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Seems like an interesting article. Germany in particular. Their politicians have adopted a frivolous attitude to energy security for a long time now. Between kn

by roenxi 3y ago

Seems like an interesting article. Germany in particular. Their politicians have adopted a frivolous attitude to energy security for a long time now. Between kneecapping their own nuclear industry and the over-dependence on Russia for energy it'll be interesting to see if they get away with it. This crisis and their response to it is a real test and it is probably going to be the decisive "did it work?" moment for me of the Energiewende to date. I will also note that although they have succeeded in removing the UK from their maps, they cannot suppress the Swiss spirit. Well done Switzerland for being irrepressible.

realusername 3y ago
> This crisis and their response to it is a real test and it is probably going to be the decisive "did it work?" moment for me of the Energiewende to date. Right now they are pushing to build more gas pipelines to replace Russia so I'd say no to that. The lessons from the russian war have not been understood and this was such a big event that I don't know what else would help.
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  What's wrong with building more gas pipelines? Maybe they's build them towards the South and connect with Turkstream - and get a mix of caspian and russian gas from there. Also Germany is building LNG terminals, but they take time and LNG is more expensive than normal natural gas, so the only "benefit" is political because they can say "we're not buying from Russia", but nothing else.
  - realusername 3y ago
    It's wrong because gas is a fossil fuel incompatible with the climate goals and the countries providing it (Algeria, Qatar, Azerbaidjan...) are basically the same thing as Russia. And LNG is even dirtier. So it's a bad thing diplomatically, environmentally and economically.
p_l 3y ago
There's also a huge "earthquake" in how Germany is currently replacing how the internal electricity market is operated... Spent few weeks trying to help someone find out what kind of setup they need with the switchover, because even the grid compliance officer didn't know...
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Germany as the third largest economy in the world (swapped places with Japan recently) and the driving economic force in Europe of course plays a key role in European energy security. The Ukraine conflict forced the transition to renewables to be accelerated and plans for a transition from coal to gas to be shelved; probably permanently. Germany no longer is dependent on Russian gas at this point and it never was very dependent on nuclear even before it put in motion the plan to get rid of it completely almost 15 years ago. People are whining about this a lot but it doesn't really matter. The energy gap is much bigger than the retired nuclear could ever fill and it was never going to be a big part of any short term solution to addressing that gap. It sure would have helped, a little bit. But in the end Germany managed fine without it. The simple reality is that unless you already have a nuclear plant up and running, getting a new one is going to take probably well over a decade even under the best of circumstances. Probably more like two decades in Germany. Germany only had a few nuclear plants left in 2021 and they are now gone. New ones were not being planned. So like it or not, nuclear simply was not going to be a major factor in the German energy crisis. The 8GW of nuclear that was left and is now gone was never going to be anywhere close to enough. Renewables are a different matter. The amount of generation added on a yearly basis is way more than the nuclear capacity they got rid off. The crisis has caused investments to be stepped up and the timeline to be accelerated. So much so, that despite the above, coal usage is not really growing. It just temporarily stopped shrinking. And we're already on the tail end of that too and the shrinkage will resume. At this point, the main challenge is actually not generation but energy transport and storage. It's doubtful coal will be completely shutdown by the mid 2030's as per the original pre-war plan. But it's going to decline in importance between now and then. LNG as a fuel for gas plants is stupidly expensive and unlikely to be something that will be stepped up. It's a stop gap solution to keep existing plants going and that will increasingly be in the role of peaker plants that are only operational when they have nothing else. But I expect they'll be needed less and less. Investments in the energy generation and transport infrastructure is going to have to step up of course. This will be good for Germany and Europe. More cables means more resilience against local weather and climate related peaks and dips in wind and solar generation and less dependence on foreign fossil fuel imports.
- roenxi 3y ago

by roenxi 3y ago

realusername 3y ago

> This crisis and their response to it is a real test and it is probably going to be the decisive "did it work?" moment for me of the Energiewende to date. Right now they are pushing to build more gas pipelines to replace Russia so I'd say no to that. The lessons from the russian war have not been understood and this was such a big event that I don't know what else would help.

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
What's wrong with building more gas pipelines? Maybe they's build them towards the South and connect with Turkstream - and get a mix of caspian and russian gas from there. Also Germany is building LNG terminals, but they take time and LNG is more expensive than normal natural gas, so the only "benefit" is political because they can say "we're not buying from Russia", but nothing else.
- realusername 3y ago
  It's wrong because gas is a fossil fuel incompatible with the climate goals and the countries providing it (Algeria, Qatar, Azerbaidjan...) are basically the same thing as Russia. And LNG is even dirtier. So it's a bad thing diplomatically, environmentally and economically.

p_l 3y ago

There's also a huge "earthquake" in how Germany is currently replacing how the internal electricity market is operated... Spent few weeks trying to help someone find out what kind of setup they need with the switchover, because even the grid compliance officer didn't know...

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Germany as the third largest economy in the world (swapped places with Japan recently) and the driving economic force in Europe of course plays a key role in European energy security. The Ukraine conflict forced the transition to renewables to be accelerated and plans for a transition from coal to gas to be shelved; probably permanently. Germany no longer is dependent on Russian gas at this point and it never was very dependent on nuclear even before it put in motion the plan to get rid of it completely almost 15 years ago. People are whining about this a lot but it doesn't really matter. The energy gap is much bigger than the retired nuclear could ever fill and it was never going to be a big part of any short term solution to addressing that gap. It sure would have helped, a little bit. But in the end Germany managed fine without it. The simple reality is that unless you already have a nuclear plant up and running, getting a new one is going to take probably well over a decade even under the best of circumstances. Probably more like two decades in Germany. Germany only had a few nuclear plants left in 2021 and they are now gone. New ones were not being planned. So like it or not, nuclear simply was not going to be a major factor in the German energy crisis. The 8GW of nuclear that was left and is now gone was never going to be anywhere close to enough. Renewables are a different matter. The amount of generation added on a yearly basis is way more than the nuclear capacity they got rid off. The crisis has caused investments to be stepped up and the timeline to be accelerated. So much so, that despite the above, coal usage is not really growing. It just temporarily stopped shrinking. And we're already on the tail end of that too and the shrinkage will resume. At this point, the main challenge is actually not generation but energy transport and storage. It's doubtful coal will be completely shutdown by the mid 2030's as per the original pre-war plan. But it's going to decline in importance between now and then. LNG as a fuel for gas plants is stupidly expensive and unlikely to be something that will be stepped up. It's a stop gap solution to keep existing plants going and that will increasingly be in the role of peaker plants that are only operational when they have nothing else. But I expect they'll be needed less and less. Investments in the energy generation and transport infrastructure is going to have to step up of course. This will be good for Germany and Europe. More cables means more resilience against local weather and climate related peaks and dips in wind and solar generation and less dependence on foreign fossil fuel imports.

roenxi 3y ago