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Stop spreading disinformation. Germany not only switched off nuclear plants but reduced its coal use drastically compared to levels 10 years ago. I've posted da

Stop spreading disinformation. Germany not only switched off nuclear plants but reduced its coal use drastically compared to levels 10 years ago. I've posted data on this a billion times, and am too lazy to do it now -- checking the actual data for once before posting an opinion should not be too difficult. Sorry, but this is beyond pitiful.

herewulf 4y ago
How is that reduced coal use going right now? And next winter?
- locallost 4y ago
  It's going as well as it did. Stop reading headlines with agendas and look at the data. Start here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255181824 https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255...
mpweiher 4y ago
Stop spreading disinformation. Reduction has been minimal, and now that we no longer have the Russian gas that we used to substitute coal, we are turning coal plants back on. While at the same time shutting down clean nuclear. The mind boggles. Go to https://www.electricitymaps.com https://www.electricitymaps.com On almost every day, Germany is the 2nd least green country in Europe, only after Poland. In 2014, Germany was the largest producer of CO2 emissions in Europe, by a wide margin. https://gefira.org/en/2015/12/15/germany-the-largest-co2-emissions-producer-in-europe/ https://gefira.org/en/2015/12/15/germany-the-largest-co2-emi...
- locallost 4y ago
  Here are the official data related to electricity production https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2022-12-16.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... Coal are the bottom two things on the chart (brown and gray). Drastically down. Gas use percentage wise is pretty much the same as 10 years ago. Obviously you're making things up. Germany is also not turning coal plants back on: there were about a dozen coal plants put on stand by this year as an emergency, but they mostly stayed off. The funny part is that the emergency was mostly related to the collapse of nuclear in France where most of the surrounding countries suddenly needed to support it. But in the end renewables made up most of the difference. Here's a Twitter thread with the data https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255181824 https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255... Europe needs to get off fossil fuels and it's about to do that really fast. Unnecessary hurdles were removed to make renewable deployment easier. As a consequence there's been a huge uptick in nuclear lobbying and astroturfing - this industry is scared it's about to be made officially irrelevant. All sort of plans are being made but there will be so much new renewable generation by the time this plans are finalized, let alone the decades it will take to get anything done with nuclear, that it will not matter at all.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    > Germany is also not turning coal plants back on "Ab Oktober werden insgesamt zwölf Kohlekraftwerke mit einer Leistung bis zu knapp sieben Gigawatt zusätzlich Strom für das deutsche Netz zur Verfügung stellen." From October, a total of twelve coal-fired power plants with an output of up to almost seven gigawatts will provide additional electricity for the German grid. https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/stromerzeugung-welche-kohlekraftwerke-im-oktober-wieder-in-betrieb-gehen/28717510.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/stromerzeug... > Gas use percentage wise is pretty much the same as 10 years ago. The very chart you cite has gas use almost tripling from 1990 to 2020, from 36 to 91. > the collapse of nuclear in France There was no "collapse" of Nuclear in France. This counter-factual talking point has been corrected so many times it isn't funny any more. What happened was that France scheduled maintenance work that had been deferred during the pandemic. This was planned, because with nuclear power, you can plan things. The reason that it was planned for summer is that that is when both energy demand is at its lowest and otherwise not-so-stellar renewable production is at its highest. Unlike renewables, which are mostly unpredictable, and the little that is predictable is bad: that they produce far less energy when it's needed most. And even the Twitter thread you cite (which also incorrectly speaks of French "outages"), admits that a whopping 1/3rd of the reduction in nuclear production was due to Germany turning off plants. Also, you might want to take a closer look at the chart you cited. The still very modest drop in coal you spotted mostly coincides with a drop in total energy consumption, making the relative reduction even more modest than it already is. So we just used less energy overall. Whoop-dee-doo. And coal use rose again even in 2021 in absolute terms, so before the war.
    - locallost 4y ago
      Read the Twitter link I posted: only a 1/6 of the deficit caused mostly by the nuclear failure in France was replaced by coal. Those plants were put on stand by because wishful thinking is not a good policy, but they were mostly idle. A quarter of France plants were out unplanned, another quarter were in planned maintenance. This was all documented extensively, we should not debate facts. On top of that the EDF kept blowing its own deadlines all year. Summary from the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-france.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... "A record 26 of its 56 reactors are off-line for maintenance or repairs after the worrisome discovery of cracks and corrosion in some pipes used to cool reactor cores." Shutting down a quarter of your fleet because of worrisome discovery of cracks, causing panic on the energy markets across the continent does not sound like predictable to me. Renewables on the other hand are extremely predictable and pretty much always deliver on the prediction because they are so distributed. The chart says Germany produced 165TWh from coal in 2021 and roughly 250TWh in 2010. I believe you should check the dictionary for the words "modest" and "predictable".
guitarbill 4y ago
Not as "drastically" as their nuclear power of course...
- locallost 4y ago
  Nuclear phase out took over 10 years. Coal phase out kicked off two years ago and will complete by 2038 with a possible goal of 2030.

herewulf 4y ago

How is that reduced coal use going right now? And next winter?

locallost 4y ago
It's going as well as it did. Stop reading headlines with agendas and look at the data. Start here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255181824 https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255...

mpweiher 4y ago

Stop spreading disinformation. Reduction has been minimal, and now that we no longer have the Russian gas that we used to substitute coal, we are turning coal plants back on. While at the same time shutting down clean nuclear. The mind boggles. Go to https://www.electricitymaps.com https://www.electricitymaps.com On almost every day, Germany is the 2nd least green country in Europe, only after Poland. In 2014, Germany was the largest producer of CO2 emissions in Europe, by a wide margin. https://gefira.org/en/2015/12/15/germany-the-largest-co2-emissions-producer-in-europe/ https://gefira.org/en/2015/12/15/germany-the-largest-co2-emi...

locallost 4y ago
Here are the official data related to electricity production https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/384/bilder/3_abb_bruttostromerzeugung-et_2022-12-16.png https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/38... Coal are the bottom two things on the chart (brown and gray). Drastically down. Gas use percentage wise is pretty much the same as 10 years ago. Obviously you're making things up. Germany is also not turning coal plants back on: there were about a dozen coal plants put on stand by this year as an emergency, but they mostly stayed off. The funny part is that the emergency was mostly related to the collapse of nuclear in France where most of the surrounding countries suddenly needed to support it. But in the end renewables made up most of the difference. Here's a Twitter thread with the data https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255181824 https://mobile.twitter.com/CoalFreeDave/status/1620360558255... Europe needs to get off fossil fuels and it's about to do that really fast. Unnecessary hurdles were removed to make renewable deployment easier. As a consequence there's been a huge uptick in nuclear lobbying and astroturfing - this industry is scared it's about to be made officially irrelevant. All sort of plans are being made but there will be so much new renewable generation by the time this plans are finalized, let alone the decades it will take to get anything done with nuclear, that it will not matter at all.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  > Germany is also not turning coal plants back on "Ab Oktober werden insgesamt zwölf Kohlekraftwerke mit einer Leistung bis zu knapp sieben Gigawatt zusätzlich Strom für das deutsche Netz zur Verfügung stellen." From October, a total of twelve coal-fired power plants with an output of up to almost seven gigawatts will provide additional electricity for the German grid. https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/stromerzeugung-welche-kohlekraftwerke-im-oktober-wieder-in-betrieb-gehen/28717510.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/stromerzeug... > Gas use percentage wise is pretty much the same as 10 years ago. The very chart you cite has gas use almost tripling from 1990 to 2020, from 36 to 91. > the collapse of nuclear in France There was no "collapse" of Nuclear in France. This counter-factual talking point has been corrected so many times it isn't funny any more. What happened was that France scheduled maintenance work that had been deferred during the pandemic. This was planned, because with nuclear power, you can plan things. The reason that it was planned for summer is that that is when both energy demand is at its lowest and otherwise not-so-stellar renewable production is at its highest. Unlike renewables, which are mostly unpredictable, and the little that is predictable is bad: that they produce far less energy when it's needed most. And even the Twitter thread you cite (which also incorrectly speaks of French "outages"), admits that a whopping 1/3rd of the reduction in nuclear production was due to Germany turning off plants. Also, you might want to take a closer look at the chart you cited. The still very modest drop in coal you spotted mostly coincides with a drop in total energy consumption, making the relative reduction even more modest than it already is. So we just used less energy overall. Whoop-dee-doo. And coal use rose again even in 2021 in absolute terms, so before the war.
  - locallost 4y ago
    Read the Twitter link I posted: only a 1/6 of the deficit caused mostly by the nuclear failure in France was replaced by coal. Those plants were put on stand by because wishful thinking is not a good policy, but they were mostly idle. A quarter of France plants were out unplanned, another quarter were in planned maintenance. This was all documented extensively, we should not debate facts. On top of that the EDF kept blowing its own deadlines all year. Summary from the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-france.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... "A record 26 of its 56 reactors are off-line for maintenance or repairs after the worrisome discovery of cracks and corrosion in some pipes used to cool reactor cores." Shutting down a quarter of your fleet because of worrisome discovery of cracks, causing panic on the energy markets across the continent does not sound like predictable to me. Renewables on the other hand are extremely predictable and pretty much always deliver on the prediction because they are so distributed. The chart says Germany produced 165TWh from coal in 2021 and roughly 250TWh in 2010. I believe you should check the dictionary for the words "modest" and "predictable".

guitarbill 4y ago

Not as "drastically" as their nuclear power of course...

locallost 4y ago
Nuclear phase out took over 10 years. Coal phase out kicked off two years ago and will complete by 2038 with a possible goal of 2030.