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Meanwhile Germany is still operating over 130 coal-fired power plants. Despite 25 years of energy transition.

pydry 2y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po... 58 according to this and 210 in America. The American nuclear lobby really, really hates Germany's nuclear free green transition though. Coal and global warming theyre not at all bothered about.
fsh 2y ago
Not very surprising with 16 of the 25 years being under a conservative government. Even so, the electricity production from coal has more than halved over the period.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) [1] [2]. Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade, regardless of what the current narrative is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 [2] https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.c...
- tuatoru 2y ago
  > The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) That's nice, but it's still underachieving compared to the task. We need ~50TW of solar and ~30 TW of wind to be able to smelt iron, make transport fuels and plastics and lubricants as well as electricity. Unless, of course, you want to suppress development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
  - audunw 2y ago
    I think 2050 is a reasonable goal to get to 100% renewable/clean (including nuclear to some degree) for all energy. Then we need to average, what, around 4TW/year for two decades? Considering how fast solar/wind is growing, that seems within reach doesn’t it? We’ll probably be somewhat under that in the 2030s and hopefully above that in the 2040s? I hope by 2030 we start to see some real growth in advanced geothermal too. Maybe some wave and tide power as well.
- lukan 2y ago
  "Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade" Very optimistic. If we can avoid a CD(S)U-AfD coalition it might even work out.
  - chihuahua 2y ago
    I don't know how they could cope with the loss of lignite strip-mining.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I approach it from the cold, hard economics and the human lizard brain operating model.
    - lukan 2y ago
      You mean: "me feeling cold" "coal is cheap" "burning coal makes me warm" "coal good!" Coal remains the cheapest energy source in the north. Only if you factor in the external costs, it gets expensive - but that factoring in is politics. And there are already lots of people feeling angry and voting "alternatives" because they think the politicians made energy (coal) too expensive. Climafanatics is the term they use for people who say coal is very expensive in the long term .
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        If you want to bet $1000 to a charity of the winner’s choice about what coal consumption looks like in 2030, let me know and we’ll spin up a Long Bet. https://longbets.org/ https://longbets.org/
        MichaelNolan 2y ago
        I wish longbets was more active. I imagine that a big blocker is that they only allow bets to charity, due to American gambling laws. I'm not opposed to the money going to charity, but it definitely limits the number, and size, of bets I'd be willing to make.
mschuster91 2y ago
Yeah, but they're getting rapidly phased out for electricity generation. The most difficult to replace are the ones which also supply district heating, which is pretty widespread in the former GDR.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  Those aren't "difficult to replace" at all. Instead replacing the systems in dozens or hundreds of homes, you're replacing just a few. And because those plants usually use multiple boilers for redundancy and load scaling, you can replace them without interrupting service. Also, banks understand and finance that sort of stuff more easily than they will Joe Homeowner. The Coefficient of Performance for a fossil-fuel heating plant is about .8. The COP for a large building / campus sized heat pump is nearly ten times that. They're well understood, too, as millions of office and apartment buildings and campuses use them. All that it takes to turn a cooling system into a heating system is switching where water is routed...
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Large city-scale heat pumps are pretty new technology - the currently largest build in Denmark is from 2023 [1]. Even if you have hot water available, it will take a city like Munich many MANY years [2]. Don't get me wrong: it's high time to switch heating and cooling to district systems, where producers of heat like datacenters can add to the supply. But it's at the same time not as easy and fast to switch a many-hundred-megawatt block to heat pumps as it is to switch a single building. [1] https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/fernwaerme-groesste-waermepumpe-der-welt-heizt-100-000-daenen-ein/ https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/fernwa... [2] https://www.swm.de/magazin/energie/geothermie https://www.swm.de/magazin/energie/geothermie
CalRobert 2y ago
At least they got rid of their nice clean nukes.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po... 58 according to this and 210 in America. The American nuclear lobby really, really hates Germany's nuclear free green transition though. Coal and global warming theyre not at all bothered about.

fsh 2y ago

Not very surprising with 16 of the 25 years being under a conservative government. Even so, the electricity production from coal has more than halved over the period.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) [1] [2]. Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade, regardless of what the current narrative is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 [2] https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.c...

tuatoru 2y ago
> The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) That's nice, but it's still underachieving compared to the task. We need ~50TW of solar and ~30 TW of wind to be able to smelt iron, make transport fuels and plastics and lubricants as well as electricity. Unless, of course, you want to suppress development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
- audunw 2y ago
  I think 2050 is a reasonable goal to get to 100% renewable/clean (including nuclear to some degree) for all energy. Then we need to average, what, around 4TW/year for two decades? Considering how fast solar/wind is growing, that seems within reach doesn’t it? We’ll probably be somewhat under that in the 2030s and hopefully above that in the 2040s? I hope by 2030 we start to see some real growth in advanced geothermal too. Maybe some wave and tide power as well.
lukan 2y ago
"Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade" Very optimistic. If we can avoid a CD(S)U-AfD coalition it might even work out.
- chihuahua 2y ago
  I don't know how they could cope with the loss of lignite strip-mining.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I approach it from the cold, hard economics and the human lizard brain operating model.
  - lukan 2y ago
    You mean: "me feeling cold" "coal is cheap" "burning coal makes me warm" "coal good!" Coal remains the cheapest energy source in the north. Only if you factor in the external costs, it gets expensive - but that factoring in is politics. And there are already lots of people feeling angry and voting "alternatives" because they think the politicians made energy (coal) too expensive. Climafanatics is the term they use for people who say coal is very expensive in the long term .
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      If you want to bet $1000 to a charity of the winner’s choice about what coal consumption looks like in 2030, let me know and we’ll spin up a Long Bet. https://longbets.org/ https://longbets.org/
      - MichaelNolan 2y ago
        I wish longbets was more active. I imagine that a big blocker is that they only allow bets to charity, due to American gambling laws. I'm not opposed to the money going to charity, but it definitely limits the number, and size, of bets I'd be willing to make.

mschuster91 2y ago

Yeah, but they're getting rapidly phased out for electricity generation. The most difficult to replace are the ones which also supply district heating, which is pretty widespread in the former GDR.

KennyBlanken 2y ago
Those aren't "difficult to replace" at all. Instead replacing the systems in dozens or hundreds of homes, you're replacing just a few. And because those plants usually use multiple boilers for redundancy and load scaling, you can replace them without interrupting service. Also, banks understand and finance that sort of stuff more easily than they will Joe Homeowner. The Coefficient of Performance for a fossil-fuel heating plant is about .8. The COP for a large building / campus sized heat pump is nearly ten times that. They're well understood, too, as millions of office and apartment buildings and campuses use them. All that it takes to turn a cooling system into a heating system is switching where water is routed...
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Large city-scale heat pumps are pretty new technology - the currently largest build in Denmark is from 2023 [1]. Even if you have hot water available, it will take a city like Munich many MANY years [2]. Don't get me wrong: it's high time to switch heating and cooling to district systems, where producers of heat like datacenters can add to the supply. But it's at the same time not as easy and fast to switch a many-hundred-megawatt block to heat pumps as it is to switch a single building. [1] https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/fernwaerme-groesste-waermepumpe-der-welt-heizt-100-000-daenen-ein/ https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/fernwa... [2] https://www.swm.de/magazin/energie/geothermie https://www.swm.de/magazin/energie/geothermie

CalRobert 2y ago

At least they got rid of their nice clean nukes.