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I don't have anything against wind power, wind power is worth investing in, but Germany is really king of half-ass energy measures right now. This isn't going

I don't have anything against wind power, wind power is worth investing in, but Germany is really king of half-ass energy measures right now. This isn't going to make up for decommissioning their nuclear plants, and it's not going to wean them off of Russian gas and oil before... 2050 or so. I really don't think German leadership is serious about the energy dependence crisis they are in, and feel-good measures aren't going to cut it.

pydry 4y ago
I always find it weird that Germany persistently gets a LOT of flak for doing this: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021.png?itok=15hkw6zI https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... ("not reducing CO2 emissions fast enough", because nuclear) While nobody really cares that Poland (along with so many other countries) is doing this: https://aleasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190724-aleasoft-poland-installed-capacity.png https://aleasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190724-ale... ("80% coal now and forever? meh, who cares?") It's almost as if Germany proving the model that you can reduce CO2 while turning off nuclear plants that is attracting flak.
- Ericson2314 4y ago
  Germany greenwashing stupidity is more irksome than other countries just dragging their feet. It's like being stabbed in the front vs the back. Germany's behavior also makes it harder for other countries to do what they do. Since it's a unified grid, Germany gets to virtue signal without getting serious about the centralized storage needed to make all renewables possible. Other countries hit the storage needs way sooner because the grid as a whole is already trying to buffer Germany's intermittent power.
  - pydry 4y ago
    They've taken the low cost, fast approach to cutting CO2 emissions rather than the high cost, incredibly-so-very-slow approach of commission a bunch of nuclear plants and then burn a LOT of coal and send a lot of money to Russia until they're finally done, over-budget and over-time circa 2040. Storage is kind of a moot point when half of your grid energy is provided by burning gas. A megawatt provided by wind in 3 years time is 100 euros not sent to Putin - no matter how intermittently it is produced. The graph above refutes any idea of this being virtue signalling. % renewables is only going up, fast.
    - Ericson2314 4y ago
      > They've taken the low cost, fast approach to cutting CO2 emissions rather than the high cost, incredibly-so-very-slow approach of commission a bunch of nuclear plants and then burn a LOT of coal and send a lot of money to Russia until they're finally done, over-budget and over-time circa 2040. Stop being a stupid marginalist. The cost of renewables is only cheap when one doesn't both to do the grid storage and other serious steps that make it actually scale to a 100% solution. Then it balloons right back up again. Any country that cannot build a nuclear power plant on time will also hit delays trying to do other major infrastructure projects like grid-scale storage.
  - arrrg 4y ago
    What greenwashing? We had a government that was actively dragging its feet and, in many ways, hindering progress. You can call that greenwashing, I would describe it as paying lip service to transformation while doing little to get ahead and also hindering progress in certain places when things got difficult. It never felt very virtue-signaly to me, though. I‘m all in favor of (critically) giving this new government at least a couple of years until we measure to what extent they were able to clean up that mess. This, for example, is a necessary step because many of the states have been actively hindering wind power expansion with overly broad regulation. That‘s why wind power expansion fell off a cliff during the last couple of years. Whether this measure can change that I do not know, but that’s the relevant background and with that context it makes sense why this is happening now.
- shakow 4y ago
  1. Because Germany is still producing 6× more energy with coal than Poland; 2. Because Germany deliberately shut down low-carbon footprint nuke powerplant to please their voters, then built coal-burning plants to compensate for the lack of production. 3. Because Germany is the first economy of Europe and arguably the top political power (which is not the case of Poland, far from it) and thus should be leading bby example. > It's almost as if Germany proving the model that you can reduce CO2 while turning off nuclear plants that is the underlying problem. Germany is not proving anything: today is a good day (https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map), and her electricity is still 4× carbon heavier than France, and closer to Balkan-level than Western Europe level.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >Because Germany is still producing 6× more energy with coal than Poland Not 6x more. They're producing about 150 TWh from coal for 84 million people while Poland does about 120 TWh for just 37 million people. Per capita, Germany uses far less coal and with current trends it'll use less actual coal for its 87 million people fairly soon. >Because Germany deliberately shut down low-carbon footprint nuke powerplant to please their voters, then built coal-burning plants to compensate That accounts for the slight blip on the graph I linked to above that lasted until 2014. This blip has received an overwhelming amount of attention given that it was relatively small, lasted a few years and coal usage started diving again in 2014. It was symbolically important to the nuclear industry, but for all the wrong reasons. >Because Germany is the first economy of Europe This is the only reasonable answer. >today is a good day (https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map), and her electricity is still 4× carbon heavier than France Going back in time and building nuclear plants in the 1960-70s probably is the best way to have a relatively cheap, carbon free grid in 2020 but unfortunately it also means that there's an almighty gargantuan bill to pay when those same plants age out in 2030. France is sitting on either a financial ticking time bomb if they choose to rebuild or a potential nuclear disaster if they choose to extend their lifetimes well beyond viability. https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-trouble-with-europes-ageing-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-trouble-with-europes-ageing-... https://futurism.com/the-byte/nuclear-plants-renewable-energy-france https://futurism.com/the-byte/nuclear-plants-renewable-energ...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Ericson2314 4y ago
Next winter they are either going to turn back on the Nukes, or put pressure on Ukraine to capitulate. We'll see which!
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  I think we both know which way that will go.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  If they were going to turn any of the nukes back on for winter they would have had to have already started. If they started today I doubt there would be enough time, though I'm not an expert.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  There's no way The German ans Austrian Greens will ever backtrack on their anti nuclear stance since that's will make them look stupid and loose credibility. Guess we'll just have to suck up to Putin for a few more decades.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    You missed quite a lot in German politics. This is no longer true, in fact Habeck already said couple times that if nuclear would still be an option they would do it. Unfortunately it is not, yet every discussion on HN about German energy policy eventually gets back to bashing Greens for „their nuclear policy“. You‘d better ask Merkel and CDU why they decided to shut down nuclear plants faster and build NS2.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      > Unfortunately it is not Words are cheap, and it's easy to lie about "oh, the decommissioning process has started, we just can't back out". It's not true. If you look at their "analysis", it has gems like "fuel might be more expensive in the future". If Russia turned off their NG and oil, Germany could absolutely keep those plants running for decades, with minimal or no safety risk.

pydry 4y ago

I always find it weird that Germany persistently gets a LOT of flak for doing this: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2021.png?itok=15hkw6zI https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... ("not reducing CO2 emissions fast enough", because nuclear) While nobody really cares that Poland (along with so many other countries) is doing this: https://aleasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190724-aleasoft-poland-installed-capacity.png https://aleasoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/20190724-ale... ("80% coal now and forever? meh, who cares?") It's almost as if Germany proving the model that you can reduce CO2 while turning off nuclear plants that is attracting flak.

Ericson2314 4y ago
Germany greenwashing stupidity is more irksome than other countries just dragging their feet. It's like being stabbed in the front vs the back. Germany's behavior also makes it harder for other countries to do what they do. Since it's a unified grid, Germany gets to virtue signal without getting serious about the centralized storage needed to make all renewables possible. Other countries hit the storage needs way sooner because the grid as a whole is already trying to buffer Germany's intermittent power.
- pydry 4y ago
  They've taken the low cost, fast approach to cutting CO2 emissions rather than the high cost, incredibly-so-very-slow approach of commission a bunch of nuclear plants and then burn a LOT of coal and send a lot of money to Russia until they're finally done, over-budget and over-time circa 2040. Storage is kind of a moot point when half of your grid energy is provided by burning gas. A megawatt provided by wind in 3 years time is 100 euros not sent to Putin - no matter how intermittently it is produced. The graph above refutes any idea of this being virtue signalling. % renewables is only going up, fast.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    > They've taken the low cost, fast approach to cutting CO2 emissions rather than the high cost, incredibly-so-very-slow approach of commission a bunch of nuclear plants and then burn a LOT of coal and send a lot of money to Russia until they're finally done, over-budget and over-time circa 2040. Stop being a stupid marginalist. The cost of renewables is only cheap when one doesn't both to do the grid storage and other serious steps that make it actually scale to a 100% solution. Then it balloons right back up again. Any country that cannot build a nuclear power plant on time will also hit delays trying to do other major infrastructure projects like grid-scale storage.
- arrrg 4y ago
  What greenwashing? We had a government that was actively dragging its feet and, in many ways, hindering progress. You can call that greenwashing, I would describe it as paying lip service to transformation while doing little to get ahead and also hindering progress in certain places when things got difficult. It never felt very virtue-signaly to me, though. I‘m all in favor of (critically) giving this new government at least a couple of years until we measure to what extent they were able to clean up that mess. This, for example, is a necessary step because many of the states have been actively hindering wind power expansion with overly broad regulation. That‘s why wind power expansion fell off a cliff during the last couple of years. Whether this measure can change that I do not know, but that’s the relevant background and with that context it makes sense why this is happening now.
shakow 4y ago
1. Because Germany is still producing 6× more energy with coal than Poland; 2. Because Germany deliberately shut down low-carbon footprint nuke powerplant to please their voters, then built coal-burning plants to compensate for the lack of production. 3. Because Germany is the first economy of Europe and arguably the top political power (which is not the case of Poland, far from it) and thus should be leading bby example. > It's almost as if Germany proving the model that you can reduce CO2 while turning off nuclear plants that is the underlying problem. Germany is not proving anything: today is a good day (https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map), and her electricity is still 4× carbon heavier than France, and closer to Balkan-level than Western Europe level.
- pydry 4y ago
  >Because Germany is still producing 6× more energy with coal than Poland Not 6x more. They're producing about 150 TWh from coal for 84 million people while Poland does about 120 TWh for just 37 million people. Per capita, Germany uses far less coal and with current trends it'll use less actual coal for its 87 million people fairly soon. >Because Germany deliberately shut down low-carbon footprint nuke powerplant to please their voters, then built coal-burning plants to compensate That accounts for the slight blip on the graph I linked to above that lasted until 2014. This blip has received an overwhelming amount of attention given that it was relatively small, lasted a few years and coal usage started diving again in 2014. It was symbolically important to the nuclear industry, but for all the wrong reasons. >Because Germany is the first economy of Europe This is the only reasonable answer. >today is a good day (https://app.electricitymap.org/map https://app.electricitymap.org/map), and her electricity is still 4× carbon heavier than France Going back in time and building nuclear plants in the 1960-70s probably is the best way to have a relatively cheap, carbon free grid in 2020 but unfortunately it also means that there's an almighty gargantuan bill to pay when those same plants age out in 2030. France is sitting on either a financial ticking time bomb if they choose to rebuild or a potential nuclear disaster if they choose to extend their lifetimes well beyond viability. https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-trouble-with-europes-ageing-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-trouble-with-europes-ageing-... https://futurism.com/the-byte/nuclear-plants-renewable-energy-france https://futurism.com/the-byte/nuclear-plants-renewable-energ...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Ericson2314 4y ago

Next winter they are either going to turn back on the Nukes, or put pressure on Ukraine to capitulate. We'll see which!

bpodgursky 4y ago
I think we both know which way that will go.
thinkcontext 4y ago
If they were going to turn any of the nukes back on for winter they would have had to have already started. If they started today I doubt there would be enough time, though I'm not an expert.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
There's no way The German ans Austrian Greens will ever backtrack on their anti nuclear stance since that's will make them look stupid and loose credibility. Guess we'll just have to suck up to Putin for a few more decades.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  You missed quite a lot in German politics. This is no longer true, in fact Habeck already said couple times that if nuclear would still be an option they would do it. Unfortunately it is not, yet every discussion on HN about German energy policy eventually gets back to bashing Greens for „their nuclear policy“. You‘d better ask Merkel and CDU why they decided to shut down nuclear plants faster and build NS2.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    > Unfortunately it is not Words are cheap, and it's easy to lie about "oh, the decommissioning process has started, we just can't back out". It's not true. If you look at their "analysis", it has gems like "fuel might be more expensive in the future". If Russia turned off their NG and oil, Germany could absolutely keep those plants running for decades, with minimal or no safety risk.