atoav 5y ago
  As a German electrical engineer that knows the rigour with which the whole electrical industry works here I am confident this will not be an issue in Germany. Cold winters are not a new thing here.
- kodah 5y ago
  No, because that's exactly what happened in Texas during their winter storm crisis.

londons_explore 5y ago

> In particular there's an anti-NIMBYism provision The best anti-NIMBYism rule is (for example of the building of new houses): "While the number of new dwellings built is below the target X for the region, all privately-funded plans that involve the building of a new house shall be automatically approved and all relevant permits automatically granted without review". Obviously no city state or local government wants any plans to be unconditionally approved. So they'll go to massive lengths to meet the target. Allow the targets to be transferable, so that some really NIMBY place can pay someone else to to do the deed they don't want to do.

zbrozek 5y ago
We desperately need property rights in the US if we want to build our way out of the housing crisis.
pydry 5y ago
This is how you get 15,000 new 15% profit margin luxury housing units sold to Chinese investors and left empty and 0 new affordable housing units. We just need higher property taxes. This will mean that these store-of-wealth investments eat losses & stop consuming all the good land while city coffers start to fill up with money that can build public housing. If you want lessons on how to solve an urban housing crisis look to 1950s Singapore not the building developers salivating over 15% margins on newbuild luxury apartments whining about NIMBYs getting in their way.
pasabagi 5y ago
I think the problem is generally legal, not administrative. Development in germany would typically be held up by people suing the developers to stop it from going ahead, so the city or state itself wouldn't be in a position to speed things along in a majority of cases. > the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved. would probably be something like a silver bullet, though, because if it is as strong as it sounds, any judge would basically have to agree to any reasonable planning proposal that was intended to increase renewables capacity.

jsnodlin 5y ago

lobochrome 5y ago

> "To ensure that these ambitious growth scenarios are not hampered by lengthy planning procedures, local opposition and contradictions with other protected goals, the government establishes the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved." Not exactly as clean as it sounds. They merely want to take away the burden of the developer to get comments and approval from people before they proceed with planning. Individuals can still sue and block projects. This is just talk in my opinion. Like when the government declared in 2010 that they want to have 1 million EV on the road in 2020. Or when they decided to shut off nuclear and replace it with renewables and instead built out coal and gas. Or when they decided to phase out coal by 2035…

freeflight 5y ago
> Or when they decided to shut off nuclear and replace it with renewables and instead built out coal and gas. The nuclear phase out was signed and ratified in 2002, since then nuclear has mostly replaced with solar and wind [0], while the share of electricity from coal has has actually gone slightly down. Germany's 40%+ renewables are an testament to Germany pioneering the sector [1], one that too often gets belittled with straight up misinformation. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... [1] https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewable-energy https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewabl...
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  >while the share of electricity from coal has has actually gone slightly down But the electricity generation in general has gone up since then. While total coal has gone down, gas has gone up, and therefore the total amount of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources has only changed slightly. It's clear on this chart[0]. So actual progress in reducing fossil fuel dependency in the last 20 years has been small (the chart is not properly labeled for this, but it looks like something around 50TWh less than in 2002) -- and that's not even counting non-electric heating. [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2a-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021-source.png?itok=WF_6jBAP https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...