4 ms·

Not necessarily. They gave scientists and industry 25+ years to develop ways to save excess renewable energy (e.g. by hydrolysis) and electrify industrial proce

Not necessarily. They gave scientists and industry 25+ years to develop ways to save excess renewable energy (e.g. by hydrolysis) and electrify industrial processes. Nothing happened, instead the industry lobbied the gov'ts for more Russian gas. Plus, we have the European Power Grid which lets you import and export electricity to neighboring countries and e.g. France is so deeply invested into nuclear, they would always have excess energy (sidenote: due to mismanagement and droughts France heavily needed to import electricity from Germany). Germany afair set a world record in generating solar electricity around 2012 while it was losing its whole solar industry (150k+ jobs) to China, bc the Merkel gov't suddenly stopped subsidizing them.

rafaelrc 3y ago
> Plus, we have the European Power Grid Ah, I see, solar and wind being volatile are not a problem because you have other countries to generate power for you, even if it is nuclear (that apparently is bad) or coal. What?
cubefox 3y ago
> They gave scientists and industry 25+ years to develop ways to save excess renewable energy (e.g. by hydrolysis) and electrify industrial processes. Nothing happened, instead the industry lobbied the gov'ts for more Russian gas. That's absurd. First, it was actually politicians like Manuela Scheswig who promoted Russian gas even though nuclear was better. Second, you can't simply blame "scientists and industry" for the effects of bad policy. If politicians turn off nuclear energy and simply hope that "scientists and industry" would readily figure out how to store vast amounts of energy, then that's naive. There is no justification for basing your policy on wishful thinking about non-existent science fiction technology.
- nforgerit 3y ago
  The "non existent science fiction technology" you're talking about (wind turbines, solar, hydrolysis) is already there for many decades. It just needed a proper push to incentivize the industry to produce and deploy it at massive scale. When deployed at scale it constantly produces clean energy at unbeatable prices per kWh. Compare that to nuclear being heavily subsidized by tax money to achieve affordable customer prices. The only real downside is that renewables take a lot of space (2% of Germany's area only for onshore wind turbines). NB: Schwesig promoted Russian gas to improve her local industry. She was the pawn sacrifice of the "leadership" in the whole shitshow.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Nuclear energy works since more than half a century, large scale energy storage is still not available. So yes, it is de facto a science fiction technology at this point. It does not exist, much less does it have unbeatable prices. Again, one cannot simply demand that it is available and blame "scientists and industry" when it isn't available. Regarding subsidies: Germany has in fact massively subsidized renewable energy, but all this got negated by needlessly disabling nuclear power. Germany produces way more CO2 than France.

rafaelrc 3y ago

> Plus, we have the European Power Grid Ah, I see, solar and wind being volatile are not a problem because you have other countries to generate power for you, even if it is nuclear (that apparently is bad) or coal. What?

cubefox 3y ago

> They gave scientists and industry 25+ years to develop ways to save excess renewable energy (e.g. by hydrolysis) and electrify industrial processes. Nothing happened, instead the industry lobbied the gov'ts for more Russian gas. That's absurd. First, it was actually politicians like Manuela Scheswig who promoted Russian gas even though nuclear was better. Second, you can't simply blame "scientists and industry" for the effects of bad policy. If politicians turn off nuclear energy and simply hope that "scientists and industry" would readily figure out how to store vast amounts of energy, then that's naive. There is no justification for basing your policy on wishful thinking about non-existent science fiction technology.

nforgerit 3y ago
The "non existent science fiction technology" you're talking about (wind turbines, solar, hydrolysis) is already there for many decades. It just needed a proper push to incentivize the industry to produce and deploy it at massive scale. When deployed at scale it constantly produces clean energy at unbeatable prices per kWh. Compare that to nuclear being heavily subsidized by tax money to achieve affordable customer prices. The only real downside is that renewables take a lot of space (2% of Germany's area only for onshore wind turbines). NB: Schwesig promoted Russian gas to improve her local industry. She was the pawn sacrifice of the "leadership" in the whole shitshow.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Nuclear energy works since more than half a century, large scale energy storage is still not available. So yes, it is de facto a science fiction technology at this point. It does not exist, much less does it have unbeatable prices. Again, one cannot simply demand that it is available and blame "scientists and industry" when it isn't available. Regarding subsidies: Germany has in fact massively subsidized renewable energy, but all this got negated by needlessly disabling nuclear power. Germany produces way more CO2 than France.