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How messed up was Germany's energy policy?

106 points by guerby 4y ago

baq 4y ago
The whole EU is setting up for a more interesting winter than… 1989? Not sure since I’ve been barely alive then but certainly it hasn’t been this dire since quite a while
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Was a hot summer too.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  The summer is worse, especially drought - lack of water to cool power plants.
guerby 4y ago
"It's not as bad as a lot of people are saying"
standardUser 4y ago
"The share of renewables in actually generation has gone from essentially nothing in 2000 (a bit of hydro), to 40-50% of the total (depending on how you count biomass and waste-to-energy)" Based on that, it's one of the only sane energy policies on the planet! Minus the premature closure of nuclear plants.
- waschl 4y ago
  For sure growth at renewables is great. However the overall percentages you gave are all-year averages. It goes down to single digit % on dark windstill winter days. Considering this and the fact that nuclear energy (Fukushima), coal (climate change) and now gas (Putin) are effectively „banned“, it’s really quite a mess.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Those percentages are just shares of electricity. Their share of energy is more dire. Natural gas is just 15% of German electricity production, but nearly half of residential heating. Then there’s gas-obligatory fertilizer production, on-premise electricity generation (campuses), cooking fuel, etc. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-much-does-germany-need-russian-gas-2022-01-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-much-does-germany-n...
  - standardUser 4y ago
    We should be so lucky to live in a world where most nations had achieved even a third of electricity generation from renewables. We'd be vastly better off than we are now! So I am happy to give credit in those few cases where credit is due.
    - morning_gelato 4y ago
      I think carbon-intensity (gCO2eq/kWh) is a much more important metric than the use of specific generating technologies. Looking at the data [1], Germany has one of the dirtiest electrical grids in western Europe. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
      - standardUser 4y ago
        We all know that electricity can be utilized for purposes currently monopolized by fossil fuels, including heating and automobiles. Which means that the end game necessarily includes a rapid transition towards electricity generation from renewables. Germany has gone much father down that road than most nations, even if they have an unfortunately massive amount of electricity still being produced from coal.
  - olau 4y ago
    Storing heat is actually much easier than storing electricity. In relatively dense areas with district heating, you can even establish storage that retains heat from the summer. Yes, it requires investments and scaling up of the production of these solutions - the reason these investments haven't been made yet, is plainly that it wasn't deemed necessary yet. Continuing burning fossil fuels was cheaper. Why would gas be obligatory for fertilizer production? I've dug into some industrial uses in my country (bakeries for instance), and in all the cases I looked into, gas was not actually required, just a bit cheaper or more convenient. If you put a tax on gas, all of them would switch within a few years. It looks like you need hydrogen for fertilizer, so I guess switching to (more expensive) hydrolysis would be the solution there.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  And yet, Germany produces more CO2 than any other European nation, and much more CO2 per capita than India.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Germany has 15 million people more than France, the next most populous European country. It is hardly surprising they produce more carbon dioxide. India will surpass Germany unless the degrowthers get their way and condemn Indians to permanent poverty which doesn’t look likely.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      There is no need for poverty there, but there's the case for massive deployment of renewables. China shows it can be done from scratch without getting poor. That is not happening. Indian government also tends to look aside when other polluting industries - mostly textile - are involved.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Where are you getting that number from? Couldn't this just mean they stopped producing as much nuclear, for example? I'm sure they have increased their green energy, but we can't tell from this figure. In fact, the total output could have actually decreased but increased relative to others. Especially if they traded domestic energy produciton for piping in more natural gas straight to homes for heating.
asguy 4y ago
Enough for Trump to call them on it 3 years ago? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg
- t6jvcereio 4y ago
  Wait, is this the same Trump who said he was getting the USA out of NATO, or is this a different Trump?
  - asguy 4y ago
    Why are you bringing up something unrelated as a gotcha for something nobody is commenting about? This is related to Germany energy policy. Trump brought up the danger of depending on Putin’s Russia to the Germans, and they laughed at him. They aren’t laughing much now. What you should be asking is: How was Germany so dumb that Trump saw it, but they didn’t?
    - rnk 4y ago
      Because it's a good, realistic comparison. Pointing out Germany was too dependent on Russia for natural gas - good point. Saying the US would drop out of NATO - not a good strategy for stability. If you wanted to point out a Trump comment that everyone saw as a mistake at the time (but that doesn't add to the conversation), give the examples where he made dangerous suggestions to treat covid. Talking about nato seems fairly relevant. Tons of people saw Germany was putting itself in a bad position. Every US administration since the initial direction was set said that.
      - nradov 4y ago
        President Trump talked about dropping out of NATO specifically because Germany (along with several other European countries) had broken their treaty obligations and had failed to spend the required 2% of GDP on defense. They were essentially getting free protection from the USA, France, and the UK without doing anything in return. And the threat worked! Germany did significantly boost defense spending (although still not quite to the 2% target).
fkarg 4y ago
Not was. Is.
nickdothutton 4y ago
We’ll find out this winter.
fdomig 4y ago
Living in Germany I can add: Yes, shutting down nuclear power plants "so early" was naive, however, even the now horrible war in Ukraine boosts the process to migrate to (more) sustainable energy even faster. Also, pretty soon energy prices in Germany might be so much lower and this will be a key advantage.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  Also: The war in Ukraine shows what a security liability nuclear plants are in wartime.
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    Which, in what is surely a coincidence, is good for Russia.
    - MagnumOpus 4y ago
      …with the Russian state-owned Rosatom being the biggest (and cheapest) builder of nuclear plants abroad? Occam’s razor applies here, I think; no need for conspiracy theories.
      - AstralStorm 4y ago
        Cheap is not necessarily better, their designs are now outdated. Most importantly, they are not water sparing, which will be necessary really soon now.
        IYasha 4y ago
        Aren't you all kinda missing the main point: who is the world's manufacturer of nuclear fuel. Hold your laugh when you realize. :)
        belorn 4y ago
        That is an common misunderstanding. You can't interchange one nuclear fuel for an other. Fuel rods are designed and built explicitly for the kind of plant that will use it, which mean that the fuel mostly used will be for the plant that is mostly built. Guess who holds the patents to the fuel rods design for a specific nuclear power plant design. Uranium mining however is pretty diversified. about 1/4 come from Canada, 1/4 from Australia, 1/4 from Russia and 1/4 from Africa. It then get processed into a powder, and then shipped to a fuel construction facility. One of the larger site of fuel rod construction is actually Sweden, which has also recently started to expand construction for fuel to Rosatom reactors. Creating fuel rods from Uranium refined powder is however not the biggest problem that the world has.
deleted 4y ago
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klanhx 4y ago
- lesuorac 4y ago
  > If one criticized Schroeder for his involvement with Gazprom on social media in 2019, comments would get deleted. [citation needed] Even NPR criticized him [1]. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/18/601825131/why-putins-pal-germanys-ex-chancellor-hasnt-landed-on-a-sanctions-list https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/18/601825131/...
  - kllqp 4y ago
- V__ 4y ago
  > Now his missteps are "common knowledge". The whole Nordstream situation is way more nuanced. Nordstream-1 was built before the Crimea invasion after Ukraine stole gas in transit. However, after the invasion of Georgia. It's not like Russian foreign policy suddenly surprised everyone. It was as bad a decision then as it is now in retrospect.
Faelian2 4y ago
Pretty messed up : https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/what-transition-are-the-germans-up-to-exactly/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/... 250 to 300 billion euros, which is more than the cost of rebuilding from scratch all the French nuclear power plants, is what Germany has invested from 1996 to 2014 to increase by 22% the fraction of renewable electricity into the gross production of the country (that went from 4% to 27%). For this price tag our neighbors did not decrease their energy imports, did not accelerate the decrease of their CO2 emissions per capita, that remain 80% higher to those of a French, increased the stress on the European grid.
- merb 4y ago
  btw. his pricing is completly off and you can't build all french nuclear plants from scratch with 250 to 300 billion euros.
  - MagnumOpus 4y ago
    France could.
- btilly 4y ago
  That's a great analysis, but unfortunately ends at around when Ukraine was first invaded. It doesn't show what has happened in the last several years.
- jakewins 4y ago
  For 250B EUR, Germany paid for the learning curve movement that now enables the rest of the world to deploy solar and batteries. If it was not for German investment to drive that 90% drop in price, bills like the IRA would not even be possible to contemplate. The "that would pay for the entire French fleet" thing is nonsense. Just google the cost of the most recent plants built anywhere in EU and multiply it by how many you'd need to meet France's 61GW capacity. (example: Hinkley Point C, 75B EUR for 3.26GWe, 61GW/3.26GW = 18, 18*75 = 1,350B EUR, Olkiluoto Unit 3, 11B EUR for 1.6GWe, 61GW/1.6=~38, 38*11=418B EUR). Yes, Germany paid a huge price for their solar. We should be thankful they did.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smsm42 4y ago
They talk about dependency on Russia being a "mistake". But with so many high-rank people (including former Chancellor) being paid by Russia openly (and who knows how many secretly beyond that) - does it look like a "mistake" or a deliberate policy on Russia's side and widespread corruption being ignored on Germany's side?
- okr 4y ago
  There is no proof of corruption. What do you know? Bring it to the press.
  - durnygbur 4y ago
    There are no proofs. Those with proofs have suicide waiting at their doorsteps.
  - dreinhardt 4y ago
    That has already happened. Try looking for Schwesig and her Klimastiftung, and that’s just a tiny part of the picture.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    I think the standard formula is "no evidence". Incidentally, check out https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... But I think that the position of "until we have a court decision proving corruption, one could not reasonably talk of a possibility of corruption, and discuss appearance of conflict of interest" is naive at best, and completely boneheaded at the usual case. Corruption is notoriously hard to prove, especially "soft" corruption where there's no direct bribery but more like alignment of interests diverting the interests of corrupt functionaries from serving the people (who even knows that that means?) to serving their private wallet and/or ideology (well, that one is much clearer). And there's tons of the press talking about German politicians being too cozy with Russia, even pre-dating the war. So what? It's not like German voters cared.
empiricus 4y ago
I feel like the focus should be on cheaper energy (Is 10x cheaper possible?) than focus on green energy. Cheap energy would open a lot of opportunities (carbon sequestration?) and solve a lot of economic tensions. But it looks like the energy markets are going towards bigger prices and probably more profit that way.
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy, they just happen to also be green. But this is a recent development- fossil fuels were cheaper in the recent past. The transition to them would be a lot cheaper if the opposition from the incumbent energy suppliers was not so stiff. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    you quoted Lazard. I always warn anyone quoting that study to be careful with the prices claimed there. There are two major issues - one that the current prices of wind and solar are primarily driven by zero fuel cost. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid continues to exist. Second - because the grid exists, energy for when the wind isn't blowing at night can come from somewhere and your lights stay on. Wind and solar introduce volatility into the mix, volatility on the generation side. That has a cost that is not currently borne by them but by us - the consumers. Lazard and co conveniently ignore this aspect when claiming that wind and solar are as cheap as they make them out to be. To be clear, wind and solar are cheap but that may or may not hold true in the future. There is currently no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere that runs on renewable energy for more than minutes at a time. Renewables are very far from being able to provide energy 24/7 and cheaply.
    - Krasnol 4y ago
      I don't get your criticism. Why should there not be zero fuel cost? Your second argument is supposed to be a variable? Since with a wider grid, the volatility falls ("there is always wind somewhere"). I also don't think the size of the whole grid should be priced into a single power source. Why not price that into other non-green sources too if the local grid doesn't support the whole country?
timmg 4y ago
My biggest worry is that they are going to open NordStream 2 this winter "just to fill the emergency gap" -- and then it never gets closed. I honestly don't know how likely that would be.
- okr 4y ago
  Why is it a worry? That would reduce the cost of living dramatically again.
  - timmg 4y ago
    Because I think we need to continue sanctioning Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.
    - okr 4y ago
      Why?
      - timmg 4y ago
        Because murdering people and taking their land is wrong.
  - klausjensen 4y ago
    The faster Germany remove the dependency on Russian gas/fossils, the faster it can cut a critical source of income for Russia and their war-machine. A temporary slightly increased cost of living is a cheap price to pay.
    - okr 4y ago
      Slightly? Have you looked at the energy prizes lately? I think the approach, pain now, sustainanble energy and independency of fosssils later, is highly risky. What if the alternatives are not ready for the winter?
      - 4y ago
daneel_w 4y ago
How messed up was it that Trump warned about the exact current situation years ago, and was promptly ignored? Didn't Obama, too?
- ManuelKiessling 4y ago
  Yes, we absolutely fucked up here, there is no doubt. The dependency wasn’t a topic at all, neither in politics nor “on the street”. A cushy situation for decades lead to naïvety, I guess.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  It wasn't exactly a controversial take either. What was Biden thinking by green-lighting NS2?
  - google234123 4y ago
    Biden has done a lot of bad things just to do the opposite of what ever trump was doing.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Not just ignored. Trump at the UN warns that Germany is endangering itself by increasing dependence on Russia. [German envoys laugh.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe). Among the comedians is Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, now enjoying a quiet retirement back home in Saarland. (The YouTube comments are hilarious.)
seydor 4y ago
The problem is that Germany is taking everyone down with them The countries that follow the EU wholesale energy price rules are royally screwed, because the price of power is set by the exorbitant price of gas even if they only use 5% gas in their energy mix. In addition to carbon mandatory limits this leads to soaring electricity prices which do not correspond to real supply and demand, but religious adherence to inflexible regulations that have not been changed despite the war. This is madness at multi-state level
- dagss 4y ago
  It is not also gas, also less hydropower available than usual in Norway, Switzerland etc. due to unfortunate climate/weather past year. There is genuine energy shortage not only an issue of setting the right price.
throwaways85989 4y ago
The disaster is already preprogrammed. Lots of germans bought electric heaters to heat flats through the winter, as the heat provided by the house central heating will be reduced. Which will result in large increases of base load on the network, which already will be under strain. Which means rolling black outs as soon as it gets cold. Perma-black outs if the people do not see reasons and unplug their heaters. No solution has been proposed for this. The clever ones went for wood for heating. Still preferable to shiver one winter through, then have it warm in putins prison.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  It is not clear at all that people will behave that way. The buying of electric heaters for now just reflects huge uncertainty about any sources of heat.
- dreinhardt 4y ago
  People also bought toilet paper against covid.
- timbit42 4y ago
  What percentage of German homes use resistive heating? If they switch to heat pumps with a COP of at least 4, every heat pump will free up enough electricity to run 3 more heat pumps. The problem is importing enough heat pumps and having the government subsidize the purchase and installation for those who can't afford it. Perhaps NATO countries would sell their stocks of heat pumps to Germany if manufacturers don't have enough of them.
btilly 4y ago
This article says, "Germany did a bunch of reasonable looking things." But after Russia invaded Georgia (2008) then Ukraine (2014), Germany worked to increase dependence on Russia for both electricity and heating. They failed to take even the most basic steps to diversify. Such as building LNG terminals to give them the option of importing gas from countries like the USA. And it wasn't like there wasn't some history demonstrating the Russia wasn't always a reliable supplier. For example in 2009 they shut off gas for 10 days. As it happens they had a good reason (dispute with Ukraine over Ukraine stealing gas - which Ukraine had been). But fundamentally all of Europe, Germany included, should have been on notice that a single man could take out their gas supply. A man whose capriciousness was demonstrated in 2008 by his invasion of Georgia. Why on Earth did Germany not work to diversify? And why, given the current consequences of that past failure, are people trying to defend Germany's past bad decisions?
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  > Why on Earth did Germany not work to diversify? So they could benefit financially by being the natural gas hub for Europe. As you said, the reasons not to work with Russia were plainly obvious.
- piva00 4y ago
  What's even more egregious is that Germany has ran multiple years with a massive budget surplus (2018 + 2019 alone amass to 100bi€). Imagine if that could be used to be invested in ways to have a diversified grid...
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  Because in the past that also would have likely forced a rethinking/reexamination of Germany's defense setup and that would have been impossible to sell domestically.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I can’t make the argument a previous head of state should be mandated from working where the free market takes them. I also can’t argue that the decisions of Germany’s leadership make a ton of sense. Or rather I can, the economic argument and Germany not likely to deal with a Russia near home it isn’t able to easily deal with (outside of MAD.) That calculus makes sense to me I get and even still agree with the principle. But you also have to look out for your national security and it really seems like Germany wasn’t looking out for anyone but it’s self here. Germany faces no serious conventional threat from Russia nor does it currently have competing spheres of influence. However as part of NATO and the EU does. So it looks to be pretty clear that the Germans do not consider that they and, say, Lithuania share the same goals.
gumby 4y ago
The author ignores another important part: betting on Russia was a bet on domestic security. Tying European countries together through commercial interdependence had a demonstrated track record of causing the longest period of peace in Europe in over a millenium. Well, why shouldn't that work in the case of Russia as well? Well we all know why is didn't work in the case of Russia. As this article well shows, Germany made a number of mistakes that amounted to not hedging this bet. But given the philosophies of Europe and the USA in the late 90s-mid 2010s, this approach can't be called utterly foolish.
- _jal 4y ago
  Interdependence does tend to promote peace, but only up to a point. Past that point it becomes a weapon, as anyone who has been anywhere near a messy divorce has seen. Imperialist Russians clearly knew this, but apparently only saw the offensive angle. (At least, they either didn't see or discounted the risks to their own exposure, or they would have held reserves elsewhere.)
- klausjensen 4y ago
  It sort of makes sense - until 2008 (invasion of Georgia). Or at least 2014 (first invasion of Ukraine). Top German politicians were/are tied closely to Russian interests. Like former Bundeskanzler (chancellor) Gerhard Schröder, who still to this day refuses to distance himself from Putin/Russia. He was literally paid by Putin-controlled entities to lobby Russian interests in Germany/Europe. The amount of money that flowed from Russia to Germany in corruption and sweet-heart deals is staggering - and I am sure much more will be revealed in the coming years, of what really went on behind the scenes.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Reading The Romanovs - I found it interesting how many Germans were influential in Russia in the 17th and 18th century. Seems like there's a long history here.
- seydor 4y ago
  And now EU is betting its future on the dictator of Azerbaijan (who is known to bribe German and european politicians) for gas and Saudi arabia for oil. Couldn't think of more iconic duo https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-azerbaijan-gas-deal-is-a-repeat-mistake/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-azerbaijan-gas-deal-i...
landofredwater 4y ago
The plan to shut down all the nuclear plants was misguided at best. Seventeen plants were able to supply almost a quarter of Germany's total power [1] for their lifetimes, and then the cost from reimbursing investors into nuclear power is added onto those of having to build more wind and solar. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
sudden_dystopia 4y ago
You can sugar coat this any way you want but the fact of the matter is, they cut energy production in lieu of renewables without actually having enough renewables up and running to offset the difference. And now they are in the predicament of not having enough energy because the gas taps have been turned down. The path to hell is paved with good (but not well formulated) intentions. Just wait until you see the environmental devastation of a continent that turns to cutting down all the trees and burning anything they can find to stay warm.
belorn 4y ago
"As the numbers from the past 20 years show, renewables do not require more volumes of gas (MWh) for the system to be balanced (they may require more gas-fired capacity (MW), but that’s not the same thing - gas turbines are manufactured in Europe)." This is a fact noted, but it includes an additional aspect. If there is a need for more gas-fired capacity, that burn less volumes of gas, then that operation still need to be paid. The way that works in Sweden is called reserve energy, which mean the plant get paid twice. First they get paid through subsidies in order to keep the plant operational and staffed, and then they get paid a second time when the plant is burning gas and the spot price is at the highest point. This is quite expensive. Sadly I rarely see people actually account for this cost, and the article does not.
- guerby 4y ago
  Gas turbine are the cheapest electricity generator to build, only expensive to operate due to fuel cost. That's why people don't mention overbuilding gas2power capacity. Data from: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...
  - belorn 4y ago
    For now at least, those plants are not operated or maintained by robots. You need employees and people to be there even if they are not generating any power, and they need to be "warm" if they are to get online quick. The case examples in that link assume constant running. One could simply take the Fixed O&M times the effect and assume that (in combination with investment costs) to be the subsidies required to keep the plant in stand-by, through a constant operated plant is not the same as one that is standing by for most the time. None of the examples you linked has that kind of operation.
jmyeet 4y ago
Interesting. Not a single mention of the impact of foreign policy precipitating this potential energy crisis. Foreign policy cannot be untangled from domestic policy. There is now this idea that the only reasonable thing to do was to completely cut off Russia from international trade, prior to the unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. Why? Because that made you dependent on Russia and that's just ontologically bad. That's not a reasonable position to have. I mean people trade with China in spite of Tibet, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square, Saudi Arabia in spite of providing material support to al-Qaeda (and being the country probably most responsible for 9/11), an unjustifable genocide in Yemen and Khashoggi or even the United States despite many sins that can reasonbly be listed. Trade in particular and engagement in general is the only reasonable path towards Russia or really any other power we may not like. The problem was that Germany and the US through NATO expected Putin to swallow something the US never would ie a hostile major power in your backyard. I mean the US almost started World War 3 when the USSR tried this in Cuba (after the US had already done it to Turkey). But instead people like the frame this debate as you should never have traded with Russia and/or to support the narrative that nuclear power is good.
locallost 4y ago
The author here makes a great point that Germany kickstarted the renewable industry for the whole world, by basically investing in it before it made economic sense. But they managed to invent the future here because now it makes economic sense for everybody. The overall effect of this on the global situation is worth pondering, the numbers in renewables vs everything else in the world are quite staggering in the last years. I think a lot of people didn't catch up on it. It's pretty clear that investments in renewables will continue to accelerate, especially considering the war. And because they are so fast to deploy, the renewable share has no other option but to go up. The one unanswered question is how high can it go. Realistically until somebody does 100%, there will always be questions. But in my life I've heard "you can't do 10%/20%/30%" etc. and now plenty of countries run on majority renewables and don't have issues. The issue is very divisive, but I'm glad more and more articles like these are popping up, with some hard numbers that paint a very different picture than "Germany replaced nuclear with coal, madness".
- glogla 4y ago
  > The issue is very divisive, but I'm glad more and more articles like these are popping up, with some hard numbers that paint a very different picture than "Germany replaced nuclear with coal, madness". The picture is not all that different sadly. Renewables are intermittent, so renewables without storage or low-carbon baseload (= nuclear) will need fossil fuels. Germany's policy is to remove as much low-carbon baseload as possible both inside and outside its borders (by pushing anti-nuclear policies). They are doing nothing in storage. It was basically greenwashing Russian natural gas, combined with typical German attitude of "we are the enlightened us, we know better" that makes it impossible for them to learn from this mistake.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    Technically, you can build more renewables than you need to have 100% renewables in almost all circumstances. Then you have something like gas power plants powered by gas generated from excess energy on sunny days to get through the rest of the days.
UKR_anon 4y ago
[dead]
AstralStorm 4y ago
The bigger issue is that the green capacity should have been increasing almost exponentially. The cleanup is not keeping up, especially for industrial sources.
Cryptonic 4y ago
I like the approach how the introduction attracts the conservative readers and then completely turns around at some point. I just hope they read on after the introduction.
IYasha 4y ago
They couldn't have made less distinguishable colors in charts, could they?
autarchprinceps 4y ago
It's not bad at all. You can look at it in isolation and wish for more, but the truth is, controverse oppinions about high nuclear usage, like France, aside, the vast majority of other countries have significantly less green energy percentage. Small exceptions aside, Germany is only beat by those countries/areas whose green energy is close to 100% water, which of course is easy to use, and has been used first historically. It isn't new and most countries use as much as their geography allows. Netherlands, UK, Italy, Spain, basically all of eastern Europe, the US, India, China, Australia, ..., they all produce less green energy. If Germany's energy policy was bad, what's the excuse of all those other countries?

106 points by guerby 4y ago

baq 4y ago

The whole EU is setting up for a more interesting winter than… 1989? Not sure since I’ve been barely alive then but certainly it hasn’t been this dire since quite a while

nonethewiser 4y ago
Was a hot summer too.
AstralStorm 4y ago
The summer is worse, especially drought - lack of water to cool power plants.

guerby 4y ago

"It's not as bad as a lot of people are saying"

standardUser 4y ago

"The share of renewables in actually generation has gone from essentially nothing in 2000 (a bit of hydro), to 40-50% of the total (depending on how you count biomass and waste-to-energy)" Based on that, it's one of the only sane energy policies on the planet! Minus the premature closure of nuclear plants.

waschl 4y ago
For sure growth at renewables is great. However the overall percentages you gave are all-year averages. It goes down to single digit % on dark windstill winter days. Considering this and the fact that nuclear energy (Fukushima), coal (climate change) and now gas (Putin) are effectively „banned“, it’s really quite a mess.
Scoundreller 4y ago
Those percentages are just shares of electricity. Their share of energy is more dire. Natural gas is just 15% of German electricity production, but nearly half of residential heating. Then there’s gas-obligatory fertilizer production, on-premise electricity generation (campuses), cooking fuel, etc. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-much-does-germany-need-russian-gas-2022-01-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-much-does-germany-n...
- standardUser 4y ago
  We should be so lucky to live in a world where most nations had achieved even a third of electricity generation from renewables. We'd be vastly better off than we are now! So I am happy to give credit in those few cases where credit is due.
  - morning_gelato 4y ago
    I think carbon-intensity (gCO2eq/kWh) is a much more important metric than the use of specific generating technologies. Looking at the data [1], Germany has one of the dirtiest electrical grids in western Europe. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
    - standardUser 4y ago
      We all know that electricity can be utilized for purposes currently monopolized by fossil fuels, including heating and automobiles. Which means that the end game necessarily includes a rapid transition towards electricity generation from renewables. Germany has gone much father down that road than most nations, even if they have an unfortunately massive amount of electricity still being produced from coal.
- olau 4y ago
  Storing heat is actually much easier than storing electricity. In relatively dense areas with district heating, you can even establish storage that retains heat from the summer. Yes, it requires investments and scaling up of the production of these solutions - the reason these investments haven't been made yet, is plainly that it wasn't deemed necessary yet. Continuing burning fossil fuels was cheaper. Why would gas be obligatory for fertilizer production? I've dug into some industrial uses in my country (bakeries for instance), and in all the cases I looked into, gas was not actually required, just a bit cheaper or more convenient. If you put a tax on gas, all of them would switch within a few years. It looks like you need hydrogen for fertilizer, so I guess switching to (more expensive) hydrolysis would be the solution there.
tsimionescu 4y ago
And yet, Germany produces more CO2 than any other European nation, and much more CO2 per capita than India.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Germany has 15 million people more than France, the next most populous European country. It is hardly surprising they produce more carbon dioxide. India will surpass Germany unless the degrowthers get their way and condemn Indians to permanent poverty which doesn’t look likely.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    There is no need for poverty there, but there's the case for massive deployment of renewables. China shows it can be done from scratch without getting poor. That is not happening. Indian government also tends to look aside when other polluting industries - mostly textile - are involved.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Where are you getting that number from? Couldn't this just mean they stopped producing as much nuclear, for example? I'm sure they have increased their green energy, but we can't tell from this figure. In fact, the total output could have actually decreased but increased relative to others. Especially if they traded domestic energy produciton for piping in more natural gas straight to homes for heating.

asguy 4y ago

Enough for Trump to call them on it 3 years ago? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg

t6jvcereio 4y ago
Wait, is this the same Trump who said he was getting the USA out of NATO, or is this a different Trump?
- asguy 4y ago
  Why are you bringing up something unrelated as a gotcha for something nobody is commenting about? This is related to Germany energy policy. Trump brought up the danger of depending on Putin’s Russia to the Germans, and they laughed at him. They aren’t laughing much now. What you should be asking is: How was Germany so dumb that Trump saw it, but they didn’t?
  - rnk 4y ago
    Because it's a good, realistic comparison. Pointing out Germany was too dependent on Russia for natural gas - good point. Saying the US would drop out of NATO - not a good strategy for stability. If you wanted to point out a Trump comment that everyone saw as a mistake at the time (but that doesn't add to the conversation), give the examples where he made dangerous suggestions to treat covid. Talking about nato seems fairly relevant. Tons of people saw Germany was putting itself in a bad position. Every US administration since the initial direction was set said that.
    - nradov 4y ago
      President Trump talked about dropping out of NATO specifically because Germany (along with several other European countries) had broken their treaty obligations and had failed to spend the required 2% of GDP on defense. They were essentially getting free protection from the USA, France, and the UK without doing anything in return. And the threat worked! Germany did significantly boost defense spending (although still not quite to the 2% target).

fkarg 4y ago

Not was. Is.

nickdothutton 4y ago

We’ll find out this winter.

fdomig 4y ago

Living in Germany I can add: Yes, shutting down nuclear power plants "so early" was naive, however, even the now horrible war in Ukraine boosts the process to migrate to (more) sustainable energy even faster. Also, pretty soon energy prices in Germany might be so much lower and this will be a key advantage.

uniqueuid 4y ago
Also: The war in Ukraine shows what a security liability nuclear plants are in wartime.
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Which, in what is surely a coincidence, is good for Russia.
  - MagnumOpus 4y ago
    …with the Russian state-owned Rosatom being the biggest (and cheapest) builder of nuclear plants abroad? Occam’s razor applies here, I think; no need for conspiracy theories.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      Cheap is not necessarily better, their designs are now outdated. Most importantly, they are not water sparing, which will be necessary really soon now.
      - IYasha 4y ago
        Aren't you all kinda missing the main point: who is the world's manufacturer of nuclear fuel. Hold your laugh when you realize. :)
        belorn 4y ago
        That is an common misunderstanding. You can't interchange one nuclear fuel for an other. Fuel rods are designed and built explicitly for the kind of plant that will use it, which mean that the fuel mostly used will be for the plant that is mostly built. Guess who holds the patents to the fuel rods design for a specific nuclear power plant design. Uranium mining however is pretty diversified. about 1/4 come from Canada, 1/4 from Australia, 1/4 from Russia and 1/4 from Africa. It then get processed into a powder, and then shipped to a fuel construction facility. One of the larger site of fuel rod construction is actually Sweden, which has also recently started to expand construction for fuel to Rosatom reactors. Creating fuel rods from Uranium refined powder is however not the biggest problem that the world has.

deleted 4y ago

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klanhx 4y ago

lesuorac 4y ago
> If one criticized Schroeder for his involvement with Gazprom on social media in 2019, comments would get deleted. [citation needed] Even NPR criticized him [1]. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/18/601825131/why-putins-pal-germanys-ex-chancellor-hasnt-landed-on-a-sanctions-list https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/04/18/601825131/...
- kllqp 4y ago
V__ 4y ago
> Now his missteps are "common knowledge". The whole Nordstream situation is way more nuanced. Nordstream-1 was built before the Crimea invasion after Ukraine stole gas in transit. However, after the invasion of Georgia. It's not like Russian foreign policy suddenly surprised everyone. It was as bad a decision then as it is now in retrospect.

Faelian2 4y ago

Pretty messed up : https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/what-transition-are-the-germans-up-to-exactly/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/societal-choices/... 250 to 300 billion euros, which is more than the cost of rebuilding from scratch all the French nuclear power plants, is what Germany has invested from 1996 to 2014 to increase by 22% the fraction of renewable electricity into the gross production of the country (that went from 4% to 27%). For this price tag our neighbors did not decrease their energy imports, did not accelerate the decrease of their CO2 emissions per capita, that remain 80% higher to those of a French, increased the stress on the European grid.

merb 4y ago
btw. his pricing is completly off and you can't build all french nuclear plants from scratch with 250 to 300 billion euros.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  France could.
btilly 4y ago
That's a great analysis, but unfortunately ends at around when Ukraine was first invaded. It doesn't show what has happened in the last several years.
jakewins 4y ago
For 250B EUR, Germany paid for the learning curve movement that now enables the rest of the world to deploy solar and batteries. If it was not for German investment to drive that 90% drop in price, bills like the IRA would not even be possible to contemplate. The "that would pay for the entire French fleet" thing is nonsense. Just google the cost of the most recent plants built anywhere in EU and multiply it by how many you'd need to meet France's 61GW capacity. (example: Hinkley Point C, 75B EUR for 3.26GWe, 61GW/3.26GW = 18, 18*75 = 1,350B EUR, Olkiluoto Unit 3, 11B EUR for 1.6GWe, 61GW/1.6=~38, 38*11=418B EUR). Yes, Germany paid a huge price for their solar. We should be thankful they did.

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smsm42 4y ago

They talk about dependency on Russia being a "mistake". But with so many high-rank people (including former Chancellor) being paid by Russia openly (and who knows how many secretly beyond that) - does it look like a "mistake" or a deliberate policy on Russia's side and widespread corruption being ignored on Germany's side?

okr 4y ago
There is no proof of corruption. What do you know? Bring it to the press.
- durnygbur 4y ago
  There are no proofs. Those with proofs have suicide waiting at their doorsteps.
- dreinhardt 4y ago
  That has already happened. Try looking for Schwesig and her Klimastiftung, and that’s just a tiny part of the picture.
- smsm42 4y ago
  I think the standard formula is "no evidence". Incidentally, check out https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... But I think that the position of "until we have a court decision proving corruption, one could not reasonably talk of a possibility of corruption, and discuss appearance of conflict of interest" is naive at best, and completely boneheaded at the usual case. Corruption is notoriously hard to prove, especially "soft" corruption where there's no direct bribery but more like alignment of interests diverting the interests of corrupt functionaries from serving the people (who even knows that that means?) to serving their private wallet and/or ideology (well, that one is much clearer). And there's tons of the press talking about German politicians being too cozy with Russia, even pre-dating the war. So what? It's not like German voters cared.

empiricus 4y ago

I feel like the focus should be on cheaper energy (Is 10x cheaper possible?) than focus on green energy. Cheap energy would open a lot of opportunities (carbon sequestration?) and solve a lot of economic tensions. But it looks like the energy markets are going towards bigger prices and probably more profit that way.

jhallenworld 4y ago
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy, they just happen to also be green. But this is a recent development- fossil fuels were cheaper in the recent past. The transition to them would be a lot cheaper if the opposition from the incumbent energy suppliers was not so stiff. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  you quoted Lazard. I always warn anyone quoting that study to be careful with the prices claimed there. There are two major issues - one that the current prices of wind and solar are primarily driven by zero fuel cost. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid continues to exist. Second - because the grid exists, energy for when the wind isn't blowing at night can come from somewhere and your lights stay on. Wind and solar introduce volatility into the mix, volatility on the generation side. That has a cost that is not currently borne by them but by us - the consumers. Lazard and co conveniently ignore this aspect when claiming that wind and solar are as cheap as they make them out to be. To be clear, wind and solar are cheap but that may or may not hold true in the future. There is currently no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere that runs on renewable energy for more than minutes at a time. Renewables are very far from being able to provide energy 24/7 and cheaply.
  - Krasnol 4y ago
    I don't get your criticism. Why should there not be zero fuel cost? Your second argument is supposed to be a variable? Since with a wider grid, the volatility falls ("there is always wind somewhere"). I also don't think the size of the whole grid should be priced into a single power source. Why not price that into other non-green sources too if the local grid doesn't support the whole country?

timmg 4y ago

My biggest worry is that they are going to open NordStream 2 this winter "just to fill the emergency gap" -- and then it never gets closed. I honestly don't know how likely that would be.

okr 4y ago
Why is it a worry? That would reduce the cost of living dramatically again.
- timmg 4y ago
  Because I think we need to continue sanctioning Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.
  - okr 4y ago
    Why?
    - timmg 4y ago
      Because murdering people and taking their land is wrong.
- klausjensen 4y ago
  The faster Germany remove the dependency on Russian gas/fossils, the faster it can cut a critical source of income for Russia and their war-machine. A temporary slightly increased cost of living is a cheap price to pay.
  - okr 4y ago
    Slightly? Have you looked at the energy prizes lately? I think the approach, pain now, sustainanble energy and independency of fosssils later, is highly risky. What if the alternatives are not ready for the winter?
    - 4y ago

daneel_w 4y ago

How messed up was it that Trump warned about the exact current situation years ago, and was promptly ignored? Didn't Obama, too?

ManuelKiessling 4y ago
Yes, we absolutely fucked up here, there is no doubt. The dependency wasn’t a topic at all, neither in politics nor “on the street”. A cushy situation for decades lead to naïvety, I guess.
nonethewiser 4y ago
It wasn't exactly a controversial take either. What was Biden thinking by green-lighting NS2?
- google234123 4y ago
  Biden has done a lot of bad things just to do the opposite of what ever trump was doing.
TMWNN 4y ago
Not just ignored. Trump at the UN warns that Germany is endangering itself by increasing dependence on Russia. [German envoys laugh.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwgepe). Among the comedians is Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, now enjoying a quiet retirement back home in Saarland. (The YouTube comments are hilarious.)

seydor 4y ago

The problem is that Germany is taking everyone down with them The countries that follow the EU wholesale energy price rules are royally screwed, because the price of power is set by the exorbitant price of gas even if they only use 5% gas in their energy mix. In addition to carbon mandatory limits this leads to soaring electricity prices which do not correspond to real supply and demand, but religious adherence to inflexible regulations that have not been changed despite the war. This is madness at multi-state level

dagss 4y ago
It is not also gas, also less hydropower available than usual in Norway, Switzerland etc. due to unfortunate climate/weather past year. There is genuine energy shortage not only an issue of setting the right price.

throwaways85989 4y ago

The disaster is already preprogrammed. Lots of germans bought electric heaters to heat flats through the winter, as the heat provided by the house central heating will be reduced. Which will result in large increases of base load on the network, which already will be under strain. Which means rolling black outs as soon as it gets cold. Perma-black outs if the people do not see reasons and unplug their heaters. No solution has been proposed for this. The clever ones went for wood for heating. Still preferable to shiver one winter through, then have it warm in putins prison.

RandomLensman 4y ago
It is not clear at all that people will behave that way. The buying of electric heaters for now just reflects huge uncertainty about any sources of heat.
dreinhardt 4y ago
People also bought toilet paper against covid.
timbit42 4y ago
What percentage of German homes use resistive heating? If they switch to heat pumps with a COP of at least 4, every heat pump will free up enough electricity to run 3 more heat pumps. The problem is importing enough heat pumps and having the government subsidize the purchase and installation for those who can't afford it. Perhaps NATO countries would sell their stocks of heat pumps to Germany if manufacturers don't have enough of them.

btilly 4y ago

This article says, "Germany did a bunch of reasonable looking things." But after Russia invaded Georgia (2008) then Ukraine (2014), Germany worked to increase dependence on Russia for both electricity and heating. They failed to take even the most basic steps to diversify. Such as building LNG terminals to give them the option of importing gas from countries like the USA. And it wasn't like there wasn't some history demonstrating the Russia wasn't always a reliable supplier. For example in 2009 they shut off gas for 10 days. As it happens they had a good reason (dispute with Ukraine over Ukraine stealing gas - which Ukraine had been). But fundamentally all of Europe, Germany included, should have been on notice that a single man could take out their gas supply. A man whose capriciousness was demonstrated in 2008 by his invasion of Georgia. Why on Earth did Germany not work to diversify? And why, given the current consequences of that past failure, are people trying to defend Germany's past bad decisions?

nonethewiser 4y ago
> Why on Earth did Germany not work to diversify? So they could benefit financially by being the natural gas hub for Europe. As you said, the reasons not to work with Russia were plainly obvious.
piva00 4y ago
What's even more egregious is that Germany has ran multiple years with a massive budget surplus (2018 + 2019 alone amass to 100bi€). Imagine if that could be used to be invested in ways to have a diversified grid...
RandomLensman 4y ago
Because in the past that also would have likely forced a rethinking/reexamination of Germany's defense setup and that would have been impossible to sell domestically.
edgyquant 4y ago
I can’t make the argument a previous head of state should be mandated from working where the free market takes them. I also can’t argue that the decisions of Germany’s leadership make a ton of sense. Or rather I can, the economic argument and Germany not likely to deal with a Russia near home it isn’t able to easily deal with (outside of MAD.) That calculus makes sense to me I get and even still agree with the principle. But you also have to look out for your national security and it really seems like Germany wasn’t looking out for anyone but it’s self here. Germany faces no serious conventional threat from Russia nor does it currently have competing spheres of influence. However as part of NATO and the EU does. So it looks to be pretty clear that the Germans do not consider that they and, say, Lithuania share the same goals.

gumby 4y ago

The author ignores another important part: betting on Russia was a bet on domestic security. Tying European countries together through commercial interdependence had a demonstrated track record of causing the longest period of peace in Europe in over a millenium. Well, why shouldn't that work in the case of Russia as well? Well we all know why is didn't work in the case of Russia. As this article well shows, Germany made a number of mistakes that amounted to not hedging this bet. But given the philosophies of Europe and the USA in the late 90s-mid 2010s, this approach can't be called utterly foolish.

_jal 4y ago
Interdependence does tend to promote peace, but only up to a point. Past that point it becomes a weapon, as anyone who has been anywhere near a messy divorce has seen. Imperialist Russians clearly knew this, but apparently only saw the offensive angle. (At least, they either didn't see or discounted the risks to their own exposure, or they would have held reserves elsewhere.)
klausjensen 4y ago
It sort of makes sense - until 2008 (invasion of Georgia). Or at least 2014 (first invasion of Ukraine). Top German politicians were/are tied closely to Russian interests. Like former Bundeskanzler (chancellor) Gerhard Schröder, who still to this day refuses to distance himself from Putin/Russia. He was literally paid by Putin-controlled entities to lobby Russian interests in Germany/Europe. The amount of money that flowed from Russia to Germany in corruption and sweet-heart deals is staggering - and I am sure much more will be revealed in the coming years, of what really went on behind the scenes.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Reading The Romanovs - I found it interesting how many Germans were influential in Russia in the 17th and 18th century. Seems like there's a long history here.
seydor 4y ago
And now EU is betting its future on the dictator of Azerbaijan (who is known to bribe German and european politicians) for gas and Saudi arabia for oil. Couldn't think of more iconic duo https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-azerbaijan-gas-deal-is-a-repeat-mistake/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-azerbaijan-gas-deal-i...

landofredwater 4y ago

The plan to shut down all the nuclear plants was misguided at best. Seventeen plants were able to supply almost a quarter of Germany's total power [1] for their lifetimes, and then the cost from reimbursing investors into nuclear power is added onto those of having to build more wind and solar. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

sudden_dystopia 4y ago

You can sugar coat this any way you want but the fact of the matter is, they cut energy production in lieu of renewables without actually having enough renewables up and running to offset the difference. And now they are in the predicament of not having enough energy because the gas taps have been turned down. The path to hell is paved with good (but not well formulated) intentions. Just wait until you see the environmental devastation of a continent that turns to cutting down all the trees and burning anything they can find to stay warm.

belorn 4y ago

"As the numbers from the past 20 years show, renewables do not require more volumes of gas (MWh) for the system to be balanced (they may require more gas-fired capacity (MW), but that’s not the same thing - gas turbines are manufactured in Europe)." This is a fact noted, but it includes an additional aspect. If there is a need for more gas-fired capacity, that burn less volumes of gas, then that operation still need to be paid. The way that works in Sweden is called reserve energy, which mean the plant get paid twice. First they get paid through subsidies in order to keep the plant operational and staffed, and then they get paid a second time when the plant is burning gas and the spot price is at the highest point. This is quite expensive. Sadly I rarely see people actually account for this cost, and the article does not.

guerby 4y ago
Gas turbine are the cheapest electricity generator to build, only expensive to operate due to fuel cost. That's why people don't mention overbuilding gas2power capacity. Data from: https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost/pdf/capital_cost_AEO2020.pdf https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...
- belorn 4y ago
  For now at least, those plants are not operated or maintained by robots. You need employees and people to be there even if they are not generating any power, and they need to be "warm" if they are to get online quick. The case examples in that link assume constant running. One could simply take the Fixed O&M times the effect and assume that (in combination with investment costs) to be the subsidies required to keep the plant in stand-by, through a constant operated plant is not the same as one that is standing by for most the time. None of the examples you linked has that kind of operation.

jmyeet 4y ago

Interesting. Not a single mention of the impact of foreign policy precipitating this potential energy crisis. Foreign policy cannot be untangled from domestic policy. There is now this idea that the only reasonable thing to do was to completely cut off Russia from international trade, prior to the unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine. Why? Because that made you dependent on Russia and that's just ontologically bad. That's not a reasonable position to have. I mean people trade with China in spite of Tibet, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square, Saudi Arabia in spite of providing material support to al-Qaeda (and being the country probably most responsible for 9/11), an unjustifable genocide in Yemen and Khashoggi or even the United States despite many sins that can reasonbly be listed. Trade in particular and engagement in general is the only reasonable path towards Russia or really any other power we may not like. The problem was that Germany and the US through NATO expected Putin to swallow something the US never would ie a hostile major power in your backyard. I mean the US almost started World War 3 when the USSR tried this in Cuba (after the US had already done it to Turkey). But instead people like the frame this debate as you should never have traded with Russia and/or to support the narrative that nuclear power is good.

locallost 4y ago

The author here makes a great point that Germany kickstarted the renewable industry for the whole world, by basically investing in it before it made economic sense. But they managed to invent the future here because now it makes economic sense for everybody. The overall effect of this on the global situation is worth pondering, the numbers in renewables vs everything else in the world are quite staggering in the last years. I think a lot of people didn't catch up on it. It's pretty clear that investments in renewables will continue to accelerate, especially considering the war. And because they are so fast to deploy, the renewable share has no other option but to go up. The one unanswered question is how high can it go. Realistically until somebody does 100%, there will always be questions. But in my life I've heard "you can't do 10%/20%/30%" etc. and now plenty of countries run on majority renewables and don't have issues. The issue is very divisive, but I'm glad more and more articles like these are popping up, with some hard numbers that paint a very different picture than "Germany replaced nuclear with coal, madness".

glogla 4y ago
> The issue is very divisive, but I'm glad more and more articles like these are popping up, with some hard numbers that paint a very different picture than "Germany replaced nuclear with coal, madness". The picture is not all that different sadly. Renewables are intermittent, so renewables without storage or low-carbon baseload (= nuclear) will need fossil fuels. Germany's policy is to remove as much low-carbon baseload as possible both inside and outside its borders (by pushing anti-nuclear policies). They are doing nothing in storage. It was basically greenwashing Russian natural gas, combined with typical German attitude of "we are the enlightened us, we know better" that makes it impossible for them to learn from this mistake.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  Technically, you can build more renewables than you need to have 100% renewables in almost all circumstances. Then you have something like gas power plants powered by gas generated from excess energy on sunny days to get through the rest of the days.

UKR_anon 4y ago

[dead]

AstralStorm 4y ago

The bigger issue is that the green capacity should have been increasing almost exponentially. The cleanup is not keeping up, especially for industrial sources.

Cryptonic 4y ago

I like the approach how the introduction attracts the conservative readers and then completely turns around at some point. I just hope they read on after the introduction.

IYasha 4y ago

They couldn't have made less distinguishable colors in charts, could they?

autarchprinceps 4y ago

It's not bad at all. You can look at it in isolation and wish for more, but the truth is, controverse oppinions about high nuclear usage, like France, aside, the vast majority of other countries have significantly less green energy percentage. Small exceptions aside, Germany is only beat by those countries/areas whose green energy is close to 100% water, which of course is easy to use, and has been used first historically. It isn't new and most countries use as much as their geography allows. Netherlands, UK, Italy, Spain, basically all of eastern Europe, the US, India, China, Australia, ..., they all produce less green energy. If Germany's energy policy was bad, what's the excuse of all those other countries?