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"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Ge

"Recently, places as diverse as Texas, California, Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas/Nebraska (SPP), the UK, and Germany have rapidly decarbonized without nuclear." Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. "The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity importing. One study found that the nuclear phase-out caused $12 billion in social costs per year, primarily due to increases in mortality due to exposure to pollution from fossil fuels." --[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany] California's likely to have serious shortages [again] if they shut off the rest of theirs. Plus: "California's electricity rates are among the highest in the United States as a result of the changing energy mix within the state, including aggressive construction of new natural gas power plants." --[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California] I don't know enough to check the rest of the article, but this certainly gives me some doubts as to its accuracy.

pstuart 4y ago
I can understand reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy. disclaimer: I'm pro nuke if we can do it right, a la LFTR/SMRs etc.
- logifail 4y ago
  > reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy Is this statement about climate change, or nuclear safety, or a bit of both? At least for those worrying about safety, isn't this simply the wrong way round? New nuclear plants would have to be constructed to the latest safety standards, older ("paid-for") plants are the ones which were built in an era before them and have grandfathered-in approvals which might not be granted today.
  - pstuart 4y ago
    The reluctance refers to those that are scared of nukes (I am not) or that they've historically been way over budget (understandable). The crazy bit is climate change -- they intentionally moved backwards to more coal.
gregwebs 4y ago
The article on the site about solar is equally bad. Both are full of lots of good information but then have some key misunderstandings. The solar article doesn't acknowledge that installing a solar requires installing a gas peaker plant on the grid as well. [1] Although solar certainly reduces carbon emissions (the gas peaker plants only runs some of the time), the result is that the cost to the grid, rather than being the lowest, could be one of the highest depending on how the math actually works out. Battery can be installed instead of peaker plants, but the prices of raw materials for batteries have increased dramatically recently and it isn't possible for the mining of battery materials to keep up with the future demand. Tesla's car prices are shooting up- even though they are building huge battery factories to drive down price- it's not enough- they are now exploring mining Lithium, having already bought mining rights for it in Nevada. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w22454.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w224... Does anyone have a more up to date citation?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Gas peaker plants are needed for nuclear just as much. Generally the article is looking at the most favourable conditions for the technology, e.g. only considering OCC and not interest cost for building and decommissioning of nuclear plants.
  - LilBytes 4y ago
    You're going to have to source this because there's been absolutely no need for gas plants in the two cities I've lived in that were both powdered by nuclear in Europe.
    - croes 4y ago
      Energy networks are not city-specific but are cross-national. Or are these cities self-sufficient and not connected to the rest of the grid?
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      It's right there in the article, but it seems many here commenting did not even read it: Many US nuclear plants are incapable of cycling power output up or down without changes to procedures or equipment.
neilwilson 4y ago
"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.
- stkdump 4y ago
  Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. France benefits from that, because in recent years they had to shut down their nuclear plants during heatwaves, when the rivers they use to cool them got too warm. I guess that will only get more frequent in the future.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. Very difficult to interpret that fact when dealing with renewable-heavy grids. Germany probably doesn't have a lot of control over when the energy is being generated - so it is entirely possible that they are exporting but still reliant on electricity imports - if power is being produced when it is not needed.
  - varajelle 4y ago
    This is a funny argument against nuclear. Some nuclear reactor have to shut down for a few days to avoid heating the rivers is a big problem. But the solar panel being down more than half the time (night or clouds) and the wind turbine also being down depending on the wind in uncontrollable ways is Ok.
    - jillesvangurp 4y ago
      Shutting down and restarting nuclear plants is super expensive and that actually adds to their cost problem. Predictable intermittencies of solar and wind are a given and mainly a challenge for other energy sources on the grid. For example, a lot of gas plants originally intended for base load are now pushed into the role of peaker plants. When there is cheap solar and wind power available, it's cheaper to shut down gas production. Of course that vastly reduces overall profitability of these gas plants. Any time they don't produce, they still cost money. Nuclear peaker plants are not a thing. It's just not practical.
stkdump 4y ago
So, by how much did Germany increase its carbon output during the nuclear shutdown? Hint: it didn't. It went from 14.8 to 7.7 tons/capita. You can always argue that it could have decreased faster by keeping nuclear plants online. But please don't believe the headlines of opinion makers without looking at the actual data.
- varajelle 4y ago
  In the same period, France went from 10 to 4.2 t/capita (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~F... )
  - stkdump 4y ago
    So?
  - mixermachine 4y ago
    And they have a massive problem with their old plants because many are about to be decommissioned. They need to build many new ones while the state run nuclear operator is basically bankrupt. https://theecologist.org/2017/mar/16/edf-facing-bankruptcy-decommissioning-time-frances-ageing-nuclear-fleet-nears https://theecologist.org/2017/mar/16/edf-facing-bankruptcy-d...
  - freemint 4y ago
    Germany has a lot of heavy industry.
    - natmaka 4y ago
      Exactly, France (sadly) lost most of its industry since the 1980's, and it shows: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart&region=Europe&country=DEU~FRA~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...
jillesvangurp 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal. And even there you might argue Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas, so that looks like it might actually accelerate decarbonization and short term raise the ambition levels even more. The thing that grew absolutely massively in the same period was wind and solar. Vastly more capacity of the latter was added than ever existed in nuclear form. It now dwarfs everything else in the German market. All without blackouts BTW.
- andromeduck 4y ago
  It only cost 40k lives and millions of livelihoods. No big deal.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  > Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas This is not the impression I have gotten from recent events. The reason Germany hasn’t experienced blackouts is because they are funding the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine in exchange for energy. Germany has advocated for the continued purchase of Russian gas and has pushed back against the EU admitting Ukraine to the union. It’s obvious that the decarbonization had not succeeded in solving their need for base load power, in fact you could argue that their denuclearization is the very reason Russia has so much leverage in the situation. So while they may be saving the planet, this is a great example of a government missing the forest for the trees.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to be a lot more expensive. Hence hundreds of billions to cut their dependence on the stuff entirely. Regarding nuclear in Germany, I think you are a bit short on the facts. Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor. What little they had is now nearly gone. During the same time, they cut coal generation from 47% to about 25%. Gas grew a bit during that time but is still smaller than their remaining coal generation and even the amount of coal capacity they got rid off. Coal is going to be gone by 2030 according to the latest plans. Indeed cheap Russian gas was part of this plan until recently. But those plans are shifting rapidly now for obvious reasons.
drak0n1c 4y ago
New York has also built 3 new gas power plants to make up for Cuomo's premature closing of the Indian Point nuclear plant. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-power-plant-closing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-pow... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-nypa-energy-indianpoint/nypa-says-entergy-indian-point-power-contract-to-end-in-2013-idUSBRE88B1C020120912 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-nypa-energy-ind...
arinlen 4y ago
> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. Wikipedia contradicts your claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany From wikipeda's article, Germany has been constantly shutting down it's carbon-based energy sources for the past half decade, with dropping to a fraction of its contribution in the past six or seven years alone. Germany currently relies primarily on wind, and wind+solar contribute more than all types of coal.
- shakow 4y ago
  I don't know what Wiki says, but this here[0] says that right now, Germany is both producing one of the dirtiest electricity in Europe, all while still importing over 1GW. [0] https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map
  - lispm 4y ago
    Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh in 2020. Of that 52.5 TWh were exports and 33.6 TWh were imports. What you may have missed is: Germany is in the middle of Europe surrounded with a bunch of neighbor countries. Most of them are in the European Union which worked for years on building a joint energy market. Thus various electricity exports and imports are NORMAL. Note also that electricity may travel through more than one country in Europe. Germany imports huge amounts of energy from other countries, given that it doesn't have much own resources of Gas, Oil, Uranium - it has some coal, though. Coal, too is imported. Exchanging electricity with other countries will increase massively. In my region there is now a 1 GW power line to Norway to exchange electricity both ways. Another example: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium are investing 135 Billion Euros in a joint offshore wind project. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-denmark-netherlands-and-belgium-sign-e135-billion-offshore-wind-pact/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-denmark...
    - shakow 4y ago
      > Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh It does not mean anything if they can't decide when they export it. Waht matters though, is that most of the time their electricity has an awful carbon footprint w.r.t what the wealthiest country in Europe should afford. All the rest is but mental gymnastics to try to justify that.
jhgb 4y ago
> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. No, they did not -- look at the fourth chart in https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... . There's no "increasing coal". The recent changes in nuclear and coal generation correlate rather than anti-correlate. You'd need them to anti-correlate for the thing that you're claiming to be true.
- nickelpro 4y ago
  Coal and other carbon sources would have been able to dive much more sharply if the nuclear capacity had remained online or been replaced appropriately. By taking down nuclear capacity, the Germans _kept_ coal and other non-renewables online and prevented them from being replaced by rising renewable sources. More important to the discussion, note the sharp rise in coal when there is a renewable availability dip. This need to burn coal and gas when renewables have less-than-perfect availability is the conundrum for the Germans.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    > Coal and other carbon sources would have been able to dive much more sharply if the nuclear capacity had remained online or been replaced appropriately. While this is true, the claim that carbon emissions could have decreased even more than they actually decreased is very different from a claim that they increased (as opposed to decreased). > More important to the discussion, note the sharp rise in coal when there is a renewable availability dip Annual fluctuations are to be expected. They don't change the long-term trend. In fact you can see on the charts that the fluctuation was comparable to one year of recent trend. Additionally, this rise happened together with the abatement of the pandemic recession effect which impacts consumption of electricity. Without the anomalous electricity consumption dip in 2020 (which you can see clearly in the third chart), the rise in coal in 2021 vs. 2020 would have been about halved.
_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear Germany has most definitely not recarbonized. Germany has consistently reduced CO2 emission over the last few years, it would have been quicker if Germany had kept nuclear online no question, but that's really how impressive renewables have become. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption-co2-emissions?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...
- cschwarm 4y ago
  > it would have been quicker if Germany had kept nuclear online no question This is a misconception. Germany invested in renewables because we wanted to get rid of nuclear, not to save the climate. Germany has a population of about 80 million. That's a sufficiently large sample, so one cannot expect Germans to be psychologically or morally different to any other large population in the world. And none of those countries has managed to do something about the climate in any meaningful sense. Consequently, neither would have Germany. Without a nuclear phase out, there would have been almost no investments in wind & solar from Germany. Consequently, neither wind nor solar would look as impressive as they do now because today's prices would have been reached only in a decade or so. The level of coal power would have been mostly unaffected.
natmaka 4y ago
Germany: less and less coal https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-coal?tab=chart&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-coal?tab=chart... "Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption": 13.7% in 2013 then many nuclear reactors shut down, and 19.3% in 2019 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_ind_ured/default/table?lang=fr https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_ind_ured/...
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity-power-sector-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity... This graphs shows the carbon intensity of their electricity dropping for years. There's a small uptick in the estimated number for the most recent year, but even with that it's a massive drop, so where is the recarbonization you mention?
- superlopuh 4y ago
  That site doesn't mention whether it's the intensity of electricity consumed or produced, when Germany imports electricity it tends to be from countries with higher carbon-intensity production[0] [0]: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
  - legulere 4y ago
    But Germany is a net-electricity-exporter https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Infografiken/stromaustausch-mit-nachbarlaendern.html https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Infografiken/stromaustausch...
gumby 4y ago
> “The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with … and electricity importing.” Germany increased imports of electricity from France and Czech that is generated by nukes. This is similar to my purchase of “green power” in Palo Alto which really just changes the allocation of how much hydro generated electricity California imports. Neither case affects domestic production.

pstuart 4y ago

I can understand reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy. disclaimer: I'm pro nuke if we can do it right, a la LFTR/SMRs etc.

logifail 4y ago
> reluctance to build more nukes, but Germany shutting down nukes that were already paid for and working seems crazy Is this statement about climate change, or nuclear safety, or a bit of both? At least for those worrying about safety, isn't this simply the wrong way round? New nuclear plants would have to be constructed to the latest safety standards, older ("paid-for") plants are the ones which were built in an era before them and have grandfathered-in approvals which might not be granted today.
- pstuart 4y ago
  The reluctance refers to those that are scared of nukes (I am not) or that they've historically been way over budget (understandable). The crazy bit is climate change -- they intentionally moved backwards to more coal.

gregwebs 4y ago

The article on the site about solar is equally bad. Both are full of lots of good information but then have some key misunderstandings. The solar article doesn't acknowledge that installing a solar requires installing a gas peaker plant on the grid as well. [1] Although solar certainly reduces carbon emissions (the gas peaker plants only runs some of the time), the result is that the cost to the grid, rather than being the lowest, could be one of the highest depending on how the math actually works out. Battery can be installed instead of peaker plants, but the prices of raw materials for batteries have increased dramatically recently and it isn't possible for the mining of battery materials to keep up with the future demand. Tesla's car prices are shooting up- even though they are building huge battery factories to drive down price- it's not enough- they are now exploring mining Lithium, having already bought mining rights for it in Nevada. [1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w22454.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22454/w224... Does anyone have a more up to date citation?

cycomanic 4y ago
Gas peaker plants are needed for nuclear just as much. Generally the article is looking at the most favourable conditions for the technology, e.g. only considering OCC and not interest cost for building and decommissioning of nuclear plants.
- LilBytes 4y ago
  You're going to have to source this because there's been absolutely no need for gas plants in the two cities I've lived in that were both powdered by nuclear in Europe.
  - croes 4y ago
    Energy networks are not city-specific but are cross-national. Or are these cities self-sufficient and not connected to the rest of the grid?
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    It's right there in the article, but it seems many here commenting did not even read it: Many US nuclear plants are incapable of cycling power output up or down without changes to procedures or equipment.

neilwilson 4y ago

"Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear" Germany outsourced their nuclear to France. Remember that Germany and France are no longer countries, but states in the Eurozone within the wider European Union. It's the same effect as, say, New Mexico exporting nuclear power to California and California then calling itself 'nuclear free'.

stkdump 4y ago
Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. France benefits from that, because in recent years they had to shut down their nuclear plants during heatwaves, when the rivers they use to cool them got too warm. I guess that will only get more frequent in the future.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > Germany is still a net exporter of electricity. Very difficult to interpret that fact when dealing with renewable-heavy grids. Germany probably doesn't have a lot of control over when the energy is being generated - so it is entirely possible that they are exporting but still reliant on electricity imports - if power is being produced when it is not needed.
- varajelle 4y ago
  This is a funny argument against nuclear. Some nuclear reactor have to shut down for a few days to avoid heating the rivers is a big problem. But the solar panel being down more than half the time (night or clouds) and the wind turbine also being down depending on the wind in uncontrollable ways is Ok.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Shutting down and restarting nuclear plants is super expensive and that actually adds to their cost problem. Predictable intermittencies of solar and wind are a given and mainly a challenge for other energy sources on the grid. For example, a lot of gas plants originally intended for base load are now pushed into the role of peaker plants. When there is cheap solar and wind power available, it's cheaper to shut down gas production. Of course that vastly reduces overall profitability of these gas plants. Any time they don't produce, they still cost money. Nuclear peaker plants are not a thing. It's just not practical.

stkdump 4y ago

So, by how much did Germany increase its carbon output during the nuclear shutdown? Hint: it didn't. It went from 14.8 to 7.7 tons/capita. You can always argue that it could have decreased faster by keeping nuclear plants online. But please don't believe the headlines of opinion makers without looking at the actual data.

varajelle 4y ago
In the same period, France went from 10 to 4.2 t/capita (Source: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/germany?country=DEU~F... )
- stkdump 4y ago
  So?
- mixermachine 4y ago
  And they have a massive problem with their old plants because many are about to be decommissioned. They need to build many new ones while the state run nuclear operator is basically bankrupt. https://theecologist.org/2017/mar/16/edf-facing-bankruptcy-decommissioning-time-frances-ageing-nuclear-fleet-nears https://theecologist.org/2017/mar/16/edf-facing-bankruptcy-d...
- freemint 4y ago
  Germany has a lot of heavy industry.
  - natmaka 4y ago
    Exactly, France (sadly) lost most of its industry since the 1980's, and it shows: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart&region=Europe&country=DEU~FRA~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...

jillesvangurp 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease. Coal has been in a slow but steady decline in Germany (mainly due to cost); which is on track to decline all the way to 0 as Germany is committing to getting rid of coal based production completely by 2035 or so. Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal. And even there you might argue Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas, so that looks like it might actually accelerate decarbonization and short term raise the ambition levels even more. The thing that grew absolutely massively in the same period was wind and solar. Vastly more capacity of the latter was added than ever existed in nuclear form. It now dwarfs everything else in the German market. All without blackouts BTW.

andromeduck 4y ago
It only cost 40k lives and millions of livelihoods. No big deal.
oceanplexian 4y ago
> Recent events in the Ukraine are cutting off cheap Russian supply of both coal and gas This is not the impression I have gotten from recent events. The reason Germany hasn’t experienced blackouts is because they are funding the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine in exchange for energy. Germany has advocated for the continued purchase of Russian gas and has pushed back against the EU admitting Ukraine to the union. It’s obvious that the decarbonization had not succeeded in solving their need for base load power, in fact you could argue that their denuclearization is the very reason Russia has so much leverage in the situation. So while they may be saving the planet, this is a great example of a government missing the forest for the trees.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Germany can't wave a magic wand and switch off Russian imports overnight. But they did just commit a few hundred billion to accelerate their plans to get rid of coal and gas based generation. That's a direct consequence of the Ukrainian situation. Like the US, Germany was overly depending on cheap gas until recently. Now that it has to import the gas in liquid form from the US (and a few other places), it's going to be a lot more expensive. Hence hundreds of billions to cut their dependence on the stuff entirely. Regarding nuclear in Germany, I think you are a bit short on the facts. Nuclear in Germany was always pretty minor. What little they had is now nearly gone. During the same time, they cut coal generation from 47% to about 25%. Gas grew a bit during that time but is still smaller than their remaining coal generation and even the amount of coal capacity they got rid off. Coal is going to be gone by 2030 according to the latest plans. Indeed cheap Russian gas was part of this plan until recently. But those plans are shifting rapidly now for obvious reasons.

drak0n1c 4y ago

New York has also built 3 new gas power plants to make up for Cuomo's premature closing of the Indian Point nuclear plant. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-power-plant-closing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/nyregion/indian-point-pow... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-nypa-energy-indianpoint/nypa-says-entergy-indian-point-power-contract-to-end-in-2013-idUSBRE88B1C020120912 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-utilities-nypa-energy-ind...

arinlen 4y ago

> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. Wikipedia contradicts your claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany From wikipeda's article, Germany has been constantly shutting down it's carbon-based energy sources for the past half decade, with dropping to a fraction of its contribution in the past six or seven years alone. Germany currently relies primarily on wind, and wind+solar contribute more than all types of coal.

shakow 4y ago
I don't know what Wiki says, but this here[0] says that right now, Germany is both producing one of the dirtiest electricity in Europe, all while still importing over 1GW. [0] https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map
- lispm 4y ago
  Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh in 2020. Of that 52.5 TWh were exports and 33.6 TWh were imports. What you may have missed is: Germany is in the middle of Europe surrounded with a bunch of neighbor countries. Most of them are in the European Union which worked for years on building a joint energy market. Thus various electricity exports and imports are NORMAL. Note also that electricity may travel through more than one country in Europe. Germany imports huge amounts of energy from other countries, given that it doesn't have much own resources of Gas, Oil, Uranium - it has some coal, though. Coal, too is imported. Exchanging electricity with other countries will increase massively. In my region there is now a 1 GW power line to Norway to exchange electricity both ways. Another example: Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium are investing 135 Billion Euros in a joint offshore wind project. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-denmark-netherlands-and-belgium-sign-e135-billion-offshore-wind-pact/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-denmark...
  - shakow 4y ago
    > Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh It does not mean anything if they can't decide when they export it. Waht matters though, is that most of the time their electricity has an awful carbon footprint w.r.t what the wealthiest country in Europe should afford. All the rest is but mental gymnastics to try to justify that.

jhgb 4y ago

> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear [increasing coal and imported electricity to pick up the slack]. No, they did not -- look at the fourth chart in https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... . There's no "increasing coal". The recent changes in nuclear and coal generation correlate rather than anti-correlate. You'd need them to anti-correlate for the thing that you're claiming to be true.

nickelpro 4y ago
Coal and other carbon sources would have been able to dive much more sharply if the nuclear capacity had remained online or been replaced appropriately. By taking down nuclear capacity, the Germans _kept_ coal and other non-renewables online and prevented them from being replaced by rising renewable sources. More important to the discussion, note the sharp rise in coal when there is a renewable availability dip. This need to burn coal and gas when renewables have less-than-perfect availability is the conundrum for the Germans.
- jhgb 4y ago
  > Coal and other carbon sources would have been able to dive much more sharply if the nuclear capacity had remained online or been replaced appropriately. While this is true, the claim that carbon emissions could have decreased even more than they actually decreased is very different from a claim that they increased (as opposed to decreased). > More important to the discussion, note the sharp rise in coal when there is a renewable availability dip Annual fluctuations are to be expected. They don't change the long-term trend. In fact you can see on the charts that the fluctuation was comparable to one year of recent trend. Additionally, this rise happened together with the abatement of the pandemic recession effect which impacts consumption of electricity. Without the anomalous electricity consumption dip in 2020 (which you can see clearly in the third chart), the rise in coal in 2021 vs. 2020 would have been about halved.

_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago

> Uh...Germany's actually recarbonized by shutting down their nuclear Germany has most definitely not recarbonized. Germany has consistently reduced CO2 emission over the last few years, it would have been quicker if Germany had kept nuclear online no question, but that's really how impressive renewables have become. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption-co2-emissions?country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...

cschwarm 4y ago
> it would have been quicker if Germany had kept nuclear online no question This is a misconception. Germany invested in renewables because we wanted to get rid of nuclear, not to save the climate. Germany has a population of about 80 million. That's a sufficiently large sample, so one cannot expect Germans to be psychologically or morally different to any other large population in the world. And none of those countries has managed to do something about the climate in any meaningful sense. Consequently, neither would have Germany. Without a nuclear phase out, there would have been almost no investments in wind & solar from Germany. Consequently, neither wind nor solar would look as impressive as they do now because today's prices would have been reached only in a decade or so. The level of coal power would have been mostly unaffected.

natmaka 4y ago

Germany: less and less coal https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-coal?tab=chart&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-coal?tab=chart... "Share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption": 13.7% in 2013 then many nuclear reactors shut down, and 19.3% in 2019 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_ind_ured/default/table?lang=fr https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/nrg_ind_ured/...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity-power-sector-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity... This graphs shows the carbon intensity of their electricity dropping for years. There's a small uptick in the estimated number for the most recent year, but even with that it's a massive drop, so where is the recarbonization you mention?

superlopuh 4y ago
That site doesn't mention whether it's the intensity of electricity consumed or produced, when Germany imports electricity it tends to be from countries with higher carbon-intensity production[0] [0]: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
- legulere 4y ago
  But Germany is a net-electricity-exporter https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Infografiken/stromaustausch-mit-nachbarlaendern.html https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Infografiken/stromaustausch...

gumby 4y ago

> “The nuclear electricity production lost in Germany's phase-out was primarily replaced with … and electricity importing.” Germany increased imports of electricity from France and Czech that is generated by nukes. This is similar to my purchase of “green power” in Palo Alto which really just changes the allocation of how much hydro generated electricity California imports. Neither case affects domestic production.