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Meaningwhile, today 17/11/2023 the same Portugal is back to the normal and emitting 170g CO2/kwh [1][2] - This is 6.8x the emissions of Sweden (25g) running on

by adev_ 3y ago

Meaningwhile, today 17/11/2023 the same Portugal is back to the normal and emitting 170g CO2/kwh [1][2] - This is 6.8x the emissions of Sweden (25g) running on Nuclear and Hydro - This is 4.1x the emissions of France (41g) running on Nuclear, Hydro and Gas - This is 2.8x the emissions of Switzerland (59g) running on Nuclear and Hydro But still much better than "Green" Germany that reaches 647g CO2/kwh.... with 22GW of power generated from Coal after closing its Nuclear powerplants for reasons. Interestingly, these facts are not praised in the press as much as "Country X has been able to run renewable for X hours". Maybe because, like the article point out, Nuclear is not entirely "privatised". Nuclear "just works" and consequently does not act as an interesting roller-coaster for speculators on the energy market and stock market ? [1] https://postimg.cc/WDVZqnK1 https://postimg.cc/WDVZqnK1 [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT

adev_ 3y ago
Would people that minus a post stating facts backed by sources deign to explain why ? I am aware that reality can be harsh to accept sometimes. And that a world where renewable are our only source of energy is more seducing to our collective imagination. But unfortunately, it is still the reality. And we have to deal with it, even if it is pretty unpleasant.
- troupo 3y ago
  In a different discussion a few days ago someone told me I was lying when I pointed out that Germany is burning 20GW of coal to compensate for their 140GW of renewables working at only 15% capacity.
  - adev_ 3y ago
    I am half surprised. People are often shocked when they discover the real number about the Carbon intensity of the German electricity production. There is years of green washing to digest before accepting the truth.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      I am not at all surprised, why would I? Looking atvtha numbwers for installed capacity by source so Germany is on a good way (despite all the head wind regarding wind mills, grid extensions and so in and so forth), even if we could, and absolutely should, move faster. It is nowhere near the desaster people like to make it seem so. Also, isn't this thread about Portugal?
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      And electricity usage is only a minor part of CO2 production. Primary energy usage in Germany is split 25% is electricity, 25% is traffic and 50% is heating and cooling. As proven by the article the whole discussion is a huge red herring. Amdahl's law applies [0], if I reduce CO2 from electricity production by 50%, my overall reduction is only 12.5% [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
      - hef19898 3y ago
        See, that is why the switch to heat pumps for heating makes sonmuch sense: you can store oversupply of renewable electricy in the form of hot water, cutting down significantly on the CO2 emissions currently produced by heating with oil and gas.
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        Yes.
      - sergiosgc 3y ago
        Obviously these aren't independent domains. Make electricity cheap and it takes over the other energy domains. Heat pumps for heating, BEV/hydrogen for transportation.
    - natmaka 3y ago
      This is not because renewables cannot tackle the challenge, but because this is a work in progress (not quick enough) => not enough electricity produced => it offers a path for coal which is important for social and financial reasons. Add the Ukraine crisis (less imported methane). From 2010 to 2020 (crisis) Germany burnt less and less fossil fuels for its electricity, and methane (gas) isn't booming (from 90 to 96), while renewables do: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source?time=2010..latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... it induced a decrease in its carbon intensity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric... Comparing it to France implies to take every pertinent parameter into account, for example GDP/capita, climate (heating needs) and the fact that France imports more, and exports less (it lost approximately 50% of its industry since 1980) and therefore "avoids" emitting by using products built in other nations: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&region=Europe&country=FRA~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    The main challenge is not production but storage - e.g. several people I know have solar panels on their roof, sometimes with 5x their electricity peak usage without a way to store that electricity for later/night usage. The slow uptick of EVs in Germany is partialy part of the problem, it would be the easiest way to increase storage. As a tought experiment, if all cars in Germany would be EVs, those could store 2 days of electricity usage. For flat owners solar panel usage increased a lot, but battery production is way behind, the first usable ones arrived this year, but it will take some more years to get out of BETA. Also energy providers in Germany fight this tooth and nails, e.g. there is no easy way to get to the current usage data of your flat to regulate battery usage from solar storage ("zero feed-in").
    - troupo 3y ago
      > As a tought experiment, if all cars in Germany would be EVs, those could store 2 days of electricity usage. If you didn't need to, you know, use those cars. Storage is a huge unsolved problem.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I wouldn't say lying, but misrepresenting decribes that claim rather well.
    - troupo 3y ago
      Which of the following was misrepresented do you think: - that Germany has 135 GW combined installed capacity of wind and solar? - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? - that Germany needed 61 GW of electricity? - wind and solar, combined, were producing only 30% of Germany's needs? - that Germany needed to burn 20 GW of coal to cover this? - that Germany needed to also burn gas, biomass, and import electricity to cover the remaining 20 GW?
      - hef19898 3y ago
        The conclsion.
      - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
        > - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? This is a misrepresentation. Solar for example is only ever planned for to achieve about 30% of its "capacity" (due to the whole sun going down at night thing). And even that varies with seasons. So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver, and were suddenly let down then that's nonsense. Onshore wind has a similar number (again, varies by season).
        troupo 3y ago
        > Solar for example is only ever planned for to achieve about 30% of its "capacity" (due to the whole sun going down at night thing). And even that varies with seasons. 1. 30% is avaerage number which is a useless because at 10 in the morning when I was writing my text solar was even below that. 2. You're literally confirming what I was saying. > So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver I was claiming no such thing. I said, and it is backed by reality, that at 10 o'clock in the morning on a cloudy quiet day 135GW worth of renewables were producing only 20GW. Which is a fact. I know it's an unpleasant fact, but reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant. > Onshore wind has a similar number (again, varies by season). So, again. What exactly was I misrepresenting? The fact that renewables are overprovisioned in Germany? Or the fact that they were producing significantly less than both their capacity and the needs of the country? Or the fact that Germany had to burn 20GW worth of coal to keep up with the demand? Or the fact that even if you provision 400% capacity (4x times the demand), and it still produces 15%, you will still need to burn coal through the night. So it's 18:44 when I'm writing this. Wind is at 12.69% and solar is at 3% capacity. In total 16% of Germany's eletricity demand. It's lower than when I was writing these numbers in the comment when someone called me a liar. 40% of electricity (26 GW) is coming from coal. Reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant. Funnily, but when I keep asking "how much more do we need to overprovision renewables" to meet the demands, I'm met with silence or wishful thinking.
- icy_deadposts 3y ago
  Here's a harsh reality: "zero co2" nuclear emits massive amounts of CO2 during mining, during enrichment, creation of fuels, the massive motorcades that transport the fuels to their final power plant destination where they finally produce power without emitting CO2. So maybe its better for local air quality, but really the emissions are quite high. The actual metric that reflects the total embodied energy, which is a much better proxy for CO2 intensivity, is Levelized Cost of Energy, and nuclear is typically one of the worst. Not only does the high cost of nuclear reflect all the embedded energy, that high cost is taking money away that could be used for other energy saving and therefore CO2 reducing activities, like better insulation, upgrading equipment, smart grid, etc. Also, lets look at the posts that are "minused" without explanation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300495
  - himinlomax 3y ago
    > Here's a harsh reality: "zero co2" nuclear emits massive amounts of CO2 during mining, during enrichment, creation of fuels, the massive motorcades that transport the fuels to their final power plant destination where they finally produce power without emitting CO2. So maybe its better for local air quality, but really the emissions are quite high. That's complete bollocks, because all those CO₂ emissions are proportional to the amount of fuel, and the power density of nuclear fuel is such that the total amount is indeed tiny. Solar panels and wind turbines also require emitting CO₂ for their manufacture, and it turns out that they emit more than nuclear, fuel included. Additionally, while enrichment requires a lot of energy, to spin turbines or fuel gas separation, it's electrical energy, and in France for instance it's nuclear energy fueling enrichment.
    - icy_deadposts 3y ago
      > Solar panels and wind turbines also require emitting CO₂ for their manufacture, and it turns out that they emit more than nuclear, fuel included. You traced every aspect of the supply chain of both technologies to come to this conclusion? > in France for instance it's nuclear energy fueling enrichment. And tell me, where are the uranium mines in france?
- j-a-a-p 3y ago
  Just recently I got downvoted questioning the reason behind that logic that e-fuel is bad, because when you burn it, CO2 is produced. Climate and energy are complicated things, but even the simple stuff seems to be difficult to grasp for a lot of people.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> Interestingly, these facts are not praised in the press as much as "Country X has been able to run renewable for X hours". No different from reporters covering "Man bites dog" rather than "Dog bites man"
adrianN 3y ago
This source has very different numbers: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-unit-energy?country=PRT~DEU~CHE~SWE~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-unit-energy?count... Do you perhaps neglect to average over the whole year?
- adev_ 3y ago
  Average on the year 2022 gives similar result with a Portugal at 227g, a Sweden around 22g, France around 72g, Switzerland around 50g.[1] Data provided by the French electrical network manager are also aligned with these estimations [2] And other sources I am aware of also report similar numbers [3] Are you sure your number is not also counting residential heating and not only electricity generation ? [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT [2] https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/synthese-des-donnees?type=co2 https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/synthese-des-donnees?type... [3] https://www.nowtricity.com/ https://www.nowtricity.com/ Edit: quick edit with exact number for 2022.
  - adrianN 3y ago
    That wouldn't explain the 3x difference between what you report for Germany vs what Our World in Data reports for Germany.
    - adev_ 3y ago
      > That wouldn't explain the 3x difference between what you report for Germany vs what Our World in Data reports for Germany. The average for Germany over last year is around 486g /kwh [1]. Something similar is also reported by alternative sources [2]. I remember the estimation about Germany bumped massively when the emission about Lignite powerplant and "Green" coal powerplant were re-evaluated. Your data is from 2021 and probably still ignore this change. If I remember correctly: the details about how the calculation were done, and why they updated it, were described on the twitter of electricity map if you are interested. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE [2] https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/
anovikov 3y ago
Well, they still consume 60% of renewable electricity long term overall, that's not counting whatever renewable electricity may be a part of imports from Spain. It's good enough and that's a big progress. With solar power due to increase more than 7x by 2030 (now generating 8% of all power consumed), and wind by almost 3x with almost all additions being offshore (now generating 18% of all power), it's easy to see that even we assume 50% curtailment rate, they will provide 100% renewable power easily.
- adev_ 3y ago
  > it's easy to see that even we assume 50% curtailment rate, It is now 07h00 in Portugal. - Solar production is reduced to 0% because it is night time. Like it is 30% of the time. - Wind is not blowing much. Wind production is at 3.14% of its total capacity. To compensate that, 29% of the production is guarantee by Gas powerplant. The rest from Hydro. To compensate its high Hydro consumption, Portugal is also doing Hydro storage for around 500 MW by Night using electricity imported from Spain. Spanish Electricity is produced around 25% from Gas, which makes the entire operation looks pretty much like Greenwashing. The situation is not exceptional. It can in fact happen for weeks when an heavy depression exist in northern Atlantic. So please, tell me again: How easy will it be to achieve 100% renewable we assume 50% curtailment rate ? Shall Portugal increase its Wind capacity again by 20x ? Can Hydro storage powered by Gas powerplants ever be considered "Green" ? Or Shall we maybe rely on future magical Hydrogen electrolyser that do not exist yet to solve 22 GW of coal power consumption like Germany ?
  - adrianN 3y ago
    You build something like 3x peak demand and produce hydrogen or ammonia while you have a surplus so that you can burn it while the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow or use it as feedstock for your industrial processes. Industrial scale hydrogen electrolyzers exist, we just need to build more of them once we have a steady electricity surplus that allows us to run them economically.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
KingOfCoders 3y ago
Shouldn't that be g/person not g/kwh? E.g. when travelling to the US I was astonished to see escalators going at night with no one around. In Germany they stop at night. Or Germany uses lots of public transport while the US doesn't. Which reflects in the numbers, the US has much higher g/person compared to Germany (Didn't look into Portugal).
- debok 3y ago
  I think both metrics have their value. g/kwh gives you nice overview at how clean the energy is, and there is value in optimising that figure. The problem with measuring CO2 per person is that it is heavily influenced by the wealth level of the country's population. Poor counties have very low CO2 emissions, but people in wealthy countries wouldn't want to trade their living standards for those of a poor country. That would arguably be worse than climate change in the first place. So optimising for CO2 g/kwh allows us to reduce our emissions without reducing our quality of living. Which is great. That being said, I agree that running escalators at night is a terrible waste of energy.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    "kWh per hour worked" would be an interesting comparative metric, like the Big Mac index.
natmaka 3y ago
This is a work in progress, their transition isn't done yet. Without nuclear no risks tied to a major accident, dependancy towards uranium providers, hot waste disposal, overcentralization, overcentralization, proliferation, daunting building and decommission projects... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 ) Not a bad deal.
- troupo 3y ago
  > This is a work in progress, their transition isn't done yet. When will it be done? What really is the answer to the challenge? Germany has ~140 GW of installed renewables when it needs about ~70GW of electricity.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    Did you include the electricity needed for when all heating, transport, industry etc is electrified?
    - troupo 3y ago
      Good question as it makes the problem even worse. When I was writing this (before I forgot to send it on a cloudy morning) 140 GW of installed renewables in Germany are producing a grand total of 14GW of electricity. Germany needs 61GW. Right now it looks like all of Europe [1] is busy burning gas and coal because it's cloudy, and there's very little wind. So what happens when everything becomes electrical? Say, Germany needs 150GW of electricity, builds 500 GW of renewables, but those only produce 50GW (10% of installed capacity, like today)? [1] Except three countries with stable electricity generation: France (nuclear), Sweden (nuclear + hydro), Norway (hydro)
      - Scarblac 3y ago
        Ah, I misunderstood you completely, I thought you were saying that Germany had more renewables than it needs. Hopefully we build better ways for storing large amounts of energy.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
`Nuclear "just works"` No it doesn't. Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits [0]. To make nuclear "work", one would need to adjust insurance and establish a trust to pay for nuclear waste facility operation for the next hundres of years. But then, no one would operate them nuclear plants from the building costs to the operating and insurance costs. As a car driver I need to insure my car, so the insurance company pays people I hit. Nuclear operators do not need to insure their plant to any significant risk level. And if you think a disaster is not happening, well I also don't intend to have a car accident, so why do I need to pay insurance? [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B.
- atoav 3y ago
  The nuclear waste thing is my pet peeve. Maybe this works in sparsely populated countries where you just dump it in a remote area, but in Europe producing a ton of nuclear waste means you have a ton of radiating toxic waste that you have to guarantee to store safely in a densely populated landmass for the next 10.000 years. There isn't many options to do that and all of them ain't even cheap today. Unless you want to socialize the costs while you privatize the gains the cost for those 10.000 (in some cases 100.000) years has to be paid for in advance — unless we are just closing your our and expect future generations will happily do that. Now I don't say there isn't a scenario (irreversible climate change?) where doing precisely that could make sense — what I say is that no fan of nuclear power managed to explain that part to me in a way that convinced me yet. I want more than a "trust me bro" or handwaving optimism.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    Pls read abt how france is reprocessing waste or how breeding reactors work
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Some of it, the French nuclear waste, goes to Germany for "storage". Not all goes to breeding reactos. Regarding treaent, feel free to move next to Sellafield or similar sites. You might want to google the environmental impact of those first.
wewxjfq 3y ago
> "Green" Germany... Germany managed to have dirty electricity with nuclear energy, too. Why do people point at Germany and pretend it's a green energy failure, when Germany had a conservative government for 16 years that never cared about green energy? Green energy was never a policy*, what makes Germany the poster-child of a green energy failure? The conservatives said renewables drive electricity prices up and set out to stop them, and around the time they shut down nuclear power plants, they considered it an achievement to have prevented new photovoltaic installations. * Germany had exactly one government that put their faith in renewables and that was a noble goal, considering that renewables were at the very bottom of the S-curve, which also means that one could only make babysteps towards green energy. Now we're in the middle of the S-curve and countries can add GWs of renewables to their grid, which makes Germany's early attempts look pathetic, but you simply can't move at that pace at the bottom of the curve.
- ncruces 3y ago
  Germany closed NPPs while extending open pit coal. That's reason enough to criticize them.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Germany decided, or rather re-decided, to close NPPs after Fukushima. Hence, operators didn't invest in maintenance, saftey upgrades, repairs or new fuel. Rather, they did thenminimum necessary to get them to the agreed (operators and the government agreed on dates, surprising, I know), closure date. The result: There was no way to keep German NPPs scheduled for closure running any lomger without massive, and financially uninteresting, investments and a lot of time (refits, repairs, maintenance, recertification, procurent and delivery of new fuel rods, testing, reactivation...). That coal was increased instead of renewbles was a really bad devision. One driven by a strong lobby and (mostly) conservative politians with a vested interest in coal.
  - V__ 3y ago
    They closed nuclear plants, but the decision to close them down was made ten years ago. To extend them now would be prohibitively expensive and not even the owners wanted to keep them online. You can fault Germany for not building new modern reactors, but the old ones had to be shut down.
choeger 3y ago
Interestingly, you don't give a source for Germany, which according to this source has much lower emissions per kWh these last days: https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/chart/today/power_emission/10.11.2023/13.11.2023/hourly https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/cha... And even this source is a bit dubious, as there's no clear correlation between the amount of coal and gas and the emissions. Presumably they also count imported energy.
- adev_ 3y ago
  The sources are the same [1]. You can see the instant consumption today at 653g/kwh [2] and normalized over a month here 416g/kwh [3]. Values are also aligned with what other specialized sources estimate [4] You can also extract similar numbers on the site of European Union itself [5] Wierdly I have more doubts about the partiality of the data of your source. Specially when tags itself as "EnergyWiende" in the title. > Presumably they also count imported energy. It does not. These number account only for production. Germany numbers considering consumption are generally better because most of its neighbours have cleaner electricity production than Germany (excepted Poland). [1]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE [2]: https://postimg.cc/zLPrw1K0 https://postimg.cc/zLPrw1K0 [3]: https://postimg.cc/14BLDSS6 https://postimg.cc/14BLDSS6 [4]: https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ [5]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-5/download.table https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...
j-a-a-p 3y ago
Lies, damn lies.... All these metrics should just support a much needed trend towards renewables. For me the metric days off grid is very compelling, that is what we are trying to achieve aren't we? PT is at 6 out of 365, where is DE? It helps to motivate others in a positive manner. And on your topic, nuclear is a pipe dream. It is a toy for politicians to evade the raw fact that very hard measurements are needed (tax flying, much higher fossil energy pricing, tax on meat, tax on children, etc). Governments cannot buy their way out of this mess, I have no confidence at all other then spending on infrastructure, that government spending will solve the climate crisis.
DrNosferatu 3y ago
<3 Germany <3
frontalier 3y ago
Nice to see you here, and thanks for posting this.
Lutger 3y ago
Much better than most of the world actually, certainly 2x to 4x better than most US states. Your references are outliers, making it seem that Portugal is a high emitter which is false, relatively speaking. Even without looking at your source its clear that the 3 countries you selected have access to huge amounts of hydro and/or nuclear. Just look at the map, Portugal is still ranking pretty good globally.
timeon 3y ago
What I find strange is that there is always someone who is arguing for nuclear and against renewable. Or other way around. That is something what fossil-fuel industry likes.
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
You seem to be making some kind of category error here as "Hydro" is also renewable.

by adev_ 3y ago

adev_ 3y ago

Would people that minus a post stating facts backed by sources deign to explain why ? I am aware that reality can be harsh to accept sometimes. And that a world where renewable are our only source of energy is more seducing to our collective imagination. But unfortunately, it is still the reality. And we have to deal with it, even if it is pretty unpleasant.

troupo 3y ago
In a different discussion a few days ago someone told me I was lying when I pointed out that Germany is burning 20GW of coal to compensate for their 140GW of renewables working at only 15% capacity.
- adev_ 3y ago
  I am half surprised. People are often shocked when they discover the real number about the Carbon intensity of the German electricity production. There is years of green washing to digest before accepting the truth.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I am not at all surprised, why would I? Looking atvtha numbwers for installed capacity by source so Germany is on a good way (despite all the head wind regarding wind mills, grid extensions and so in and so forth), even if we could, and absolutely should, move faster. It is nowhere near the desaster people like to make it seem so. Also, isn't this thread about Portugal?
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    And electricity usage is only a minor part of CO2 production. Primary energy usage in Germany is split 25% is electricity, 25% is traffic and 50% is heating and cooling. As proven by the article the whole discussion is a huge red herring. Amdahl's law applies [0], if I reduce CO2 from electricity production by 50%, my overall reduction is only 12.5% [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
    - hef19898 3y ago
      See, that is why the switch to heat pumps for heating makes sonmuch sense: you can store oversupply of renewable electricy in the form of hot water, cutting down significantly on the CO2 emissions currently produced by heating with oil and gas.
      - KingOfCoders 3y ago
        Yes.
    - sergiosgc 3y ago
      Obviously these aren't independent domains. Make electricity cheap and it takes over the other energy domains. Heat pumps for heating, BEV/hydrogen for transportation.
  - natmaka 3y ago
    This is not because renewables cannot tackle the challenge, but because this is a work in progress (not quick enough) => not enough electricity produced => it offers a path for coal which is important for social and financial reasons. Add the Ukraine crisis (less imported methane). From 2010 to 2020 (crisis) Germany burnt less and less fossil fuels for its electricity, and methane (gas) isn't booming (from 90 to 96), while renewables do: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source?time=2010..latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... it induced a decrease in its carbon intensity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric... Comparing it to France implies to take every pertinent parameter into account, for example GDP/capita, climate (heating needs) and the fact that France imports more, and exports less (it lost approximately 50% of its industry since 1980) and therefore "avoids" emitting by using products built in other nations: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&region=Europe&country=FRA~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  The main challenge is not production but storage - e.g. several people I know have solar panels on their roof, sometimes with 5x their electricity peak usage without a way to store that electricity for later/night usage. The slow uptick of EVs in Germany is partialy part of the problem, it would be the easiest way to increase storage. As a tought experiment, if all cars in Germany would be EVs, those could store 2 days of electricity usage. For flat owners solar panel usage increased a lot, but battery production is way behind, the first usable ones arrived this year, but it will take some more years to get out of BETA. Also energy providers in Germany fight this tooth and nails, e.g. there is no easy way to get to the current usage data of your flat to regulate battery usage from solar storage ("zero feed-in").
  - troupo 3y ago
    > As a tought experiment, if all cars in Germany would be EVs, those could store 2 days of electricity usage. If you didn't need to, you know, use those cars. Storage is a huge unsolved problem.
- hef19898 3y ago
  I wouldn't say lying, but misrepresenting decribes that claim rather well.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Which of the following was misrepresented do you think: - that Germany has 135 GW combined installed capacity of wind and solar? - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? - that Germany needed 61 GW of electricity? - wind and solar, combined, were producing only 30% of Germany's needs? - that Germany needed to burn 20 GW of coal to cover this? - that Germany needed to also burn gas, biomass, and import electricity to cover the remaining 20 GW?
    - hef19898 3y ago
      The conclsion.
    - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      > - that wind and solar, combined, were only producing 15% of their installed capacity aka 20GW? This is a misrepresentation. Solar for example is only ever planned for to achieve about 30% of its "capacity" (due to the whole sun going down at night thing). And even that varies with seasons. So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver, and were suddenly let down then that's nonsense. Onshore wind has a similar number (again, varies by season).
      - troupo 3y ago
        > Solar for example is only ever planned for to achieve about 30% of its "capacity" (due to the whole sun going down at night thing). And even that varies with seasons. 1. 30% is avaerage number which is a useless because at 10 in the morning when I was writing my text solar was even below that. 2. You're literally confirming what I was saying. > So if you're claiming the German grid planners were expecting the solar to magically 4x overdeliver I was claiming no such thing. I said, and it is backed by reality, that at 10 o'clock in the morning on a cloudy quiet day 135GW worth of renewables were producing only 20GW. Which is a fact. I know it's an unpleasant fact, but reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant. > Onshore wind has a similar number (again, varies by season). So, again. What exactly was I misrepresenting? The fact that renewables are overprovisioned in Germany? Or the fact that they were producing significantly less than both their capacity and the needs of the country? Or the fact that Germany had to burn 20GW worth of coal to keep up with the demand? Or the fact that even if you provision 400% capacity (4x times the demand), and it still produces 15%, you will still need to burn coal through the night. So it's 18:44 when I'm writing this. Wind is at 12.69% and solar is at 3% capacity. In total 16% of Germany's eletricity demand. It's lower than when I was writing these numbers in the comment when someone called me a liar. 40% of electricity (26 GW) is coming from coal. Reality has the unfortunate tendency to be unpleasant. Funnily, but when I keep asking "how much more do we need to overprovision renewables" to meet the demands, I'm met with silence or wishful thinking.
icy_deadposts 3y ago
Here's a harsh reality: "zero co2" nuclear emits massive amounts of CO2 during mining, during enrichment, creation of fuels, the massive motorcades that transport the fuels to their final power plant destination where they finally produce power without emitting CO2. So maybe its better for local air quality, but really the emissions are quite high. The actual metric that reflects the total embodied energy, which is a much better proxy for CO2 intensivity, is Levelized Cost of Energy, and nuclear is typically one of the worst. Not only does the high cost of nuclear reflect all the embedded energy, that high cost is taking money away that could be used for other energy saving and therefore CO2 reducing activities, like better insulation, upgrading equipment, smart grid, etc. Also, lets look at the posts that are "minused" without explanation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300495
- himinlomax 3y ago
  > Here's a harsh reality: "zero co2" nuclear emits massive amounts of CO2 during mining, during enrichment, creation of fuels, the massive motorcades that transport the fuels to their final power plant destination where they finally produce power without emitting CO2. So maybe its better for local air quality, but really the emissions are quite high. That's complete bollocks, because all those CO₂ emissions are proportional to the amount of fuel, and the power density of nuclear fuel is such that the total amount is indeed tiny. Solar panels and wind turbines also require emitting CO₂ for their manufacture, and it turns out that they emit more than nuclear, fuel included. Additionally, while enrichment requires a lot of energy, to spin turbines or fuel gas separation, it's electrical energy, and in France for instance it's nuclear energy fueling enrichment.
  - icy_deadposts 3y ago
    > Solar panels and wind turbines also require emitting CO₂ for their manufacture, and it turns out that they emit more than nuclear, fuel included. You traced every aspect of the supply chain of both technologies to come to this conclusion? > in France for instance it's nuclear energy fueling enrichment. And tell me, where are the uranium mines in france?
j-a-a-p 3y ago
Just recently I got downvoted questioning the reason behind that logic that e-fuel is bad, because when you burn it, CO2 is produced. Climate and energy are complicated things, but even the simple stuff seems to be difficult to grasp for a lot of people.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> Interestingly, these facts are not praised in the press as much as "Country X has been able to run renewable for X hours". No different from reporters covering "Man bites dog" rather than "Dog bites man"

adrianN 3y ago

This source has very different numbers: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-unit-energy?country=PRT~DEU~CHE~SWE~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-unit-energy?count... Do you perhaps neglect to average over the whole year?

adev_ 3y ago
Average on the year 2022 gives similar result with a Portugal at 227g, a Sweden around 22g, France around 72g, Switzerland around 50g.[1] Data provided by the French electrical network manager are also aligned with these estimations [2] And other sources I am aware of also report similar numbers [3] Are you sure your number is not also counting residential heating and not only electricity generation ? [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT [2] https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/synthese-des-donnees?type=co2 https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/synthese-des-donnees?type... [3] https://www.nowtricity.com/ https://www.nowtricity.com/ Edit: quick edit with exact number for 2022.
- adrianN 3y ago
  That wouldn't explain the 3x difference between what you report for Germany vs what Our World in Data reports for Germany.
  - adev_ 3y ago
    > That wouldn't explain the 3x difference between what you report for Germany vs what Our World in Data reports for Germany. The average for Germany over last year is around 486g /kwh [1]. Something similar is also reported by alternative sources [2]. I remember the estimation about Germany bumped massively when the emission about Lignite powerplant and "Green" coal powerplant were re-evaluated. Your data is from 2021 and probably still ignore this change. If I remember correctly: the details about how the calculation were done, and why they updated it, were described on the twitter of electricity map if you are interested. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE [2] https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/

anovikov 3y ago

Well, they still consume 60% of renewable electricity long term overall, that's not counting whatever renewable electricity may be a part of imports from Spain. It's good enough and that's a big progress. With solar power due to increase more than 7x by 2030 (now generating 8% of all power consumed), and wind by almost 3x with almost all additions being offshore (now generating 18% of all power), it's easy to see that even we assume 50% curtailment rate, they will provide 100% renewable power easily.

adev_ 3y ago
> it's easy to see that even we assume 50% curtailment rate, It is now 07h00 in Portugal. - Solar production is reduced to 0% because it is night time. Like it is 30% of the time. - Wind is not blowing much. Wind production is at 3.14% of its total capacity. To compensate that, 29% of the production is guarantee by Gas powerplant. The rest from Hydro. To compensate its high Hydro consumption, Portugal is also doing Hydro storage for around 500 MW by Night using electricity imported from Spain. Spanish Electricity is produced around 25% from Gas, which makes the entire operation looks pretty much like Greenwashing. The situation is not exceptional. It can in fact happen for weeks when an heavy depression exist in northern Atlantic. So please, tell me again: How easy will it be to achieve 100% renewable we assume 50% curtailment rate ? Shall Portugal increase its Wind capacity again by 20x ? Can Hydro storage powered by Gas powerplants ever be considered "Green" ? Or Shall we maybe rely on future magical Hydrogen electrolyser that do not exist yet to solve 22 GW of coal power consumption like Germany ?
- adrianN 3y ago
  You build something like 3x peak demand and produce hydrogen or ammonia while you have a surplus so that you can burn it while the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow or use it as feedstock for your industrial processes. Industrial scale hydrogen electrolyzers exist, we just need to build more of them once we have a steady electricity surplus that allows us to run them economically.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago

KingOfCoders 3y ago

Shouldn't that be g/person not g/kwh? E.g. when travelling to the US I was astonished to see escalators going at night with no one around. In Germany they stop at night. Or Germany uses lots of public transport while the US doesn't. Which reflects in the numbers, the US has much higher g/person compared to Germany (Didn't look into Portugal).

debok 3y ago
I think both metrics have their value. g/kwh gives you nice overview at how clean the energy is, and there is value in optimising that figure. The problem with measuring CO2 per person is that it is heavily influenced by the wealth level of the country's population. Poor counties have very low CO2 emissions, but people in wealthy countries wouldn't want to trade their living standards for those of a poor country. That would arguably be worse than climate change in the first place. So optimising for CO2 g/kwh allows us to reduce our emissions without reducing our quality of living. Which is great. That being said, I agree that running escalators at night is a terrible waste of energy.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  "kWh per hour worked" would be an interesting comparative metric, like the Big Mac index.

natmaka 3y ago

This is a work in progress, their transition isn't done yet. Without nuclear no risks tied to a major accident, dependancy towards uranium providers, hot waste disposal, overcentralization, overcentralization, proliferation, daunting building and decommission projects... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 ) Not a bad deal.

troupo 3y ago
> This is a work in progress, their transition isn't done yet. When will it be done? What really is the answer to the challenge? Germany has ~140 GW of installed renewables when it needs about ~70GW of electricity.
- Scarblac 3y ago
  Did you include the electricity needed for when all heating, transport, industry etc is electrified?
  - troupo 3y ago
    Good question as it makes the problem even worse. When I was writing this (before I forgot to send it on a cloudy morning) 140 GW of installed renewables in Germany are producing a grand total of 14GW of electricity. Germany needs 61GW. Right now it looks like all of Europe [1] is busy burning gas and coal because it's cloudy, and there's very little wind. So what happens when everything becomes electrical? Say, Germany needs 150GW of electricity, builds 500 GW of renewables, but those only produce 50GW (10% of installed capacity, like today)? [1] Except three countries with stable electricity generation: France (nuclear), Sweden (nuclear + hydro), Norway (hydro)
    - Scarblac 3y ago
      Ah, I misunderstood you completely, I thought you were saying that Germany had more renewables than it needs. Hopefully we build better ways for storing large amounts of energy.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

`Nuclear "just works"` No it doesn't. Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits [0]. To make nuclear "work", one would need to adjust insurance and establish a trust to pay for nuclear waste facility operation for the next hundres of years. But then, no one would operate them nuclear plants from the building costs to the operating and insurance costs. As a car driver I need to insure my car, so the insurance company pays people I hit. Nuclear operators do not need to insure their plant to any significant risk level. And if you think a disaster is not happening, well I also don't intend to have a car accident, so why do I need to pay insurance? [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B.

atoav 3y ago
The nuclear waste thing is my pet peeve. Maybe this works in sparsely populated countries where you just dump it in a remote area, but in Europe producing a ton of nuclear waste means you have a ton of radiating toxic waste that you have to guarantee to store safely in a densely populated landmass for the next 10.000 years. There isn't many options to do that and all of them ain't even cheap today. Unless you want to socialize the costs while you privatize the gains the cost for those 10.000 (in some cases 100.000) years has to be paid for in advance — unless we are just closing your our and expect future generations will happily do that. Now I don't say there isn't a scenario (irreversible climate change?) where doing precisely that could make sense — what I say is that no fan of nuclear power managed to explain that part to me in a way that convinced me yet. I want more than a "trust me bro" or handwaving optimism.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Pls read abt how france is reprocessing waste or how breeding reactors work
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Some of it, the French nuclear waste, goes to Germany for "storage". Not all goes to breeding reactos. Regarding treaent, feel free to move next to Sellafield or similar sites. You might want to google the environmental impact of those first.

wewxjfq 3y ago

> "Green" Germany... Germany managed to have dirty electricity with nuclear energy, too. Why do people point at Germany and pretend it's a green energy failure, when Germany had a conservative government for 16 years that never cared about green energy? Green energy was never a policy*, what makes Germany the poster-child of a green energy failure? The conservatives said renewables drive electricity prices up and set out to stop them, and around the time they shut down nuclear power plants, they considered it an achievement to have prevented new photovoltaic installations. * Germany had exactly one government that put their faith in renewables and that was a noble goal, considering that renewables were at the very bottom of the S-curve, which also means that one could only make babysteps towards green energy. Now we're in the middle of the S-curve and countries can add GWs of renewables to their grid, which makes Germany's early attempts look pathetic, but you simply can't move at that pace at the bottom of the curve.

ncruces 3y ago
Germany closed NPPs while extending open pit coal. That's reason enough to criticize them.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Germany decided, or rather re-decided, to close NPPs after Fukushima. Hence, operators didn't invest in maintenance, saftey upgrades, repairs or new fuel. Rather, they did thenminimum necessary to get them to the agreed (operators and the government agreed on dates, surprising, I know), closure date. The result: There was no way to keep German NPPs scheduled for closure running any lomger without massive, and financially uninteresting, investments and a lot of time (refits, repairs, maintenance, recertification, procurent and delivery of new fuel rods, testing, reactivation...). That coal was increased instead of renewbles was a really bad devision. One driven by a strong lobby and (mostly) conservative politians with a vested interest in coal.
- V__ 3y ago
  They closed nuclear plants, but the decision to close them down was made ten years ago. To extend them now would be prohibitively expensive and not even the owners wanted to keep them online. You can fault Germany for not building new modern reactors, but the old ones had to be shut down.

choeger 3y ago

Interestingly, you don't give a source for Germany, which according to this source has much lower emissions per kWh these last days: https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/chart/today/power_emission/10.11.2023/13.11.2023/hourly https://www.agora-energiewende.de/daten-tools/agorameter/cha... And even this source is a bit dubious, as there's no clear correlation between the amount of coal and gas and the emissions. Presumably they also count imported energy.

adev_ 3y ago
The sources are the same [1]. You can see the instant consumption today at 653g/kwh [2] and normalized over a month here 416g/kwh [3]. Values are also aligned with what other specialized sources estimate [4] You can also extract similar numbers on the site of European Union itself [5] Wierdly I have more doubts about the partiality of the data of your source. Specially when tags itself as "EnergyWiende" in the title. > Presumably they also count imported energy. It does not. These number account only for production. Germany numbers considering consumption are generally better because most of its neighbours have cleaner electricity production than Germany (excepted Poland). [1]: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE [2]: https://postimg.cc/zLPrw1K0 https://postimg.cc/zLPrw1K0 [3]: https://postimg.cc/14BLDSS6 https://postimg.cc/14BLDSS6 [4]: https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ https://www.nowtricity.com/country/germany/ [5]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-intensity-5/download.table https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/co2-emission-i...

j-a-a-p 3y ago

Lies, damn lies.... All these metrics should just support a much needed trend towards renewables. For me the metric days off grid is very compelling, that is what we are trying to achieve aren't we? PT is at 6 out of 365, where is DE? It helps to motivate others in a positive manner. And on your topic, nuclear is a pipe dream. It is a toy for politicians to evade the raw fact that very hard measurements are needed (tax flying, much higher fossil energy pricing, tax on meat, tax on children, etc). Governments cannot buy their way out of this mess, I have no confidence at all other then spending on infrastructure, that government spending will solve the climate crisis.

DrNosferatu 3y ago

<3 Germany <3

frontalier 3y ago

Nice to see you here, and thanks for posting this.

Lutger 3y ago

Much better than most of the world actually, certainly 2x to 4x better than most US states. Your references are outliers, making it seem that Portugal is a high emitter which is false, relatively speaking. Even without looking at your source its clear that the 3 countries you selected have access to huge amounts of hydro and/or nuclear. Just look at the map, Portugal is still ranking pretty good globally.

timeon 3y ago

What I find strange is that there is always someone who is arguing for nuclear and against renewable. Or other way around. That is something what fossil-fuel industry likes.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

You seem to be making some kind of category error here as "Hydro" is also renewable.