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Germany did two things to cope with the loss of nuclear plants. First they simply use less power than before. Second they import nuclear power from France for

Germany did two things to cope with the loss of nuclear plants. First they simply use less power than before. Second they import nuclear power from France for reliability. Seems kinda silly to me.

froh 2y ago
the article states we imported renewables from the alps and scandinavia, and produced more renewables ourselves. neither are silly.
- CraftingLinks 2y ago
  It's not the relatively clean nuclear you needed to replace it's the coal and gas. You effectively neutralized your renewable energy efforts by shutting down nuclear.
  - practicemaths 2y ago
    Yeah but then Russia could not have sold them as much oil & gas.
  - kjeldsendk 2y ago
    That's not true, nuclear was never the main source of power in Germany and it's been replaced by a constantly growing sustainable energy sector.
    - CraftingLinks 2y ago
      30 TWh nuclear, replaced by 30 TWh renewables, from the article.
- josefx 2y ago
  > we imported renewables from the alps and scandinavia How large are those power lines going from scandinavia to Germany? Afaik we already have issues getting north and south Germany properly connected. It doesn't help that there where reports of "greenwashing" in the past where power companies would trade local coal power for hydroelectric power from the other side on the planet so they could put a 100% green energy seal on their offering.
- QuesnayJr 2y ago
  Since you importing it meant less for the rest of us, "silly" isn't the word I would use either. "Irresponsible", on the other hand, I would accept.
throw0101c 2y ago
> First they simply use less power than before. Some numbers at: * https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany
kjeldsendk 2y ago
They import from all neighbors and helped France when 50% of their aging nuclear power plants were down.
- realusername 2y ago
  Yeah sure, they helped one year out of the last 30 years where they've been importing from France. Good for them for that year.
copx 2y ago
Also tons of coal power from Poland. But that's the beauty of climate activism: As long as the emissions are happening somewhere else they don't count. You kill your own industry and just import everything from China, where they use dirt cheap and very dirty energy from brown coal, but, hey, it does not count towards our carbon footprint.
- eigenspace 2y ago
  Germany does not import a significant amount of electricity from Poland. ___________________________________ Edit: Removed a false claim on my part that Germany exported more to Poland than it imports. I maintain however that the amount imported from Poland is not significant.
  - copx 2y ago
    No, your information is false. >A considerably strong increase of electricity imports to Germany is seen from Poland. Starting at a lower level, the Polish electricity import rose by 400 percent in 2021, compared to previous year. [1] ..and that was / is coal power. Media critical of the nuclear exit here in Germany pointed out that the immediate solution to the disappearence of German nuclear power from the network was to increase energy imports, namely more nuclear power from France and more coal power from Poland, which made the whole move even more questionable. [1] https://www.eupd-research.com/en/conventional-electricity-imports-are-the-achilles-heel-of-the-german-energy-transition/ https://www.eupd-research.com/en/conventional-electricity-im...
    - eigenspace 2y ago
      Sorry, I had it wrong that Germany exported more to Poland than it imports, I had misremembered. However, if you look here: https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023 https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=... you'll see that in 2023, Germany exported 3.57 TWh of power to Poland, and imported 3.05 TWh, which is not very much. For context, Germany imported 63.7 TWh of electricity in total in 2023, so the amount coming from Poland is indeed quite small.
scrlk 2y ago
> First they simply use less power than before. That's the effect of strangling their heavy industry via higher energy prices.
PinguTS 2y ago
You didn't read the report didn't you?
locallost 2y ago
This is incorrect. The "authors" of the article also run Energy-Charts.info where you can see how much was imported/exported. In all of 2023 Germany imported just 0.4TWh net electricity from France. Most of the import imbalance came from Denmark, Norway and third place Sweden the only other country with a significant nuclear percentage. The numbers are skewed by last winter when Germany did most of the exports to France, but at the same time it will continue to increase renewables capacity and decrease the imports. In general I don't see a problem. Germany doesn't want nuclear because it considers it a bad deal. France thinks it's good so it sells it to Germany, and Germany buys it because it's cheaper than producing from coal domestically. Everyone should be happy. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=tcs_saldo&year=2023&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...
- hokkos 2y ago
  Now switch to physical flow and France is the top exporter for Germany. Note that cross border trading is day ahead and not complete, it misses at lot of the daily flow, anyway trading and physical are completely different because of Kirchhoff law. Anyway people that talk about import from one country to another just show that they don't what they talk about. For example Danemark is a net importer for 2023, so it doesn't make any sense to say that most of Germany electricity import comes from Danemark, it actually comes from Norway and Sweden and Danemark is just passing it through. You would have to use flow tracing to get how much each country provide, but if there is 2 way to count flow there many more to do flow tracing. What is important is net position.
  - locallost 2y ago
    Quote from the energy charts page: > The physical electricity flows do not provide any information on whether the electricity was actually consumed in the country or whether it was forwarded to neighbouring countries as transit electricity. So when people talk about imports and exports, they usually talk about who paid who (electricity trade). Sweden and Norway are already listed. I suppose it's possible someone in Denmark was buying from the Scandinavian countries and sold it to Germany, I don't know how the markets, bidding zones etc work in detail. But even in that case it was not really buying that much French nuclear. And again, even if it was I don't see a real problem. Germany thinks it's a bad deal to have them running, but if France thinks it can make it work, sure. Sounds like a win-win.

Germany did two things to cope with the loss of nuclear plants. First they simply use less power than before. Second they import nuclear power from France for reliability. Seems kinda silly to me.

froh 2y ago

the article states we imported renewables from the alps and scandinavia, and produced more renewables ourselves. neither are silly.

CraftingLinks 2y ago
It's not the relatively clean nuclear you needed to replace it's the coal and gas. You effectively neutralized your renewable energy efforts by shutting down nuclear.
- practicemaths 2y ago
  Yeah but then Russia could not have sold them as much oil & gas.
- kjeldsendk 2y ago
  That's not true, nuclear was never the main source of power in Germany and it's been replaced by a constantly growing sustainable energy sector.
  - CraftingLinks 2y ago
    30 TWh nuclear, replaced by 30 TWh renewables, from the article.
josefx 2y ago
> we imported renewables from the alps and scandinavia How large are those power lines going from scandinavia to Germany? Afaik we already have issues getting north and south Germany properly connected. It doesn't help that there where reports of "greenwashing" in the past where power companies would trade local coal power for hydroelectric power from the other side on the planet so they could put a 100% green energy seal on their offering.
QuesnayJr 2y ago
Since you importing it meant less for the rest of us, "silly" isn't the word I would use either. "Irresponsible", on the other hand, I would accept.

throw0101c 2y ago

> First they simply use less power than before. Some numbers at: * https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany

kjeldsendk 2y ago

They import from all neighbors and helped France when 50% of their aging nuclear power plants were down.

realusername 2y ago
Yeah sure, they helped one year out of the last 30 years where they've been importing from France. Good for them for that year.

copx 2y ago

Also tons of coal power from Poland. But that's the beauty of climate activism: As long as the emissions are happening somewhere else they don't count. You kill your own industry and just import everything from China, where they use dirt cheap and very dirty energy from brown coal, but, hey, it does not count towards our carbon footprint.

eigenspace 2y ago
Germany does not import a significant amount of electricity from Poland. ___________________________________ Edit: Removed a false claim on my part that Germany exported more to Poland than it imports. I maintain however that the amount imported from Poland is not significant.
- copx 2y ago
  No, your information is false. >A considerably strong increase of electricity imports to Germany is seen from Poland. Starting at a lower level, the Polish electricity import rose by 400 percent in 2021, compared to previous year. [1] ..and that was / is coal power. Media critical of the nuclear exit here in Germany pointed out that the immediate solution to the disappearence of German nuclear power from the network was to increase energy imports, namely more nuclear power from France and more coal power from Poland, which made the whole move even more questionable. [1] https://www.eupd-research.com/en/conventional-electricity-imports-are-the-achilles-heel-of-the-german-energy-transition/ https://www.eupd-research.com/en/conventional-electricity-im...
  - eigenspace 2y ago
    Sorry, I had it wrong that Germany exported more to Poland than it imports, I had misremembered. However, if you look here: https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=2023 https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=... you'll see that in 2023, Germany exported 3.57 TWh of power to Poland, and imported 3.05 TWh, which is not very much. For context, Germany imported 63.7 TWh of electricity in total in 2023, so the amount coming from Poland is indeed quite small.

scrlk 2y ago

> First they simply use less power than before. That's the effect of strangling their heavy industry via higher energy prices.

PinguTS 2y ago

You didn't read the report didn't you?

locallost 2y ago

This is incorrect. The "authors" of the article also run Energy-Charts.info where you can see how much was imported/exported. In all of 2023 Germany imported just 0.4TWh net electricity from France. Most of the import imbalance came from Denmark, Norway and third place Sweden the only other country with a significant nuclear percentage. The numbers are skewed by last winter when Germany did most of the exports to France, but at the same time it will continue to increase renewables capacity and decrease the imports. In general I don't see a problem. Germany doesn't want nuclear because it considers it a bad deal. France thinks it's good so it sells it to Germany, and Germany buys it because it's cheaper than producing from coal domestically. Everyone should be happy. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=tcs_saldo&year=2023&interval=year https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

hokkos 2y ago
Now switch to physical flow and France is the top exporter for Germany. Note that cross border trading is day ahead and not complete, it misses at lot of the daily flow, anyway trading and physical are completely different because of Kirchhoff law. Anyway people that talk about import from one country to another just show that they don't what they talk about. For example Danemark is a net importer for 2023, so it doesn't make any sense to say that most of Germany electricity import comes from Danemark, it actually comes from Norway and Sweden and Danemark is just passing it through. You would have to use flow tracing to get how much each country provide, but if there is 2 way to count flow there many more to do flow tracing. What is important is net position.
- locallost 2y ago
  Quote from the energy charts page: > The physical electricity flows do not provide any information on whether the electricity was actually consumed in the country or whether it was forwarded to neighbouring countries as transit electricity. So when people talk about imports and exports, they usually talk about who paid who (electricity trade). Sweden and Norway are already listed. I suppose it's possible someone in Denmark was buying from the Scandinavian countries and sold it to Germany, I don't know how the markets, bidding zones etc work in detail. But even in that case it was not really buying that much French nuclear. And again, even if it was I don't see a real problem. Germany thinks it's a bad deal to have them running, but if France thinks it can make it work, sure. Sounds like a win-win.