5 ms·
Like a lot of articles about power or energy as related to 'green' or renewables, this article is about electricity and not total power. Only a fraction of ene
by zhte415 5y ago
Like a lot of articles about power or energy as related to 'green' or renewables, this article is about electricity and not total power. Only a fraction of energy consumption is from electricity.
From [1], total energy consumption in Germany in 2021 was 3364 TWh. Total electricity consumption was 581 TWh. That's quite a difference. Electricity at around 20-30% of total energy consumption is in the ball park for developed/industrial economies.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany
- chess_buster 5y agoThat's why Germany is planning to do Sektorenkopplung. Don't know the english word. Basically everything is switched over to electric. Transportation, Heating, …
- dangerlibrary 5y agoI could be wrong, but I thought the point of the GP comment was that there are many industrial processes like smelting that don't have good electric replacements. For example, it's nigh-impossible to maintain the temperatures required to run a steel plant with no combustion and only resistive heating elements.
- adrianN 5y agoThere are steelmaking processes using hydrogen for reducing the ore and arc furnaces for heat. They are currently a bit more expensive than using coke.
- _ph_ 5y agoFor those, one would use H2 or methane created with the use of electricity.
- lazide 5y agoArc blast furnaces are a thing - just more expensive. The electrode (typically graphite) is consumed, so technically not zero carbon, but the gas could be captured.
- scythe 5y agoOne major category of such processes is calcination, both for cement (CaCO3 >> CaO) and alumina (Al(OH)3 >> Al2O3). This can be done with concentrated solar heating: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/gc/c7gc00585g https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/gc/c7gc0058... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X18307874 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X1... But building enough plants to actually do this at scale could take a while. Supposedly there was an anode developed for electrolytic iron reduction: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12134 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12134 but there have been problems with scaling it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349905 Between calcination, smelting and heating, you've addressed a pretty big chunk of fuel-burning processes. The question is whether we can get these kinds of technologies online in time without Manhattan-Project levels of government support, since that does not seem to be forthcoming.
- namibj 5y agoCalcination can also use low-duty-cycle electric kilns that soak up spare solar panel electricity (from overprovisioning), at least once you have 2-3 days of storage to level solar fluctuations and day/night (big, cheap ovens take a while to heat up). In general, they are quite amenable to using electrically heated air in place of methane/air combustion exhaust.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThey all have good replacements, but if their competitor is allowed to pollute without paying for externalities, they'll struggle in the market.
- hef19898 5y agoThe EU had, as pointless as it was, anti dumping tariffs on solar modules. Such tariffs can be used to protect domestic non-poluters against their foreign competition.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThey've been talking about exactly that for a while but recent events seen to have nudged it along: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/3/15/eu-countries-back-plan-for-world-first-carbon-border-tariff https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/3/15/eu-countries-ba...
- lkbm 5y agoLooks like the translation is "sector coupling" or "integrated energy", but I think the real key in translating this is that we typically use a different framing in English. German "Sektorenkopplung": We're explicitly unifying all sectors to a single source of energy, and it's implicit that this source is electricity. English "electrification": We're explicitly switching sectors to electricity, and it's implicit that this will ultimately tie every sector to a single source of energy. Disclaimer: I don't speak German.
- NortySpock 5y agoThe English-language podcasts I listen to have dubbed it the "electrify everything" movement.
- chess_buster 5y agoTo be honest, English most often sounds way cooler than German.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lkbm 5y agoI've just assumed Germany is working towards electrification for heating. From a cursory search, this appears to be both de-facto the case[0] and an official policy goal[1]. I agree this should be explicitly mentioned when talking about renewable electricity generation targets, but the good news is that it is being addressed. (I mostly looked at heating, but I'm sure industry is also a huge portion. Presumably that's also being worked on.) [0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/heat-make-german-buildings-nearly-climate-neutral https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/heat-make-german-buildi... [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-launch-emergency-programme-huge-gigantic-2030-emissions-target-task https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-launch-emergenc...
- synotna 5y agoI dunno about de-facto, my anecdata is my heating is in the process switching from L-Gas to H-Gas, have not heard any mention of replacing gas in the near future for existing properties Wonder what the stats are for new builds being with gas heating vs without Am not optimistic about German electricity handling the switching of heating and transport (cars) on top of existing usage+growth as long as we're antinuke (:
- bally0241 5y agoYeah, its pretty unrealistic to imagine any zero-Carbon approach which excludes nuclear. But the greens would rather cover their eye/hears about that, and imagine that it can all be done with wind and solar (in northern europe of all places).
- adrianN 5y agoHow does nuclear help with heating homes? The last time I checked we put nuclear plants far away from people, not use them for district heating.
- bally0241 5y agoEver hear of electric heating? How on earth would you expect solar or wind to be used for heating. It's far from the cheapest option currently, but you're not getting rid of fossil fuels without electric heat.
- Gwypaas 5y agoHow much of that 3364 TWh is lost fighting Carnot's theorem and similarly futile endeavors?
- sorenbs 5y agoThe year Germany reaches ~100% renewable energy for electricity, will also be the year they install the most renewable capacity in history. It is very unlikely that the year after will see 0 renewable capacity installed. Instead, prices will start to fall steadily, dramatically accelerating the electrification of remaining sectors. Remember that both wind and solar follow very predictably cost-reduction curves. Starting a few years before 2030, electricity consumers will start to see reduced energy bills because of this.
- riku_iki 5y agoturbines and solar panels will need to be replaced after 20 years of use..