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Germany relied on 1) gas from Russia because it was naive on geopolitical issues. 2) fossil gas in general, because it was a cheap method to compensate clean en
by tcfhgj 4y ago
Germany relied on 1) gas from Russia because it was naive on geopolitical issues.
2) fossil gas in general, because it was a cheap method to compensate clean energy storage (such as gas from renewable energy, classic batteries are by far not the only option to store energy) and grid improvement to compensate geographic fluctuations without storage.
Nuclear was phased out because of the potentially catastrophic risk as well as the unwillingness go provide permanent storage for nuclear waste.
Further, traditional nuclear power plants don't scale well, see the costs in France (even though it's not represented in electricity prices and this although France is already heavily invested in nuclear power plants), problems with heat waves/dry climate, as well as the fact that economic uranium sources are limited.
France is building new plants, planning close to 50, however the long term trend will be a reduced share of nuclear power in the grid, because old reactors will have to shut down as well, and renewable energy build out will shadow everything else.
This is in terms with the estimates in the IPCC report that cover cost and potential avoidance in CO2 emissions.
Personally, I see activists mainly going after the government's to implement a strategy to reduce emissions, but surely almost everyone doing this will call out plastic items and fossil fuel usage where avoidable.
Rightly so, if this reduces tolerance for whatever program (doing what? Reduce emissions?), I don't see the problem there, but rather at NIMBYism, mis information and green washing.
There's nothing wrong with going after these things.
I feel like you are more interested in preventing actions from being taken than shedding light on things that are missed - I hope I am wrong though and calling out hypocrisy of climate activists isn't the primary part.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago> Nuclear was phased out because of the potentially catastrophic risk as well as the unwillingness go provide permanent storage for nuclear waste. That kind of personifies the eco-hypocrisy I have mentioned: The Germans want what they want, but they want other people to bear the cost and the risks of it. If they aren't willing to pay the costs for cutting carbon emissions, do they really want to do it? I think they have revealed that the answer is "no." > Further, traditional nuclear power plants don't scale well, see the costs in France (even though it's not represented in electricity prices and this although France is already heavily invested in nuclear power plants), problems with heat waves/dry climate, as well as the fact that economic uranium sources are limited. The people who say this have no clue whether it is actually true. Since Chernobyl, there hasn't been a serious effort to build out nuclear power plants at scale. Previously, the Soviets did a pretty good job demonstrating the scaling laws here, but they also cut too many corners. As to the whole idea that renewable energy will overshadow other sources of power, renewables are not dispatchabale on-demand without several significant advances in power storage technology (which will come from batteries before anything else - nothing else scales well enough right now).