10 ms·

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

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.
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    Germany could have cancelled their nuclear shutdown process. But saving face is more important than Ukrainian lives.
    - jhgb 4y ago
      As I pointed out above, this would not have changed anything with respect to the need to import gas from Russia. Nuclear generation is not a substitute for gas imports. Even worse, they can't "cancel their nuclear shutdown process" even if they wanted. First of all, the shutdown deadline had been firmly set in law twenty years ago, so it would require a major legislative effort to make another law. Second, even if they somehow managed to instantly change the law, the shutdown was "baked into" the operation and maintenance schedule for the nuclear plants. They were simply not expecting to have to run them beyond early 2020-ish so a lot of money was almost certainly saved by delaying maintenance. Hence, if they suddenly changed their minds about shutting the plants down, they'd almost certainly have to invest massive amounts of money to fix them first.
      - 4y ago
- croes 4y ago
  Gas has more use cases than just electricity. These can't easily be replaced by nuclear power.
  - dsnr 4y ago
    Actually, gas heating can _easily_ be replaced with heat pumps assuming cheap electricity is provided.
    - cschwarm 4y ago
      You can't convert about 40 million households [1] in a year or two. Also, in the German climate and with its many 'old' buildings, merely switching the heat source won't do. One also needs additional isolation, and new radiators. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-millio...
      - dsnr 4y ago
        > You can't convert about 40 million households [1] in a year or two. Who's talking about a year or two? Germany has been pushing for russian gas since the 90's, against all logic.
        vrfvr 4y ago
        > in fact you could argue that their denuclearization is the very reason Russia has so much leverage in the situation If we had more nuclear power, this wouldn't change much, if anything
        dsnr 4y ago
        I think you replied to the wrong person.
        dirkt 4y ago
        The logic was "if we depend on each other, Russia isn't going to pull crazy stuff". Which works with rational people (and after Gorbachev and the German reunion, the perception was that Russia is rational), but not with Putin. And you may have noticed that Russia is not cutting off delivery of Russian gas to Germany. Which they would if the damage was unilateral. Also, electrical heating is one of most wasteful and damaging ways to do heating, and Germany has been moving away from electrical heating for this reason for decades now.
- jhgb 4y ago
  You're confusing German gas consumption and German electricity consumption. It couldn't escape my attention that many people especially from the US make this fatal mistake (presumably because of the prevalence of natural gas electricity generation in the US - almost 40% in the US, compared to ~15% in Germany). In Germany, the vast majority of gas is being used for heating or for industrial purposes (chemistry etc.). This is not (yet) substitutable by other electricity sources. Even if the denuclearization hadn't taken place, they'd still be dependent on Russian gas for at least a significant part of their gas supply. They can always substitute basically any gas shortfalls in the electricity sector simply by increasing coal generation, since there's a lot of unused capacity now that renewables leaped massively, and even replacing all the gas currently being used for electricity generation (because there's so little of it!) with coal would not even reach the levels of coal generation that Germany had as recently as just five years ago, so the coal plants can simply somewhat increase their output for a while. What Germans currently don't have is any way to not freeze to death and keep the industry running without Russian gas.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    The other aspect of the Ukraine war used for advocating for nuclear, which the nuclear proponents like to omit is that 25% of European uranium comes from Russia, so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas. It's simply dishonest to use the current situation as an argument for nuclear. If anything it shows that we should have invested into renewables much more strongly, but nuclear proponents were strongly arguing against it because it would have made nuclear even less financially viable.
    - stingraycharles 4y ago
      > so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas I’d argue that it’s not about % coming from Russia that reflects dependence, it’s how easy you could switch to another supplier. How difficult would it be to find a different provider for that Uranium?
      - cycomanic 4y ago
- natmaka 4y ago
  Nuclear isn't better on this account: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utilities-push-white-house-not-sanction-russian-uranium-2022-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti... This is even true for France, as most of its uranium comes from Kazakhstan.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    Kazakhstan is not Russia, and in fact they're rather alarmed by recent Russian sabre-rattlijg about reclaiming land in northern KZ to protect Russian speakers etc (heard this one before?). The current leadership is very much indebted to Putin though for saving them during a recent near-revolution, so they're walking a tightrope.
    - drunkpotato 4y ago
      I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia had encouraged the very unrest that made them worried and indebted. Not because Putin is a Bond villain super genius but just because encouraging chaos and unrest and then playing all sides of a conflict is a standard technique of Russian foreign relations. Edit: and also used in Russian domestic affairs, didn’t mean to leave that out!
    - natmaka 4y ago
      Indebted, indeed... If you really think Kazakhstan can disobey to Russia then let's agree on not living on the same planet.
- anovikov 4y ago
  But now Germany is committed to stopping Russian coal imports in 3 months and oil, by the year's end, and a (less format and obligatory) statement of intent to quit Russian gas too, in the next two years.
ulfw 4y ago
Germany has one of the highest electricity costs on the planet. That leads to reduction of use (as people just can't afford it) and this is before the Russian corrupt cheap gas deals. Who knows what it'll look like with higher gas and oil prices.
- croes 4y ago
  That would be a strange corruption that causes cheap gas
  - dsnr 4y ago
    So you really can’t see how a corrupt government can hinder the development of alternative energy sources in favor of dirty deals from which they profit themselves?
  - barrenko 4y ago
    It is corruption 101.
- vrfvr 4y ago
  > That leads to reduction of use (as people just can't afford it) I consider this a good thing. Wasting energy ain't good, especially when it isn't completely climate neutral
  - sputr 4y ago
    View your comment from the POV of the majority of the population, who aren't rich IT sector workers. There's energy poverty in Germany. A lot of it. You don't even have to go to any “3rd world” areas of the world to see it. Cheap energy is CRITICAL for the elimination of poverty and suffering. I know that single-mindedly obsessing about the single goal of climate change is currently popular, but please, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
- legulere 4y ago
  Only for household consumers, for instance because there's a special tax on household electricity to get people to use less electricity: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromsteuergesetz_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromsteuergesetz_(Deutschland... For none-household consumers it's the same as the EU average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics#Electricity_prices_for_non-household_consumers https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... At the same time Germany has one of the most reliable electricity nets with less outages than other countries.
emteycz 4y ago
Germany doesn't have blackouts only thanks to Czech and French nuclear energy ;-)
- brazzy 4y ago
  The other way round, actually. France recently had massive problems because they had to switch off multiple nuclear plants for unexpected maintenance issues, and bought lots of power from Germany
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    1 event does not make a rule. French nuclear reactors were turned off for maintenance, yes, but over the past 30 years, it is clearly Germany depending on French power
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      That's kinda the point of an interconnected electricity grid, it allows you to import the cheapest energy available. I don't get the argument here. Sometimes it's renewable, sometimes it's gas, sometimes it's coal, sometimes it's hydro, sometimes it's nuclear...?
      - emteycz 4y ago
        The argument here is that a country that keeps talking about green energy, ecology and renewables for decades is now using much less ecological methods of power generation than nuclear, and they keep badmouthing nuclear too.
        cinntaile 4y ago
        Germany abandoning nuclear has been decades in the making, it does not come as a surprise. If we look at the whole picture without focusing on one particular energy source, then we can see that they have reduced their CO2 emissions over the years. Not by much, but it's expected to improve when they close down their coal plants.
Emma_Goldman 4y ago
> "Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease" > "Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal" This is dishonest at two levels. First, nuclear power fell and, at the same time, renewables and gas sharply rose in Germany's energy mix. Power is fungible. It is not as if power generated by renewables substitutes for nuclear, but power generated by gas doesn't. Germany had to add up it's energy inputs to meet 100% of its needs, and it used both sources to do so. Second, everyone in Germany knew they were supposed to get rid of coal by 2030. That's the international deadline for coal in advanced economies. But the national phase-out law, until very recently, was eliminating coal at a far slower pace - aiming towards a terminal date of 2038. One reason why was the decline of nuclear.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Renewables rose by far more than gas did. The overall market also grew. If you take coal and gas together and look at overall fossil based generation, it declined and continues to decline. The unspoken implication of nuclear proponents is that Germany started putting out more CO2 because they shut down nuclear. The reality is that there was a continuous decline in fossil fuel related emissions related to electricity production. So, who is being "dishonest" here? Gas "sharply" rose to much less than the coal and nuclear reductions combined. Renewables are on track to grow to about an order of magnitude more than the nuclear capacity Germany ever had. New gas plants might still happen as that is part of their plan to decommission coal. Or at least it was until a few months ago. But it will probably never grow to close to the level of coal production Germany had 12 years ago when it started shutting down nuclear plants. The decision to get rid of coal by 2030 is fairly recent. There are no international deadlines other than what was agreed at Cop 26, which thanks to China and India avoids any big explicit commitments. However, there is a lot of peer pressure especially in Europe to clean up the energy sector. Germany actually resisted that peer pressure quite long. E.g. the reason brown coal is still a thing in Germany is because until a few years ago, the CDU essentially blocked all attempts to kill that massively polluting industry to protect jobs. I think at the time of the Paris agreements they were thinking/hoping a 2050-2060 time frame. Germany even opened new coal plants as recent as two years ago. The ambition levels have of course increased dramatically in the last few years; mainly due to the success of renewables. Mostly this is driven by simple economics. People like cheap wind and solar energy. Nuclear they don't like for lots of reasons; including the bad economics.
seydor 4y ago
what is the yield of solarwind in germany though? looking at their energy stats , it is underutilized https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&chartColumnSorting=default https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.... https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewable-Energy-Potential-Map.gif https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewa... and what happens to that massive coal+gas infrastructure?Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night and you will always need the same level of coal+gas+oil
- WalterGR 4y ago
  Batteries work at night.
  - seydor 4y ago
    1. They need 2-3x renewable capacity to charge 2. You need to buy the batteries
    - mixermachine 4y ago
      Aren't batteries at something like >90% efficiency? Were does the 2-3x energy come from?
      - freemint 4y ago
        I suspect he means production energy capacity to account for the charging when energy is being produced.
    - jillesvangurp 4y ago
      1) nonsense. Charging batteries is very efficient. About 90-95% efficient. The idea is to use peaks in power to charge the batteries. Those peaks already exist and don't require new capacity. Every time people complain about broken wind mills, what's actually happening is that they are being turned off to reduce the output: grids are currently bad at handling supply peaks from wind and solar. 2) Yes, lots of them. Luckily, people are buying EVs (aka. batteries with wheels). Soon in the order of tens of gwh per year. Those batteries will be perfect for absorbing supply peaks (just plug the car in). And a growing number of cars can also return power to the grid. And mostly the second life for EV batteries is grid storage after they survive the car they were in. Of course other storage solutions are available as well.

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.
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  Germany could have cancelled their nuclear shutdown process. But saving face is more important than Ukrainian lives.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    As I pointed out above, this would not have changed anything with respect to the need to import gas from Russia. Nuclear generation is not a substitute for gas imports. Even worse, they can't "cancel their nuclear shutdown process" even if they wanted. First of all, the shutdown deadline had been firmly set in law twenty years ago, so it would require a major legislative effort to make another law. Second, even if they somehow managed to instantly change the law, the shutdown was "baked into" the operation and maintenance schedule for the nuclear plants. They were simply not expecting to have to run them beyond early 2020-ish so a lot of money was almost certainly saved by delaying maintenance. Hence, if they suddenly changed their minds about shutting the plants down, they'd almost certainly have to invest massive amounts of money to fix them first.
    - 4y ago
croes 4y ago
Gas has more use cases than just electricity. These can't easily be replaced by nuclear power.
- dsnr 4y ago
  Actually, gas heating can _easily_ be replaced with heat pumps assuming cheap electricity is provided.
  - cschwarm 4y ago
    You can't convert about 40 million households [1] in a year or two. Also, in the German climate and with its many 'old' buildings, merely switching the heat source won't do. One also needs additional isolation, and new radiators. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-millio...
    - dsnr 4y ago
      > You can't convert about 40 million households [1] in a year or two. Who's talking about a year or two? Germany has been pushing for russian gas since the 90's, against all logic.
      - vrfvr 4y ago
        > in fact you could argue that their denuclearization is the very reason Russia has so much leverage in the situation If we had more nuclear power, this wouldn't change much, if anything
        dsnr 4y ago
        I think you replied to the wrong person.
      - dirkt 4y ago
        The logic was "if we depend on each other, Russia isn't going to pull crazy stuff". Which works with rational people (and after Gorbachev and the German reunion, the perception was that Russia is rational), but not with Putin. And you may have noticed that Russia is not cutting off delivery of Russian gas to Germany. Which they would if the damage was unilateral. Also, electrical heating is one of most wasteful and damaging ways to do heating, and Germany has been moving away from electrical heating for this reason for decades now.
jhgb 4y ago
You're confusing German gas consumption and German electricity consumption. It couldn't escape my attention that many people especially from the US make this fatal mistake (presumably because of the prevalence of natural gas electricity generation in the US - almost 40% in the US, compared to ~15% in Germany). In Germany, the vast majority of gas is being used for heating or for industrial purposes (chemistry etc.). This is not (yet) substitutable by other electricity sources. Even if the denuclearization hadn't taken place, they'd still be dependent on Russian gas for at least a significant part of their gas supply. They can always substitute basically any gas shortfalls in the electricity sector simply by increasing coal generation, since there's a lot of unused capacity now that renewables leaped massively, and even replacing all the gas currently being used for electricity generation (because there's so little of it!) with coal would not even reach the levels of coal generation that Germany had as recently as just five years ago, so the coal plants can simply somewhat increase their output for a while. What Germans currently don't have is any way to not freeze to death and keep the industry running without Russian gas.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  The other aspect of the Ukraine war used for advocating for nuclear, which the nuclear proponents like to omit is that 25% of European uranium comes from Russia, so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas. It's simply dishonest to use the current situation as an argument for nuclear. If anything it shows that we should have invested into renewables much more strongly, but nuclear proponents were strongly arguing against it because it would have made nuclear even less financially viable.
  - stingraycharles 4y ago
    > so Europe's dependence on Russia is even stronger for Uranium than for gas I’d argue that it’s not about % coming from Russia that reflects dependence, it’s how easy you could switch to another supplier. How difficult would it be to find a different provider for that Uranium?
    - cycomanic 4y ago
natmaka 4y ago
Nuclear isn't better on this account: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utilities-push-white-house-not-sanction-russian-uranium-2022-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti... This is even true for France, as most of its uranium comes from Kazakhstan.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Kazakhstan is not Russia, and in fact they're rather alarmed by recent Russian sabre-rattlijg about reclaiming land in northern KZ to protect Russian speakers etc (heard this one before?). The current leadership is very much indebted to Putin though for saving them during a recent near-revolution, so they're walking a tightrope.
  - drunkpotato 4y ago
    I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia had encouraged the very unrest that made them worried and indebted. Not because Putin is a Bond villain super genius but just because encouraging chaos and unrest and then playing all sides of a conflict is a standard technique of Russian foreign relations. Edit: and also used in Russian domestic affairs, didn’t mean to leave that out!
  - natmaka 4y ago
    Indebted, indeed... If you really think Kazakhstan can disobey to Russia then let's agree on not living on the same planet.
anovikov 4y ago
But now Germany is committed to stopping Russian coal imports in 3 months and oil, by the year's end, and a (less format and obligatory) statement of intent to quit Russian gas too, in the next two years.

ulfw 4y ago

Germany has one of the highest electricity costs on the planet. That leads to reduction of use (as people just can't afford it) and this is before the Russian corrupt cheap gas deals. Who knows what it'll look like with higher gas and oil prices.

croes 4y ago
That would be a strange corruption that causes cheap gas
- dsnr 4y ago
  So you really can’t see how a corrupt government can hinder the development of alternative energy sources in favor of dirty deals from which they profit themselves?
- barrenko 4y ago
  It is corruption 101.
vrfvr 4y ago
> That leads to reduction of use (as people just can't afford it) I consider this a good thing. Wasting energy ain't good, especially when it isn't completely climate neutral
- sputr 4y ago
  View your comment from the POV of the majority of the population, who aren't rich IT sector workers. There's energy poverty in Germany. A lot of it. You don't even have to go to any “3rd world” areas of the world to see it. Cheap energy is CRITICAL for the elimination of poverty and suffering. I know that single-mindedly obsessing about the single goal of climate change is currently popular, but please, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
legulere 4y ago
Only for household consumers, for instance because there's a special tax on household electricity to get people to use less electricity: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromsteuergesetz_(Deutschland) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromsteuergesetz_(Deutschland... For none-household consumers it's the same as the EU average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics#Electricity_prices_for_non-household_consumers https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... At the same time Germany has one of the most reliable electricity nets with less outages than other countries.

emteycz 4y ago

Germany doesn't have blackouts only thanks to Czech and French nuclear energy ;-)

brazzy 4y ago
The other way round, actually. France recently had massive problems because they had to switch off multiple nuclear plants for unexpected maintenance issues, and bought lots of power from Germany
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  1 event does not make a rule. French nuclear reactors were turned off for maintenance, yes, but over the past 30 years, it is clearly Germany depending on French power
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    That's kinda the point of an interconnected electricity grid, it allows you to import the cheapest energy available. I don't get the argument here. Sometimes it's renewable, sometimes it's gas, sometimes it's coal, sometimes it's hydro, sometimes it's nuclear...?
    - emteycz 4y ago
      The argument here is that a country that keeps talking about green energy, ecology and renewables for decades is now using much less ecological methods of power generation than nuclear, and they keep badmouthing nuclear too.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        Germany abandoning nuclear has been decades in the making, it does not come as a surprise. If we look at the whole picture without focusing on one particular energy source, then we can see that they have reduced their CO2 emissions over the years. Not by much, but it's expected to improve when they close down their coal plants.

Emma_Goldman 4y ago

> "Actually, Germany did not have a long term increase in coal/gas due to the nuclear shut down but a decrease" > "Gas production did grow but mainly to offset declines in coal" This is dishonest at two levels. First, nuclear power fell and, at the same time, renewables and gas sharply rose in Germany's energy mix. Power is fungible. It is not as if power generated by renewables substitutes for nuclear, but power generated by gas doesn't. Germany had to add up it's energy inputs to meet 100% of its needs, and it used both sources to do so. Second, everyone in Germany knew they were supposed to get rid of coal by 2030. That's the international deadline for coal in advanced economies. But the national phase-out law, until very recently, was eliminating coal at a far slower pace - aiming towards a terminal date of 2038. One reason why was the decline of nuclear.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Renewables rose by far more than gas did. The overall market also grew. If you take coal and gas together and look at overall fossil based generation, it declined and continues to decline. The unspoken implication of nuclear proponents is that Germany started putting out more CO2 because they shut down nuclear. The reality is that there was a continuous decline in fossil fuel related emissions related to electricity production. So, who is being "dishonest" here? Gas "sharply" rose to much less than the coal and nuclear reductions combined. Renewables are on track to grow to about an order of magnitude more than the nuclear capacity Germany ever had. New gas plants might still happen as that is part of their plan to decommission coal. Or at least it was until a few months ago. But it will probably never grow to close to the level of coal production Germany had 12 years ago when it started shutting down nuclear plants. The decision to get rid of coal by 2030 is fairly recent. There are no international deadlines other than what was agreed at Cop 26, which thanks to China and India avoids any big explicit commitments. However, there is a lot of peer pressure especially in Europe to clean up the energy sector. Germany actually resisted that peer pressure quite long. E.g. the reason brown coal is still a thing in Germany is because until a few years ago, the CDU essentially blocked all attempts to kill that massively polluting industry to protect jobs. I think at the time of the Paris agreements they were thinking/hoping a 2050-2060 time frame. Germany even opened new coal plants as recent as two years ago. The ambition levels have of course increased dramatically in the last few years; mainly due to the success of renewables. Mostly this is driven by simple economics. People like cheap wind and solar energy. Nuclear they don't like for lots of reasons; including the bad economics.

seydor 4y ago

what is the yield of solarwind in germany though? looking at their energy stats , it is underutilized https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&chartColumnSorting=default https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.... https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewable-Energy-Potential-Map.gif https://sminpowergroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Renewa... and what happens to that massive coal+gas infrastructure?Apparently , wind+solar don't work at night and you will always need the same level of coal+gas+oil

WalterGR 4y ago
Batteries work at night.
- seydor 4y ago
  1. They need 2-3x renewable capacity to charge 2. You need to buy the batteries
  - mixermachine 4y ago
    Aren't batteries at something like >90% efficiency? Were does the 2-3x energy come from?
    - freemint 4y ago
      I suspect he means production energy capacity to account for the charging when energy is being produced.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    1) nonsense. Charging batteries is very efficient. About 90-95% efficient. The idea is to use peaks in power to charge the batteries. Those peaks already exist and don't require new capacity. Every time people complain about broken wind mills, what's actually happening is that they are being turned off to reduce the output: grids are currently bad at handling supply peaks from wind and solar. 2) Yes, lots of them. Luckily, people are buying EVs (aka. batteries with wheels). Soon in the order of tens of gwh per year. Those batteries will be perfect for absorbing supply peaks (just plug the car in). And a growing number of cars can also return power to the grid. And mostly the second life for EV batteries is grid storage after they survive the car they were in. Of course other storage solutions are available as well.