4 ms·

> I know you are being ironic with "clear", but gas fired plants should also be "billed" for the dirt created by mining the natural gas in the first place. +1

by krasin 3y ago

> I know you are being ironic with "clear", but gas fired plants should also be "billed" for the dirt created by mining the natural gas in the first place. +1 to taxing externalities. I would also add a tax to the plants that ever used Russian gas with proceeds going to restoration of Ukraine. If not for the decision of German public to shut down their nuclear reactors, Putin would have never had that much money to start the war. (edit: as correctly pointed out below, significant part of the lost electricity capacity after turning down the nuclear plants was substituted by domestic coal, not Russian gas, so my comment was based on partially wrong info; sorry about that)

pgeorgi 3y ago
> If not for the decision of German public to shut down their nuclear reactors, Putin would have never had that much money to start the war. 55% of natural gas that circulated in Germany in 2021 came from russia. 48% of natural gas that circulated in Germany in 2021 was exported to other countries. ~13% of natural gas in Germany that year was used for electricity production. But go on and tell us how keeping nuclear power on in Germany would have cut those natural gas exports, heated the 14 million domestic gas boilers, or produced fertilizer.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Germany didn’t replace its nukes with gas, but with coal.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    Germany replaced its nuclear power plants with all kinds of things, predominantly renewables. The first NPP going offline under the "Atomausstieg" went offline in 2003. https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/News/stromerzeugung-rueckblick-auf-den-energiemix-seit-1990-zeigt-die-risiken-uebergrosser-dynamik https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/N... has a chart showing the energy sources for electricity production in Germany (up to 2021). During the period in which nuclear (Kernenergie) went down from ~160bn kWh (2003) to ~60bn kWh (2021), lignite (Braunkohle) went down from a bit over 150bn kWh to ~110bn kWh. Hard coal (Steinkohle) went down from ~140bn kWh to ~50bn kWh. There has been an uptick in natural gas (Erdgas) from ~60bn kWh to ~90bn kWh, but most of it was covered by renewables (Erneuerbare), going from ~55bn kWh to ~240bn kWh. So no, nuclear power wasn't replaced with coal. There has been an increase in coal to replace natural gas in 2022 (not on this chart) when the gas market imploded following russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine, but that was more of a temporary measure. With the LNG terminals going online, that will be sorted out soon enough, and measures to increase the build out of renewables to get rid of all fossils (_and_ nuclear) were planned even before 2022. Germany just had the problem that after a coalition government including the Greens until 2005, the conservative-led coalitions for the next 16 years didn't dare to reopen the snake pit that is nuclear power (it was a conservative government that ended new build out of nuclear power plants in 1989, too) but at the same time hampered the renewables build out - apparently they have some weird infatuation with burning fossils.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Look at primary production of imported power. That’s where Germany’s coal is burnt.
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        Net exporter since 2003. Increasing renewables since 2003. If we go by cherry-picking what kind of power plant creates whose power, Germany is busy reducing everybody else's CO2 emissions, too.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Net exporter since 2003. Increasing renewables since 2003. If we go by cherry-picking what kind of power plant creates whose power, Germany is busy reducing everybody else's CO2 emissions, too Germany exports a lot of intermittent green power. It also imports a lot of dirty stable power. Neither of us is cherry picking, they're just different sides of the same coin.
    - ars 3y ago
      So what you are saying is that if Germany had kept it's reactors running it could have taken coal down to zero?
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        At the price of continuing tensions in society and politics. NPP weren't taken down just for fun, that was a long time coming. An NPP based energy policy wouldn't have stopped building new nuclear power plants in 1989: nuclear power never provided more than 1/3 of the electricity consumption of the country and unlike France, there was never a push to go all in, e.g. by promoting electrically powered domestic heating. The real issue is that, even though renewables saw a pretty good growth, the renewables side of the plan was to push it even harder (and expand the transmission network, and establish storage) and that fell through once a government took over which didn't care for that all. Those plans are 25 years old now (the Social-Democrat/Green coalition was formed in 1998 and set out to implement the transition from the start) and the south is still not properly connected to the wind power resources in the north. Germany would have had to go all-in with nuclear (and build it out by a factor of 6 or so, to also replace avoidable uses of fossils like domestic heating) or it would have had to go all-in with renewables. Instead it stumbled around indecisively.

by krasin 3y ago

pgeorgi 3y ago

> If not for the decision of German public to shut down their nuclear reactors, Putin would have never had that much money to start the war. 55% of natural gas that circulated in Germany in 2021 came from russia. 48% of natural gas that circulated in Germany in 2021 was exported to other countries. ~13% of natural gas in Germany that year was used for electricity production. But go on and tell us how keeping nuclear power on in Germany would have cut those natural gas exports, heated the 14 million domestic gas boilers, or produced fertilizer.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Germany didn’t replace its nukes with gas, but with coal.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  Germany replaced its nuclear power plants with all kinds of things, predominantly renewables. The first NPP going offline under the "Atomausstieg" went offline in 2003. https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/News/stromerzeugung-rueckblick-auf-den-energiemix-seit-1990-zeigt-die-risiken-uebergrosser-dynamik https://www.energie.de/et/news-detailansicht/nsctrl/detail/N... has a chart showing the energy sources for electricity production in Germany (up to 2021). During the period in which nuclear (Kernenergie) went down from ~160bn kWh (2003) to ~60bn kWh (2021), lignite (Braunkohle) went down from a bit over 150bn kWh to ~110bn kWh. Hard coal (Steinkohle) went down from ~140bn kWh to ~50bn kWh. There has been an uptick in natural gas (Erdgas) from ~60bn kWh to ~90bn kWh, but most of it was covered by renewables (Erneuerbare), going from ~55bn kWh to ~240bn kWh. So no, nuclear power wasn't replaced with coal. There has been an increase in coal to replace natural gas in 2022 (not on this chart) when the gas market imploded following russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine, but that was more of a temporary measure. With the LNG terminals going online, that will be sorted out soon enough, and measures to increase the build out of renewables to get rid of all fossils (_and_ nuclear) were planned even before 2022. Germany just had the problem that after a coalition government including the Greens until 2005, the conservative-led coalitions for the next 16 years didn't dare to reopen the snake pit that is nuclear power (it was a conservative government that ended new build out of nuclear power plants in 1989, too) but at the same time hampered the renewables build out - apparently they have some weird infatuation with burning fossils.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Look at primary production of imported power. That’s where Germany’s coal is burnt.
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      Net exporter since 2003. Increasing renewables since 2003. If we go by cherry-picking what kind of power plant creates whose power, Germany is busy reducing everybody else's CO2 emissions, too.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Net exporter since 2003. Increasing renewables since 2003. If we go by cherry-picking what kind of power plant creates whose power, Germany is busy reducing everybody else's CO2 emissions, too Germany exports a lot of intermittent green power. It also imports a lot of dirty stable power. Neither of us is cherry picking, they're just different sides of the same coin.
  - ars 3y ago
    So what you are saying is that if Germany had kept it's reactors running it could have taken coal down to zero?
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      At the price of continuing tensions in society and politics. NPP weren't taken down just for fun, that was a long time coming. An NPP based energy policy wouldn't have stopped building new nuclear power plants in 1989: nuclear power never provided more than 1/3 of the electricity consumption of the country and unlike France, there was never a push to go all in, e.g. by promoting electrically powered domestic heating. The real issue is that, even though renewables saw a pretty good growth, the renewables side of the plan was to push it even harder (and expand the transmission network, and establish storage) and that fell through once a government took over which didn't care for that all. Those plans are 25 years old now (the Social-Democrat/Green coalition was formed in 1998 and set out to implement the transition from the start) and the south is still not properly connected to the wind power resources in the north. Germany would have had to go all-in with nuclear (and build it out by a factor of 6 or so, to also replace avoidable uses of fossils like domestic heating) or it would have had to go all-in with renewables. Instead it stumbled around indecisively.