4 ms·

Not to forget ever-rising sky-high energy prices due to a premature end of coal and nuclear, and a distinct lack of energy storage for renewables.

fnord123 3y ago
The end of coal is not pre-mature.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Climate change is, in a sense, a massive store of value that you can take from without the consent of those who pay. Which makes it very hard for economics-minded thinking to overlook as a lazy way to thrive.
- c4mpute 3y ago
  The end of coal is premature if your only other GW-scale energy source, nuclear, is being phased out at the same time, and you don't even have a replacement planned.
- VSerge 3y ago
  The end of coal has not happened on Germany, who went back to using massive amounts of coal as Russian gas stopped being available : 33.2% of all German electricity came from coal in 2022. https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022.pdf https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022... (slide 17 braunkohle + steinkohle)
  - b3orn 3y ago
    I'd say it's slowly happening. There was a large drop in 2019[0] by around 25% (~50TWh) from 2018, ignoring the 2020 drop (around 25% ~33TWh compared to 2019) due to the pandemic, 2021 was almost back to 2019 levels (-3.5%) and 2022 was an increase by ~6.5% compared to 2019. Looking at quaterly data[1] it looks like 2023 will be well below 2019 again. And no, it hasn't been replaced by gas[2], although there's no clear trend in gas for electricity, if anything gas consumption is down due to the war. [0]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000001010000000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [1]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000001010000000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=quarter&quarter=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [2]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000000000100000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
martin_a 3y ago
Bullshit. Energy prices are falling right now. I've just switched contracts for my parents at the weekend. They pay 30 cent/kWh for 100% renewable energy now. Down from 44 cent/kWh.
- c4mpute 3y ago
  They are falling from the Ukraine-war special-circumstances peak down to the pre-war rising slope. 30ct/kWh is still 50-100% higher than what e.g. France, Poland, or the UK (comparable in size and economy) are paying. Btw., those aren't even really low. Heavy industry, data centers and other energy-intensive industries are migrating heavily towards 1-digit-cent-per-kWh countries, so <10ct/kWh.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    Corporations move operations to places where operating is cheap? How exactly would this not happen if the prices were lower? This kind of concessions is how you end up with domestic sweat shops. FWIW the answer is not to prevent corporations from leaving the country either. That's silly. The answer is to apply carbon emission regulations to the entire supply chain of a company and to make the fines/fees more expensive than the money a business can save from moving somewhere else. Businesses act on what makes financial sense. If you want to change how businesses act, you need to change what makes financial sense for them.
    - c4mpute 3y ago
      You can try to ignore that and insist on applying emission regulations on import, which is what the EU currently is preparing. However, the scenario this will lead to is: Industry will still leave high-energy-price areas. If low-energy-price regions can be found within the EU, industry might go there. Otherwise industry will be off to wherever in the world is cheap and happily charge the EU carbon import duties to EU customers. The rest of the world will enjoy low-priced not-carbon-neutral products that the EU will never be able to compete with because of economies of scale. The only viable ways out of this isn't import duties but import restrictions, i.e. outright preventing goods that are not up to EU CO_2 standards from being imported. That will lead to local CO_2-neutral industries that have to be continuously walled off, because if they are exposed to the rest of the world they will be too small and expensive. The other way is a global agreement on CO_2 standards, such that those kinds of import regulations are unnecessary.
Gasp0de 3y ago
The sky-high energy prices are not because the end of coal and nuclear, but because the conservative government that ruled for the past 16 years streamlined the entire energy system so that it depended on cheap russian gas. However, prices are already down to normal again.
- c4mpute 3y ago
  > not because the end of coal and nuclear, but [...] it depended on cheap russian gas. Those events aren't independent, they are strongly connected. Coal and nuclear have provided baseload power, with gas and renewables filling in the peaks in the demand curve (e.g. solar for the day-peak). Ending coal and nuclear has ended baseload power, so not only do you have to fill the demand curve, you also have a far more variable supply curve. The only elements in that supply curve you can control are pumped-hydro storage and gas plants. Pumped-hydro is available but rare in Germany due to topography and the green movement. Which left gas plants, strongly increasing the reliance on gas imports. Edit: And Germany is still dependent on the goodwill and market prices of gas suppliers. It is just that the cheaper and easy-to-transport Russian pipelined gas has been replaced by overseas ship-supplied gas.

fnord123 3y ago

The end of coal is not pre-mature.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Climate change is, in a sense, a massive store of value that you can take from without the consent of those who pay. Which makes it very hard for economics-minded thinking to overlook as a lazy way to thrive.
c4mpute 3y ago
The end of coal is premature if your only other GW-scale energy source, nuclear, is being phased out at the same time, and you don't even have a replacement planned.
VSerge 3y ago
The end of coal has not happened on Germany, who went back to using massive amounts of coal as Russian gas stopped being available : 33.2% of all German electricity came from coal in 2022. https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022.pdf https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022... (slide 17 braunkohle + steinkohle)
- b3orn 3y ago
  I'd say it's slowly happening. There was a large drop in 2019[0] by around 25% (~50TWh) from 2018, ignoring the 2020 drop (around 25% ~33TWh compared to 2019) due to the pandemic, 2021 was almost back to 2019 levels (-3.5%) and 2022 was an increase by ~6.5% compared to 2019. Looking at quaterly data[1] it looks like 2023 will be well below 2019 again. And no, it hasn't been replaced by gas[2], although there's no clear trend in gas for electricity, if anything gas consumption is down due to the war. [0]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000001010000000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [1]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000001010000000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=quarter&quarter=-1 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... [2]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&legendItems=000000000100000000000&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&timeslider=1&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

martin_a 3y ago

Bullshit. Energy prices are falling right now. I've just switched contracts for my parents at the weekend. They pay 30 cent/kWh for 100% renewable energy now. Down from 44 cent/kWh.

c4mpute 3y ago
They are falling from the Ukraine-war special-circumstances peak down to the pre-war rising slope. 30ct/kWh is still 50-100% higher than what e.g. France, Poland, or the UK (comparable in size and economy) are paying. Btw., those aren't even really low. Heavy industry, data centers and other energy-intensive industries are migrating heavily towards 1-digit-cent-per-kWh countries, so <10ct/kWh.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Corporations move operations to places where operating is cheap? How exactly would this not happen if the prices were lower? This kind of concessions is how you end up with domestic sweat shops. FWIW the answer is not to prevent corporations from leaving the country either. That's silly. The answer is to apply carbon emission regulations to the entire supply chain of a company and to make the fines/fees more expensive than the money a business can save from moving somewhere else. Businesses act on what makes financial sense. If you want to change how businesses act, you need to change what makes financial sense for them.
  - c4mpute 3y ago
    You can try to ignore that and insist on applying emission regulations on import, which is what the EU currently is preparing. However, the scenario this will lead to is: Industry will still leave high-energy-price areas. If low-energy-price regions can be found within the EU, industry might go there. Otherwise industry will be off to wherever in the world is cheap and happily charge the EU carbon import duties to EU customers. The rest of the world will enjoy low-priced not-carbon-neutral products that the EU will never be able to compete with because of economies of scale. The only viable ways out of this isn't import duties but import restrictions, i.e. outright preventing goods that are not up to EU CO_2 standards from being imported. That will lead to local CO_2-neutral industries that have to be continuously walled off, because if they are exposed to the rest of the world they will be too small and expensive. The other way is a global agreement on CO_2 standards, such that those kinds of import regulations are unnecessary.

Gasp0de 3y ago

The sky-high energy prices are not because the end of coal and nuclear, but because the conservative government that ruled for the past 16 years streamlined the entire energy system so that it depended on cheap russian gas. However, prices are already down to normal again.

c4mpute 3y ago
> not because the end of coal and nuclear, but [...] it depended on cheap russian gas. Those events aren't independent, they are strongly connected. Coal and nuclear have provided baseload power, with gas and renewables filling in the peaks in the demand curve (e.g. solar for the day-peak). Ending coal and nuclear has ended baseload power, so not only do you have to fill the demand curve, you also have a far more variable supply curve. The only elements in that supply curve you can control are pumped-hydro storage and gas plants. Pumped-hydro is available but rare in Germany due to topography and the green movement. Which left gas plants, strongly increasing the reliance on gas imports. Edit: And Germany is still dependent on the goodwill and market prices of gas suppliers. It is just that the cheaper and easy-to-transport Russian pipelined gas has been replaced by overseas ship-supplied gas.