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Germany had a much higher peak in emissions in the 1970s and 1980s, unlike the UK which phased out coal early, or France which went all in on nuclear. German e
by akamaka 3y ago
Germany had a much higher peak in emissions in the 1970s and 1980s, unlike the UK which phased out coal early, or France which went all in on nuclear.
German emissions have been rapidly declining since 1990 (even with nuclear reactors closing, because the investment was steered into renewables). They just need a few more years to catch up to their neighbours.
- renaudg 3y agoNo, it's an impossible equation. Germany cannot win this game without nuclear, barring an unlikely huge breakthrough in battery storage real soon. Because of renewables' intermittency, there's an upper limit on how much you can have of them in the mix. If the rest of your mix (even just 20%) is coal, your CO2/kWh average is destroyed because its emissions are so much worse than the rest. There will always be a minimum need for a "base load" energy source in the mix, and only two of them are low carbon : hydro and nuclear. Germany doesn't have the geography for hydro, but they decided to ditch the other one... guess what happens next ?