7 ms·

It's important to understand how much software is responsible for greenhouse gaz emissions and it's good that politicians are finally realizing that.

by ognarb 3y ago

_dain_ 3y ago
The same "green" politicians who forced the shutdown of a perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors, meaning Germany's dependence on coal is increasing, now more than a third. All the energy-saving software in the world won't cancel that out. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/health-impacts-of-germanys-proposed-coal-power-plant-emissions-limits/ https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/health-impacts-of-... >Emissions from German coal-fired power plants are set to be responsible for a projected 26,000 attributable deaths between 2022 and 2038 German Green party "environmentalism" is completely fraudulent, they should be international pariahs. Any "sustainability" conference sponsored by them is a farce and should be boycotted, same as if it were sponsored by Exxon or Shell.
- mschild 3y ago
  For the love of god, stop with putting the blame for this absolutely shit situation on the current green politicians. The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations. The government parties that ratified the Atomausstieg in Germany were the conservatives (CDU) and socialists (SPD).
  - onli 3y ago
    Also, the route forward the greens wanted were green energies - solar, wind, biomass. This was blocked as much as possible by the last coalition of CDU and SPD, including a complete construction stop of new wind energy in Bavaria (caused by the CSU, a fundamentalist conservative sister of the CDU)
    - wheelerof4te 3y ago
      It was blocked because you simply cannot power a large industry using only renewable sources. You absolutely need nuclear energy for that. No one believed their fairy tales.
      - onli 3y ago
        It was blocked because the CSU wanted to win the local election in Bavaria by blocking "ugly" wind turbines.
      - ketzu 3y ago
        Afaik, one of the largest blocker for wind in bavaria is the 10-H rule: the distance from a wind turbine and the closest residential building has to be more than 10 times the height of the wind turbine. This does not exactly seem a concern focused around industry.
      - mschild 3y ago
        Says who? What actual energy expert says that you absolutely need nuclear for that?
      - PurpleRamen 3y ago
        Large industries don't need nuclear energy. Nuclear only produces electricity anyway. And renewable already delivers far more electricity than nuclear since decades. Large Industries are moving to renewable now, to replace coal and gas, because they never cared much about nuclear.
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    >The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations. This was a political choice, not technical. It was entirely possible to extend their lifetimes. They just chose not to. The Green politicians and activists are the ones who spent decades hyping up the dangers of nuclear, they influenced a whole generation. The fact that it was a different party that implemented it is immaterial; they were the authors of the whole ideology. Fanatical minority parties force the hand of cowardly or indifferent moderates all the time. It would not have happened without them. Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds, when Russia started the war and suddenly Germany couldn't rely on gas anymore. But they didn't. They chose coal. It's completely preposterous to say it's not the Greens' fault. --- Can't reply to other comment because of cooldown, putting my reply here: >No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year. Nope, nope, nope. Greens have continually lied about this. Inspections would not have taken years: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-generates-nuclear-dilemma-ruling-greens-2022-07-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-... >Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view. >The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months. Nor was there any problem of fuel availability. Westinghouse offered to make new fuel rods and could have delivered them by Q4 2022; Habeck just said no. https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe I repeat: there was no technical, safety, or logistical reason whatsoever that the plants couldn't have been brought back up. It was purely a political choice. --- >Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions. German reactors are inherently safer than Soviet RBMK reactors, in that they have containment vessels and are not shrouded in institutional secrecy. Literally nobody died from the Fukushima disaster. And there is no rigorously imaginable scenario where a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a 10 metre high tsunami could happen in Germany. If the plants were in a poor condition, then bring them to a better condition. There was no reason whatsoever for the Fukushima disaster to trigger outright decommissioning of Germany's nuclear fleet. It just doesn't rationally follow. No new relevant information was learned; people already knew what a meltdown was. >The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 years where politicians from both parties were actively sabotaging the building of new wind and solar in favour for more coal. Sigmar Gabriel, being a prime example of that. Hydroelectric power is neither safe nor environmentally friendly. You have to dam a river, flood thousands of acres of land, and a single dam failure can kill more people than all the casualties of any other power source put together, apart from coal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st... >1975 Banqian Dam failure: 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless. By the Chernobyl/Fukushima doctrine, this one event should have made everyone else dismantle their hydroelectric dams, shouldn't it? Barring new technical innovations, geothermal is marginal anywhere except Iceland. Wind and solar are safe but land-hungry. When you say "advocated for safe and clean alternatives", that's just begging the question. Nuclear is already safe and clean, and hence needs no advocacy for an alternative on that basis. >2 of the reactors, Neckarwestheim and Emsland, had only old fuel rods left over. Estimates suggest at best a continuation at 60% capacity for 80 days. Acquiring new ones isn't something you can just do. From order to delivery it takes 12-18 months. Since reactors were being shut down, they simply didn't have the personal to keep them running. There was also no planned upkeep since 2009, which is another major time and cost point. So at best, those reactors would have run for 80 days before having to power up coal again. Instead of spending all that money on mainting old infrastructure, we can just as well massively build and invest into green energy. That would produce more energy, for a lesser amount of money. I've already addressed the parts about delays and fuel availability above. As for money: Germany has already spent half a trillion euros on the transition to renewables. Half a trillion! And they're still getting half their energy from carbon-emitting sources. What they're doing now is not cheap at all. They could have built several dozen brand new plants for that amount of money, and have rock-solid reliable zero-carbon electric baseload, enough to power all of central Europe.
- BurningPenguin 3y ago
  Good job leaving out some important details to blame the greens. 1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet 2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark. 3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear 4. It was conservatives who stopped or slowed down the shutdown of fossil power plants, because of the "but muh job" gang 5. It was conservatives, once again, who put ridiculous rules in place to prevent wind power from being built in sufficient amount (Bavaria) 6. Greens weren't in power for 16 years, but still get the blame. Once again it was conservatives in the majority, who did their best to make fossil fuel lobbyists happy the entire time. 7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it? So if you want to blame someone, blame the CDU/CSU for their lobbyism and the SPD for their lack of a spine.
  - sc4les 3y ago
    This. But that’s not the current narrative unfortunately
  - Zenst 3y ago
    > 1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet Not true. France had their nuclear fleet in limbo, unable to know how to plan due to EU rules saying X amount of energy must be generated from a green source. Sadly EU (well Germany) blocked that for many years, causing France to be stuck in a position of unable to invest or develop its nuclear energy (which btw they used to export lots, including to Germany). https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-label-nuclear-energy-as-green-european-commission/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-l... That got fixed in the end, as long as they agreed to label Gas as green energy generation, which Germany wanted and indeed, needed to comply with EU rules they help create. You could say Germany handicapped France and held them to ransom, you could say that, but to say France messed up would be utterly unfair with the full context at play.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  Greens and their fairly tales about renewable energy...but not nuclear. It's always hard when reality hits. Good luck powering your industry now that the US basically destroyed your source of cheap, eco-friendly energy.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  The "Greens" just brought the coal phaseout forward by 8 years which, based on your figures, suggests they just saved 13,000 lives. Nice work. https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-greens-robert-habeck-combustion-motor-heat-pumps-coal-phase-out/ https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  Nuclear is not carbon-free, and the green did not shut down the reactors. That decision was made in 2011, and 2019 was the latest point where it could have been cancelled. Both times when the green had no significant power to force anything.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    > Nuclear is not carbon-free In the same way solar and wind aren't carbon free either yes
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      Yes, but no. It's similar, but different. A major source of emissions for both is building the plants, which is roughly 1/3 of for nuclear. But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source, which makes roughly 2/3 of its emissions. This overall leads to far higher emissions. Though, they both are small compared to the like of coal, gas or burning stuff.
      - lm28469 3y ago
        > But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source Where do the rare earth, metal, &co for solar and wind harvesters come from ? These things are getting rarer by the day and harder to mine = more pollutants. It's very very far from clean https://www.goudsmit.co.uk/fears-over-the-supply-of-neodymium-magnets-for-wind-turbines/ https://www.goudsmit.co.uk/fears-over-the-supply-of-neodymiu... https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-summary-report-final.pdf https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-su...
- MattHeard 3y ago
  Germany's electricity generation from coal has over the long run substantially decreased. The low of 2020 appears to correlate with the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase since then appears to be more of a reversion to the original trend than anything to do with changes in electricity from nuclear. 2022 coal use is a third greater than 2020, as _dain_ mentions, but 2020 was anomalously low usage rather than representing a normal baseline for comparison. While any increase in coal usage is a problem, the coal use should be compared to the average of the last few years with the anomaly of 2020 removed. This would produce effectively no increase or decrease in coal usage. Source: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/STRERZ22A11_Abg_0223.pdf https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/STR... via https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/ https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/
  - wazoox 3y ago
    If Germany had kept all its nukes running in the past 20 years, it would be 100% coal-free RIGHT NOW. It would have saved literally MILLIONS OF LIVES. There is absolutely no possible excuse for this.
    - V__ 3y ago
      > It would have saved literally MILLIONS OF LIVES Estimates are less than 5000 deaths per year in Germany. Quite a bit off. [1] https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleausstieg/3100-todesfaelle-kohlekraftwerke https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleauss...
      - wazoox 3y ago
        According to various articles, coal is causing more than 20 000 to per year in Europe. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Report-Finds-Coal-Industry-Causes-22300-Premature-Deaths-a-Year-in-Europe.html https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Report-Fi... https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(16)30198-9.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600... Some sources say as much as 200 000 deaths per year: https://www.lemondedelenergie.com/electricite-allemagne-charbon/2020/07/13/ https://www.lemondedelenergie.com/electricite-allemagne-char... If that's true, that means that coal killed about 4 million Europeans since 2003.
- wazoox 3y ago
  If Germany had kept its nuclear plants available in 2003 today (which was completely feasible), it would be 100% coal-free TODAY. Imagine that. There is zero excuse. Any ton of CO2 emitted is a problem.
- V__ 3y ago
  > perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors The planning to decommission them started in 2011. It was a big hurdle to just extend that for the last few months. This also meant that long-term maintenance wasn't done. So perfectly good they are not, and keeping them online now would be extremely expensive. Until there are off the shelf nuclear-plant solutions, (which don't take decades to get up and running) it just won't happen. I really hope a few of the current SMR startups become successful.

It's important to understand how much software is responsible for greenhouse gaz emissions and it's good that politicians are finally realizing that.

by ognarb 3y ago

It's important to understand how much software is responsible for greenhouse gaz emissions and it's good that politicians are finally realizing that.

_dain_ 3y ago

The same "green" politicians who forced the shutdown of a perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors, meaning Germany's dependence on coal is increasing, now more than a third. All the energy-saving software in the world won't cancel that out. https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/health-impacts-of-germanys-proposed-coal-power-plant-emissions-limits/ https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/health-impacts-of-... >Emissions from German coal-fired power plants are set to be responsible for a projected 26,000 attributable deaths between 2022 and 2038 German Green party "environmentalism" is completely fraudulent, they should be international pariahs. Any "sustainability" conference sponsored by them is a farce and should be boycotted, same as if it were sponsored by Exxon or Shell.

mschild 3y ago
For the love of god, stop with putting the blame for this absolutely shit situation on the current green politicians. The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations. The government parties that ratified the Atomausstieg in Germany were the conservatives (CDU) and socialists (SPD).
- onli 3y ago
  Also, the route forward the greens wanted were green energies - solar, wind, biomass. This was blocked as much as possible by the last coalition of CDU and SPD, including a complete construction stop of new wind energy in Bavaria (caused by the CSU, a fundamentalist conservative sister of the CDU)
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    It was blocked because you simply cannot power a large industry using only renewable sources. You absolutely need nuclear energy for that. No one believed their fairy tales.
    - onli 3y ago
      It was blocked because the CSU wanted to win the local election in Bavaria by blocking "ugly" wind turbines.
    - ketzu 3y ago
      Afaik, one of the largest blocker for wind in bavaria is the 10-H rule: the distance from a wind turbine and the closest residential building has to be more than 10 times the height of the wind turbine. This does not exactly seem a concern focused around industry.
    - mschild 3y ago
      Says who? What actual energy expert says that you absolutely need nuclear for that?
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      Large industries don't need nuclear energy. Nuclear only produces electricity anyway. And renewable already delivers far more electricity than nuclear since decades. Large Industries are moving to renewable now, to replace coal and gas, because they never cared much about nuclear.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations. This was a political choice, not technical. It was entirely possible to extend their lifetimes. They just chose not to. The Green politicians and activists are the ones who spent decades hyping up the dangers of nuclear, they influenced a whole generation. The fact that it was a different party that implemented it is immaterial; they were the authors of the whole ideology. Fanatical minority parties force the hand of cowardly or indifferent moderates all the time. It would not have happened without them. Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds, when Russia started the war and suddenly Germany couldn't rely on gas anymore. But they didn't. They chose coal. It's completely preposterous to say it's not the Greens' fault. --- Can't reply to other comment because of cooldown, putting my reply here: >No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year. Nope, nope, nope. Greens have continually lied about this. Inspections would not have taken years: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-generates-nuclear-dilemma-ruling-greens-2022-07-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-... >Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view. >The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months. Nor was there any problem of fuel availability. Westinghouse offered to make new fuel rods and could have delivered them by Q4 2022; Habeck just said no. https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe I repeat: there was no technical, safety, or logistical reason whatsoever that the plants couldn't have been brought back up. It was purely a political choice. --- >Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions. German reactors are inherently safer than Soviet RBMK reactors, in that they have containment vessels and are not shrouded in institutional secrecy. Literally nobody died from the Fukushima disaster. And there is no rigorously imaginable scenario where a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a 10 metre high tsunami could happen in Germany. If the plants were in a poor condition, then bring them to a better condition. There was no reason whatsoever for the Fukushima disaster to trigger outright decommissioning of Germany's nuclear fleet. It just doesn't rationally follow. No new relevant information was learned; people already knew what a meltdown was. >The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 years where politicians from both parties were actively sabotaging the building of new wind and solar in favour for more coal. Sigmar Gabriel, being a prime example of that. Hydroelectric power is neither safe nor environmentally friendly. You have to dam a river, flood thousands of acres of land, and a single dam failure can kill more people than all the casualties of any other power source put together, apart from coal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st... >1975 Banqian Dam failure: 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless. By the Chernobyl/Fukushima doctrine, this one event should have made everyone else dismantle their hydroelectric dams, shouldn't it? Barring new technical innovations, geothermal is marginal anywhere except Iceland. Wind and solar are safe but land-hungry. When you say "advocated for safe and clean alternatives", that's just begging the question. Nuclear is already safe and clean, and hence needs no advocacy for an alternative on that basis. >2 of the reactors, Neckarwestheim and Emsland, had only old fuel rods left over. Estimates suggest at best a continuation at 60% capacity for 80 days. Acquiring new ones isn't something you can just do. From order to delivery it takes 12-18 months. Since reactors were being shut down, they simply didn't have the personal to keep them running. There was also no planned upkeep since 2009, which is another major time and cost point. So at best, those reactors would have run for 80 days before having to power up coal again. Instead of spending all that money on mainting old infrastructure, we can just as well massively build and invest into green energy. That would produce more energy, for a lesser amount of money. I've already addressed the parts about delays and fuel availability above. As for money: Germany has already spent half a trillion euros on the transition to renewables. Half a trillion! And they're still getting half their energy from carbon-emitting sources. What they're doing now is not cheap at all. They could have built several dozen brand new plants for that amount of money, and have rock-solid reliable zero-carbon electric baseload, enough to power all of central Europe.
BurningPenguin 3y ago
Good job leaving out some important details to blame the greens. 1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet 2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark. 3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear 4. It was conservatives who stopped or slowed down the shutdown of fossil power plants, because of the "but muh job" gang 5. It was conservatives, once again, who put ridiculous rules in place to prevent wind power from being built in sufficient amount (Bavaria) 6. Greens weren't in power for 16 years, but still get the blame. Once again it was conservatives in the majority, who did their best to make fossil fuel lobbyists happy the entire time. 7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it? So if you want to blame someone, blame the CDU/CSU for their lobbyism and the SPD for their lack of a spine.
- sc4les 3y ago
  This. But that’s not the current narrative unfortunately
- Zenst 3y ago
  > 1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet Not true. France had their nuclear fleet in limbo, unable to know how to plan due to EU rules saying X amount of energy must be generated from a green source. Sadly EU (well Germany) blocked that for many years, causing France to be stuck in a position of unable to invest or develop its nuclear energy (which btw they used to export lots, including to Germany). https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-label-nuclear-energy-as-green-european-commission/ https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-l... That got fixed in the end, as long as they agreed to label Gas as green energy generation, which Germany wanted and indeed, needed to comply with EU rules they help create. You could say Germany handicapped France and held them to ransom, you could say that, but to say France messed up would be utterly unfair with the full context at play.
wheelerof4te 3y ago
Greens and their fairly tales about renewable energy...but not nuclear. It's always hard when reality hits. Good luck powering your industry now that the US basically destroyed your source of cheap, eco-friendly energy.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The "Greens" just brought the coal phaseout forward by 8 years which, based on your figures, suggests they just saved 13,000 lives. Nice work. https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-greens-robert-habeck-combustion-motor-heat-pumps-coal-phase-out/ https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
PurpleRamen 3y ago
Nuclear is not carbon-free, and the green did not shut down the reactors. That decision was made in 2011, and 2019 was the latest point where it could have been cancelled. Both times when the green had no significant power to force anything.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Nuclear is not carbon-free In the same way solar and wind aren't carbon free either yes
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    Yes, but no. It's similar, but different. A major source of emissions for both is building the plants, which is roughly 1/3 of for nuclear. But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source, which makes roughly 2/3 of its emissions. This overall leads to far higher emissions. Though, they both are small compared to the like of coal, gas or burning stuff.
    - lm28469 3y ago
      > But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source Where do the rare earth, metal, &co for solar and wind harvesters come from ? These things are getting rarer by the day and harder to mine = more pollutants. It's very very far from clean https://www.goudsmit.co.uk/fears-over-the-supply-of-neodymium-magnets-for-wind-turbines/ https://www.goudsmit.co.uk/fears-over-the-supply-of-neodymiu... https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-summary-report-final.pdf https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-su...
MattHeard 3y ago
Germany's electricity generation from coal has over the long run substantially decreased. The low of 2020 appears to correlate with the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase since then appears to be more of a reversion to the original trend than anything to do with changes in electricity from nuclear. 2022 coal use is a third greater than 2020, as _dain_ mentions, but 2020 was anomalously low usage rather than representing a normal baseline for comparison. While any increase in coal usage is a problem, the coal use should be compared to the average of the last few years with the anomaly of 2020 removed. This would produce effectively no increase or decrease in coal usage. Source: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/STRERZ22A11_Abg_0223.pdf https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/STR... via https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/ https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/
- wazoox 3y ago
  If Germany had kept all its nukes running in the past 20 years, it would be 100% coal-free RIGHT NOW. It would have saved literally MILLIONS OF LIVES. There is absolutely no possible excuse for this.
  - V__ 3y ago
    > It would have saved literally MILLIONS OF LIVES Estimates are less than 5000 deaths per year in Germany. Quite a bit off. [1] https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleausstieg/3100-todesfaelle-kohlekraftwerke https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleauss...
    - wazoox 3y ago
      According to various articles, coal is causing more than 20 000 to per year in Europe. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Report-Finds-Coal-Industry-Causes-22300-Premature-Deaths-a-Year-in-Europe.html https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Report-Fi... https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600(16)30198-9.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600... Some sources say as much as 200 000 deaths per year: https://www.lemondedelenergie.com/electricite-allemagne-charbon/2020/07/13/ https://www.lemondedelenergie.com/electricite-allemagne-char... If that's true, that means that coal killed about 4 million Europeans since 2003.
wazoox 3y ago
If Germany had kept its nuclear plants available in 2003 today (which was completely feasible), it would be 100% coal-free TODAY. Imagine that. There is zero excuse. Any ton of CO2 emitted is a problem.
V__ 3y ago
> perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors The planning to decommission them started in 2011. It was a big hurdle to just extend that for the last few months. This also meant that long-term maintenance wasn't done. So perfectly good they are not, and keeping them online now would be extremely expensive. Until there are off the shelf nuclear-plant solutions, (which don't take decades to get up and running) it just won't happen. I really hope a few of the current SMR startups become successful.