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Residing in Germany, the country with one of the world’s most expensive kWhs I urge you Americans: Milk this Overton Window as much as you can because the Luddi

Residing in Germany, the country with one of the world’s most expensive kWhs I urge you Americans: Milk this Overton Window as much as you can because the Luddites will be back.

locallost 3y ago
Electricity itself is cheaper in Germany than e.g. in nuclear France, especially now. The difference is that most of the actual costs in Germany are on the utility bill, whereas in France the EDF made a 20 billion loss last year and it only exists still because it's state owned. But the true costs will be paid, likely through taxes. Around 300 Euros per capita will be paid to plug the hole for last year alone. My family of four would thus pay around 1200 Euros in taxes just to make up for that loss, which is almost two years of "expensive" German electricity we actually spend. So what is expensive again? What is unfortunately not on the bill in Germany is the price of nuclear waste storage. The producers of nuclear power paid a fraction of the actual costs (that could end up at over 100 billion) to rid themselves of the responsibility. If it was on the bill where it belongs, that would really kill nuclear forever.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > whereas in France the EDF made a 20 billion loss last year and it only exists still because it's state owned. EDF made a 18 billions loss in 2022 mostly because of government decisions. Welcome to French state-owned companies, the government giveth, and the government taketh away. This doesn't happen to German electricity companies. > My family of four would thus pay around 1200 Euros in taxes just to make up for that loss, which is almost two years of "expensive" German electricity we actually spend. Your family of four spends €50 per month on electricity? You're heating and cooking with gas right?
  - locallost 3y ago
    If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. Electricity providers in Germany can go bust at any time, and that's fine, there are hundreds of them. Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month (used to be 50), and we usually get a tiny bit paid back. Heating (warm water in general) is gas, but everything else is electric including cooking which we do daily. There was a price cap of 40c per kWh (or something like that) introduced recently, but other than that it's "what you pay for is what you get". A transparent system where you have the true price stimulates energy efficiency. People that want to waste energy are free to do so, but should not have the rest subsidize the behavior. There are dozens of tiny things that you can do every day that have no effect on your life, yet save a lot of energy and money: avoiding being straight up wasteful, e.g. leaving things on for no reason; paying attention to energy efficiency of the devices you buy and run; paying attention to what you do, e.g. when you boil an egg, put a lid on, boil the water and switch it off, it will keep boiling until it's ready since the stove is hot (this becomes mostly irrelevant with induction). On a level beyond that, is your fridge normal sized, or does it store food for three weeks, that you then buy with you gigantic car in a huge shop 15km away (and the shop is there because the land is cheaper, and the energy spent on having that system work is massively subsizidized). Etc. etc. A lot of things you think are tiny, but as a whole end up being significant. We spent a few months abroad a couple years ago, and there you'd get a note on your bill comparing your consumption to the same month the year before. We were routinely at 50% of the previous tenants.
    - pyrale 3y ago
      > If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. The point is, just because the system works differently doesn't mean you can't do proper accounting of electricity costs. You just need to measure where it makes sense. And when you do this, well, power has been pretty cheap for a while in France. The claims about "french electricity funded by your taxes" doesn't really hold water when you realize that, in the last 20 years, EDF has been returning sizeable dividends to its shareholder most years. It's not really surprising when you do the math and realize that EDF has paid about €3-4bn per GW of installed capacity. > Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month With a low price of €0.2/kWh, that's about 10kWh per day. For 4. That's extremely low. Anyone working remotely can't hope to get that little used, for instance.
      - locallost 3y ago
        The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt and the government started the process of its nationalization to make it 100% state owned last year. If various internet source are to be believed, France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. I checked the current averages in Germany and the price of electricity alone is around 25 kWh (and then taxes and distribution surcharges and various other costs go on top), despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. How is this possible? It can only be that french prices are artificially low because the EDF is state owned. But back to my original statement - the real price will be paid one way or another, there is no free lunch. The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year, this was the case even as a household of 3. I sort of work remote, I have a shared office with 5 other people, and we spend less than 100kWh per month (we checked a few times since we moved in). So if you want you might add around 300-400kWh per year if two people were working remotely, but then again we would not have two fridges at home, and we already frequently work from home.
        pyrale 3y ago

Residing in Germany, the country with one of the world’s most expensive kWhs I urge you Americans: Milk this Overton Window as much as you can because the Luddites will be back.

locallost 3y ago

Electricity itself is cheaper in Germany than e.g. in nuclear France, especially now. The difference is that most of the actual costs in Germany are on the utility bill, whereas in France the EDF made a 20 billion loss last year and it only exists still because it's state owned. But the true costs will be paid, likely through taxes. Around 300 Euros per capita will be paid to plug the hole for last year alone. My family of four would thus pay around 1200 Euros in taxes just to make up for that loss, which is almost two years of "expensive" German electricity we actually spend. So what is expensive again? What is unfortunately not on the bill in Germany is the price of nuclear waste storage. The producers of nuclear power paid a fraction of the actual costs (that could end up at over 100 billion) to rid themselves of the responsibility. If it was on the bill where it belongs, that would really kill nuclear forever.

pyrale 3y ago
> whereas in France the EDF made a 20 billion loss last year and it only exists still because it's state owned. EDF made a 18 billions loss in 2022 mostly because of government decisions. Welcome to French state-owned companies, the government giveth, and the government taketh away. This doesn't happen to German electricity companies. > My family of four would thus pay around 1200 Euros in taxes just to make up for that loss, which is almost two years of "expensive" German electricity we actually spend. Your family of four spends €50 per month on electricity? You're heating and cooking with gas right?
- locallost 3y ago
  If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. Electricity providers in Germany can go bust at any time, and that's fine, there are hundreds of them. Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month (used to be 50), and we usually get a tiny bit paid back. Heating (warm water in general) is gas, but everything else is electric including cooking which we do daily. There was a price cap of 40c per kWh (or something like that) introduced recently, but other than that it's "what you pay for is what you get". A transparent system where you have the true price stimulates energy efficiency. People that want to waste energy are free to do so, but should not have the rest subsidize the behavior. There are dozens of tiny things that you can do every day that have no effect on your life, yet save a lot of energy and money: avoiding being straight up wasteful, e.g. leaving things on for no reason; paying attention to energy efficiency of the devices you buy and run; paying attention to what you do, e.g. when you boil an egg, put a lid on, boil the water and switch it off, it will keep boiling until it's ready since the stove is hot (this becomes mostly irrelevant with induction). On a level beyond that, is your fridge normal sized, or does it store food for three weeks, that you then buy with you gigantic car in a huge shop 15km away (and the shop is there because the land is cheaper, and the energy spent on having that system work is massively subsizidized). Etc. etc. A lot of things you think are tiny, but as a whole end up being significant. We spent a few months abroad a couple years ago, and there you'd get a note on your bill comparing your consumption to the same month the year before. We were routinely at 50% of the previous tenants.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > If the government giveth and then taketh away, those are just two sides of the same coin. The point is, just because the system works differently doesn't mean you can't do proper accounting of electricity costs. You just need to measure where it makes sense. And when you do this, well, power has been pretty cheap for a while in France. The claims about "french electricity funded by your taxes" doesn't really hold water when you realize that, in the last 20 years, EDF has been returning sizeable dividends to its shareholder most years. It's not really surprising when you do the math and realize that EDF has paid about €3-4bn per GW of installed capacity. > Our electricity bill is currently 60 a month With a low price of €0.2/kWh, that's about 10kWh per day. For 4. That's extremely low. Anyone working remotely can't hope to get that little used, for instance.
    - locallost 3y ago
      The EDF is actually 65 billion in debt and the government started the process of its nationalization to make it 100% state owned last year. If various internet source are to be believed, France has a price of 22c per kWh for consumers. I checked the current averages in Germany and the price of electricity alone is around 25 kWh (and then taxes and distribution surcharges and various other costs go on top), despite the fact that wholesale prices in Germany have been drastically below that of France for at least a year now. How is this possible? It can only be that french prices are artificially low because the EDF is state owned. But back to my original statement - the real price will be paid one way or another, there is no free lunch. The additional irony of that is that prices in Germany and other European countries shot up last year because of electricity deficit partially caused by France's nuclear plants going belly up. Our consumption is a lot lower than that, we are almost always around 1500kWh per year, this was the case even as a household of 3. I sort of work remote, I have a shared office with 5 other people, and we spend less than 100kWh per month (we checked a few times since we moved in). So if you want you might add around 300-400kWh per year if two people were working remotely, but then again we would not have two fridges at home, and we already frequently work from home.
      - pyrale 3y ago