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And all of it was replaced by renewables: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_

And all of it was replaced by renewables: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschla...

pantalaimon 4y ago
And natural gas
Rygian 4y ago
Why is Germany using more natural gas now than in 2010? Did they replace coal by gas? Would it have been possible to replace coal with nuclear instead, and keep gas at 2015 levels?
- jansan 4y ago
  It is needed in summer to replace solar energy during the night. Gas power plants can be switched on and off almost at will, unlike coal or nuclear plants that have long startup and shutdown times. So the gas power plants are switched on at night in summer when the sun doesn't shine. Also, the EU commission declared in February 2022 natural gas as a sustainable energy source, and the EU parliament confirmed this in July 2022. Sounds a bit bizarre, but the dates are correct.
  - Rygian 4y ago
    So nuclear was replaced by renewables+gas (EU newspeak not withstanding).
  - hedora 4y ago
    Some modern nuclear plants can be turned on and off at will. The reactor itself takes a long time to ramp up and down, but it heats a molten salt battery. The battery can burst-power the turbines at well-above the reactor output; they can be sized to handle peak demand + overnight loads.
    - calaphos 4y ago
      Even if technically possible the economics of nuclear power plants don't favour only using them for peak loads. With gigantic initial captial investment and very low fuel costs (almost?) all nuclear power plants are used for base loads. It's hard to find current numbers, but capital investment for combined cycle natural gas plants seems to be about a tenth of modern reactor projects in western countries.
      - hedora 4y ago
        We have no real choice. Natural gas has to be phased out as soon as possible. The plant designs I’m describing are new, but marching to commercialization. They are not in wide-scale production yet. They are optimized for a world where solar and wind have taken over most of the production.
- legulere 4y ago
  Gas has lower CO2 emissions and the advantage over coal that it can better supply peak loads. At that point in time Russia was also seen as a reliable cheap supplier of it, as the UdSSR has been since the 70s before. It's unlikely that coal could have been replaced with new nuclear. It would have probably been an EPR from back then Framatome and Siemens. Construction of the EPR in Olkiluoto started in 2005 and just finished recently. Keeping old nuclear reactors running and shutting down coal plants instead would have been possible though, but didn't have backing in the population.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  Schröder was chancellor when the initial nuclear phase-out was decided. He later joined the board of Gazprom. I no longer believe in coincidence.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> all of it was replaced by renewables An equal quantity of renewable generation was brought online. That isn’t the same as replacing it with renewables. Had the nukes stayed, Germany would be more secure and a better global citizen in terms of emissions.
mabbo 4y ago
They could have instead replaced the fossil fuel electrical generation with those renewables, and kept the nuclear plants. That would have been a massive reduction in carbon emissions by Germany. Odd choice.
- legulere 4y ago
  I would agree, especially from the standpoint of today, but I guess you have to see things historically. Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German or bad handling of nuclear waste at the Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. The climate crisis picked up as a topic only really in the late 90s. That explains the first nuclear exit plan in 2000. The current exit from 2011 was a direct reaction to what happened in Fukushima. I mean even today you still have plenty of people and company that think that there is still a lot of time before more action must be taken against climate change.
  - asdff 4y ago
    But isn't it scary that political decisions about energy are made on reactionary terms rather than engineering terms? An engineer would not have said "we have to stop nuclear power," because of accidents, they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. This is why airlines are safe, because of past accidents that were deeply tragic and catastrophic but often went on to stymie some shortcoming of aircraft that wasn't apparent in modelling and testing that had been done at that point. If we reacted to aircraft disasters how the German government reacted to nuclear energy disasters that didn't even happen within their own borders, we'd be back to using clipper ships to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. This is regressive thinking that hurts our species overall, not progressive thinking that leads to technological improvements and benefits for our species.
    - dorgo 4y ago
      > they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. So, eartchquakes and tsunamis were a new developement in japan. The engineers had never a chance to study them and develope methods to mitigate risks for nuclear plants? If plane crashes would endanger whole countries or continents we would ban air traffic all together.
zakk 4y ago
Part of these renewables are the so-called "biomass", which leads to pretty substantial CO2 emissions. So basically they replaced a CO2-neutral energy source, with another which is pretty CO2-intensive. Renewable does not mean good for the environment!
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Biomass use in certain European countries is... all sorts of questionable. Some of it is wood imports from America for use as "green" energy, discounting the energy cost of shipment.
thescriptkiddie 4y ago
No, most of it was replaced with extremely dirty brown coal extracted by strip mining.
rasz 4y ago
Almost 1/4 (biomass) is a huge scam (cofiring freshly chopped trees in coal plants)
hbgl 4y ago
You cannot 1-for-1 replace a reliable energy source with an intermittent one.
Faaak 4y ago
Would've been better to decrease coal though. Coal provokes more deaths per kWh than nuclear
- dieze 4y ago
  ...by 3 orders of magnitude
- asdff 4y ago
  Probably a lot more radioactive pollution as well
maliker 4y ago
True. Some even argue that Germany's renewable build-out was so large that it significantly lowered renewable costs worldwide. But if Russian gas was as expensive and unreliable 15 years ago as it is now, I suspect they would have kept the nukes.
- YeBanKo 4y ago
  If only there was a sign in 2008 that would indicate to Germany that Russia was not a reliable partner. Like if, for example, Russia targeted oil pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Oh, but there was: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121866234961938253 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121866234961938253

And all of it was replaced by renewables: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Energiemix_Deutschla...

pantalaimon 4y ago

And natural gas

Rygian 4y ago

Why is Germany using more natural gas now than in 2010? Did they replace coal by gas? Would it have been possible to replace coal with nuclear instead, and keep gas at 2015 levels?

jansan 4y ago
It is needed in summer to replace solar energy during the night. Gas power plants can be switched on and off almost at will, unlike coal or nuclear plants that have long startup and shutdown times. So the gas power plants are switched on at night in summer when the sun doesn't shine. Also, the EU commission declared in February 2022 natural gas as a sustainable energy source, and the EU parliament confirmed this in July 2022. Sounds a bit bizarre, but the dates are correct.
- Rygian 4y ago
  So nuclear was replaced by renewables+gas (EU newspeak not withstanding).
- hedora 4y ago
  Some modern nuclear plants can be turned on and off at will. The reactor itself takes a long time to ramp up and down, but it heats a molten salt battery. The battery can burst-power the turbines at well-above the reactor output; they can be sized to handle peak demand + overnight loads.
  - calaphos 4y ago
    Even if technically possible the economics of nuclear power plants don't favour only using them for peak loads. With gigantic initial captial investment and very low fuel costs (almost?) all nuclear power plants are used for base loads. It's hard to find current numbers, but capital investment for combined cycle natural gas plants seems to be about a tenth of modern reactor projects in western countries.
    - hedora 4y ago
      We have no real choice. Natural gas has to be phased out as soon as possible. The plant designs I’m describing are new, but marching to commercialization. They are not in wide-scale production yet. They are optimized for a world where solar and wind have taken over most of the production.
legulere 4y ago
Gas has lower CO2 emissions and the advantage over coal that it can better supply peak loads. At that point in time Russia was also seen as a reliable cheap supplier of it, as the UdSSR has been since the 70s before. It's unlikely that coal could have been replaced with new nuclear. It would have probably been an EPR from back then Framatome and Siemens. Construction of the EPR in Olkiluoto started in 2005 and just finished recently. Keeping old nuclear reactors running and shutting down coal plants instead would have been possible though, but didn't have backing in the population.
pantalaimon 4y ago
Schröder was chancellor when the initial nuclear phase-out was decided. He later joined the board of Gazprom. I no longer believe in coincidence.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> all of it was replaced by renewables An equal quantity of renewable generation was brought online. That isn’t the same as replacing it with renewables. Had the nukes stayed, Germany would be more secure and a better global citizen in terms of emissions.

mabbo 4y ago

They could have instead replaced the fossil fuel electrical generation with those renewables, and kept the nuclear plants. That would have been a massive reduction in carbon emissions by Germany. Odd choice.

legulere 4y ago
I would agree, especially from the standpoint of today, but I guess you have to see things historically. Issues with nuclear like fallout from Chernobyl still leading to contamination today in German or bad handling of nuclear waste at the Asse II mine have been a topic in German society for a very long time. The climate crisis picked up as a topic only really in the late 90s. That explains the first nuclear exit plan in 2000. The current exit from 2011 was a direct reaction to what happened in Fukushima. I mean even today you still have plenty of people and company that think that there is still a lot of time before more action must be taken against climate change.
- asdff 4y ago
  But isn't it scary that political decisions about energy are made on reactionary terms rather than engineering terms? An engineer would not have said "we have to stop nuclear power," because of accidents, they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. This is why airlines are safe, because of past accidents that were deeply tragic and catastrophic but often went on to stymie some shortcoming of aircraft that wasn't apparent in modelling and testing that had been done at that point. If we reacted to aircraft disasters how the German government reacted to nuclear energy disasters that didn't even happen within their own borders, we'd be back to using clipper ships to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. This is regressive thinking that hurts our species overall, not progressive thinking that leads to technological improvements and benefits for our species.
  - dorgo 4y ago
    > they would have studied those accidents and developed methods to mitigate them. So, eartchquakes and tsunamis were a new developement in japan. The engineers had never a chance to study them and develope methods to mitigate risks for nuclear plants? If plane crashes would endanger whole countries or continents we would ban air traffic all together.

zakk 4y ago

Part of these renewables are the so-called "biomass", which leads to pretty substantial CO2 emissions. So basically they replaced a CO2-neutral energy source, with another which is pretty CO2-intensive. Renewable does not mean good for the environment!

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Biomass use in certain European countries is... all sorts of questionable. Some of it is wood imports from America for use as "green" energy, discounting the energy cost of shipment.

thescriptkiddie 4y ago

No, most of it was replaced with extremely dirty brown coal extracted by strip mining.

rasz 4y ago

Almost 1/4 (biomass) is a huge scam (cofiring freshly chopped trees in coal plants)

hbgl 4y ago

You cannot 1-for-1 replace a reliable energy source with an intermittent one.

Faaak 4y ago

Would've been better to decrease coal though. Coal provokes more deaths per kWh than nuclear

dieze 4y ago
...by 3 orders of magnitude
asdff 4y ago
Probably a lot more radioactive pollution as well

maliker 4y ago

True. Some even argue that Germany's renewable build-out was so large that it significantly lowered renewable costs worldwide. But if Russian gas was as expensive and unreliable 15 years ago as it is now, I suspect they would have kept the nukes.

YeBanKo 4y ago
If only there was a sign in 2008 that would indicate to Germany that Russia was not a reliable partner. Like if, for example, Russia targeted oil pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Oh, but there was: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121866234961938253 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121866234961938253