8 ms·

Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catas

Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catastrophe.

mpweiher 3y ago
Yeah, evidently I missed the news that after 20 years of Energiewende, Germany has the 2nd most expensive AND the 2nd dirtiest electricity in Europe and that the old plan of "we'll use wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and when they do not <a miracle occurs>" really worked out perfectly, particularly when the miracle turned out to be "Russian gas" and exploded in our face, causing us to have to buy up essentially all the gas available on the open market at horrible expense after Russia started blackmailing us. Note that "buying up all the gas on the open market" is not a strategy that too many countries can follow at once, hence other countries started to look elsewhere. For example, Japan, who were going to exit nuclear, and are now turning more and more of their old plants back on and have announced they will be building more (!), very specifically to replace reliance on LNG shipments. And yeah, we got really, really lucky with the mild winter of 2022. Apparently not too many other countries think that "luck" is sound energy policy, but YMMV. Also slightly unpopular in the world is our tried and true method of "we'll lower emissions by pushing our economy into recession due to high energy costs". And the constitutional court also took a dim view of trying to hide all the extra costs off the main budget, so the real costs are only now starting to emerge. The farmer demos were probably just the start of the unrest when the pain gets passed onto the population. A population that already now thinks the getting out of nuclear was a mistake: "Sechs von zehn Befragten (59 Prozent) im aktuellen DeutschlandTrend für das ARD-Morgenmagazin halten die Entscheidung der Politik für falsch," https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... Meanwhile, the coalition that is pushing this through against the voters is now down to 32% in the polls. But you're right, I really should have followed the news more! The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger... Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a-disaster-in-the-making/ https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a... Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-20-years-later/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=bqa4ZDn.PbhF76s.wE3Pcw8CjafP.bMyifjcBEAD5Yw-1703749860-0-gaNycGzNDdA https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-... Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germanys-energy-crisis-dispels-several-myths/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany... "Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy." You are right, I really should follow the news more!
- _ph_ 3y ago
  I am from Germany, and I am just replying for the record: You are just repeating right wing propaganda, which tries to paint black pictures about a policy they helped implementing. But the truth is, the current government was able to avoid a gas shortage after Russia had cut off deliveries to Germany and that was the only possible problematic point in the winter of 22. By now we have enough capacity to import LNG to avoid shortages while the Energiewende has take up speed again. It hasn't failed at all, but the previous government had tried the best to make it fail. But coal usage in Germany has still been on a historic low in 23. Oh, and the grid in France managed to keep up only because Germany was propping it up as too many old nuclear reactors had to be taken off grid. Which caused a small uptake in German coal production. But in 23 the downward trend continued.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    I am also from Germany. The fact that the left (my side, I have never voted for an even moderate right party in my life) won't let go of this purely ideologically driven energy policy that is proving disastrous and that 59% of the population (and rising) oppose maybe one of the reasons the current ruling coalition has fallen to 32% in the polls (those numbers match surprisingly well), and there is starting to be unrest in the streets. For example the most recent demonstrations by farmers. They are supposed to pay billions of Euros extra for the Diesel fuel for their tractors because the constitutional court declared all the off-books vehicles the government tried to use to hide the subsidies for the energy crisis illegal. And so the government now has to actually account for all that money, and is scrambling to find places to cut in the budget. All the <a miracle occurs> little white lies are coming out. It's not pretty. And the failed energy policy is also one of the primary reasons the really, really awful far right parties like the AfD have doubled from ~10% last election to 20% in current polls. That was one of the catastrophic results of this catastrophic energy policy that I didn't mention before, because I am not that interested in party politics. "Die in weiten Teilen rechtsextreme AfD erzielt vor allem in Regionen gute Wahlergebnisse, in denen die Industrie wegen der Klimapolitik vor Umbrüchen steht." https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/klimaziele-deutschland-in-diesen-regionen-staerkt-die-klimapolitik-der-ampel-die-afd/29410172.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/klimaziele-... The vast majority of AfD voters (75% according to stats I have seen) do not vote for the AfD because they are Nazis. They hold their noses at the awful ideology, but don't see an alternative to some of the awful policies being enacted. And I am 100% in agreement with you that the moderate right like the CDU are just as much to blame as the current government. They had the chance to stop the madness, but instead they made a populistic calculation that keeping this irrational energy policy would keep them in power a little longer. Pathetic. Particularly pathetic because they knew it was wrong, whereas the Greens apparently believe their BS. Now the CDU/CSU seems to be turning around (also pathetically) to be more pro-nuclear, conveniently "forgetting" that it was them that passed the current laws mandating getting out of nuclear, but at least they are providing an alternative to the current failed policies that isn't the AfD. Lesser of three evils, I guess. Our catastrophic energy policy also contributed to the war in Ukraine, because Putin (incorrectly, it turned out, partly because Habeck did am amazing job of crisis management) assumed he could blackmail us into not supporting Ukraine. You denounce what I write as "right wing propaganda", without being able to list a single thing about it that is wrong. Because it is not wrong. What I write is correct. When the only political parties telling the truth about an important subject are the far right, we are in serious trouble as a democracy. Serious, serious trouble. I don't want the AfD. Please stop the madness that is bringing them to power. I have already debunked the narrative about French reactors in '22 in detail elsewhere, here's the summary: "The shutdowns for the inspections and maintenance were planned. Not for a single plant, for a lot of plants. The inspections found a problem. The shutdowns were extended so they could be fixed, in the original plants and in other plants that might also be affected. The shutdowns, the inspections and the maintenance were planned. What they found was obviously not planned. If you could plan for what you find during an inspection, you wouldn't need an inspection. That's why you inspect." France was able to plan their inspections and routine maintenance for the summer, because nuclear can be planned, the capacity factor is generally >90%. Have you tried planning a storm? The capacity factor for wind/solar is <15%.

Evidently you missed the news that it turned out to be no catastrophe at all, but just a lot of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over a clearly hoped-for catastrophe.

mpweiher 3y ago

Yeah, evidently I missed the news that after 20 years of Energiewende, Germany has the 2nd most expensive AND the 2nd dirtiest electricity in Europe and that the old plan of "we'll use wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines, and when they do not <a miracle occurs>" really worked out perfectly, particularly when the miracle turned out to be "Russian gas" and exploded in our face, causing us to have to buy up essentially all the gas available on the open market at horrible expense after Russia started blackmailing us. Note that "buying up all the gas on the open market" is not a strategy that too many countries can follow at once, hence other countries started to look elsewhere. For example, Japan, who were going to exit nuclear, and are now turning more and more of their old plants back on and have announced they will be building more (!), very specifically to replace reliance on LNG shipments. And yeah, we got really, really lucky with the mild winter of 2022. Apparently not too many other countries think that "luck" is sound energy policy, but YMMV. Also slightly unpopular in the world is our tried and true method of "we'll lower emissions by pushing our economy into recession due to high energy costs". And the constitutional court also took a dim view of trying to hide all the extra costs off the main budget, so the real costs are only now starting to emerge. The farmer demos were probably just the start of the unrest when the pain gets passed onto the population. A population that already now thinks the getting out of nuclear was a mistake: "Sechs von zehn Befragten (59 Prozent) im aktuellen DeutschlandTrend für das ARD-Morgenmagazin halten die Entscheidung der Politik für falsch," https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... Meanwhile, the coalition that is pushing this through against the voters is now down to 32% in the polls. But you're right, I really should have followed the news more! The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger... Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a-disaster-in-the-making/ https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a... Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-20-years-later/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=bqa4ZDn.PbhF76s.wE3Pcw8CjafP.bMyifjcBEAD5Yw-1703749860-0-gaNycGzNDdA https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-... Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germanys-energy-crisis-dispels-several-myths/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany... "Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy." You are right, I really should follow the news more!

_ph_ 3y ago
I am from Germany, and I am just replying for the record: You are just repeating right wing propaganda, which tries to paint black pictures about a policy they helped implementing. But the truth is, the current government was able to avoid a gas shortage after Russia had cut off deliveries to Germany and that was the only possible problematic point in the winter of 22. By now we have enough capacity to import LNG to avoid shortages while the Energiewende has take up speed again. It hasn't failed at all, but the previous government had tried the best to make it fail. But coal usage in Germany has still been on a historic low in 23. Oh, and the grid in France managed to keep up only because Germany was propping it up as too many old nuclear reactors had to be taken off grid. Which caused a small uptake in German coal production. But in 23 the downward trend continued.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  I am also from Germany. The fact that the left (my side, I have never voted for an even moderate right party in my life) won't let go of this purely ideologically driven energy policy that is proving disastrous and that 59% of the population (and rising) oppose maybe one of the reasons the current ruling coalition has fallen to 32% in the polls (those numbers match surprisingly well), and there is starting to be unrest in the streets. For example the most recent demonstrations by farmers. They are supposed to pay billions of Euros extra for the Diesel fuel for their tractors because the constitutional court declared all the off-books vehicles the government tried to use to hide the subsidies for the energy crisis illegal. And so the government now has to actually account for all that money, and is scrambling to find places to cut in the budget. All the <a miracle occurs> little white lies are coming out. It's not pretty. And the failed energy policy is also one of the primary reasons the really, really awful far right parties like the AfD have doubled from ~10% last election to 20% in current polls. That was one of the catastrophic results of this catastrophic energy policy that I didn't mention before, because I am not that interested in party politics. "Die in weiten Teilen rechtsextreme AfD erzielt vor allem in Regionen gute Wahlergebnisse, in denen die Industrie wegen der Klimapolitik vor Umbrüchen steht." https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/klimaziele-deutschland-in-diesen-regionen-staerkt-die-klimapolitik-der-ampel-die-afd/29410172.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/klimaziele-... The vast majority of AfD voters (75% according to stats I have seen) do not vote for the AfD because they are Nazis. They hold their noses at the awful ideology, but don't see an alternative to some of the awful policies being enacted. And I am 100% in agreement with you that the moderate right like the CDU are just as much to blame as the current government. They had the chance to stop the madness, but instead they made a populistic calculation that keeping this irrational energy policy would keep them in power a little longer. Pathetic. Particularly pathetic because they knew it was wrong, whereas the Greens apparently believe their BS. Now the CDU/CSU seems to be turning around (also pathetically) to be more pro-nuclear, conveniently "forgetting" that it was them that passed the current laws mandating getting out of nuclear, but at least they are providing an alternative to the current failed policies that isn't the AfD. Lesser of three evils, I guess. Our catastrophic energy policy also contributed to the war in Ukraine, because Putin (incorrectly, it turned out, partly because Habeck did am amazing job of crisis management) assumed he could blackmail us into not supporting Ukraine. You denounce what I write as "right wing propaganda", without being able to list a single thing about it that is wrong. Because it is not wrong. What I write is correct. When the only political parties telling the truth about an important subject are the far right, we are in serious trouble as a democracy. Serious, serious trouble. I don't want the AfD. Please stop the madness that is bringing them to power. I have already debunked the narrative about French reactors in '22 in detail elsewhere, here's the summary: "The shutdowns for the inspections and maintenance were planned. Not for a single plant, for a lot of plants. The inspections found a problem. The shutdowns were extended so they could be fixed, in the original plants and in other plants that might also be affected. The shutdowns, the inspections and the maintenance were planned. What they found was obviously not planned. If you could plan for what you find during an inspection, you wouldn't need an inspection. That's why you inspect." France was able to plan their inspections and routine maintenance for the summer, because nuclear can be planned, the capacity factor is generally >90%. Have you tried planning a storm? The capacity factor for wind/solar is <15%.