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Germany and piss poor energy policy - name a more iconic duo. The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobby

Germany and piss poor energy policy - name a more iconic duo. The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobbyists and Gazprom's natural gas lobbyists. The politicians not included in any of the above were too toothless, and couldn't fight through this bullshit and secure good outcomes regardless.

Qwertious 1y ago
The problem was "compromise" - essentially as part of forming government the Greens and the CDU (Angela Merkel's party) agreed to an energy policy where they would phase out nuclear and replace it with a fuckton of renewables. But the actual govt did only the former without the latter (despite the previous agreement and the Greens' protest of Where Are The Fucking Renewables), thus leaving only coal and gas. Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.
- MagnumOpus 1y ago
  This is very much wrong. The Greens were never in a coalition with CDU/Merkel. (Merkel was in coalitions with the SPD/Social Democrats and FDP/Liberals.) Greens were in a coalition with the Social Democrats led by Chancellor Schroeder; Schroeder agreed to the Greens’ demands for nuclear exit and negotiated a board role at Gazprom for himself after his political career. Merkel initially wanted to reverse or freeze the exit timeline but bowed to public opinion to continue it once the tsunami hit Japan.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    Yep, this is what I meant by "anti-nuclear eco-activists", "Gazprom oil lobbyists" and "toothless politicians" respectively.
hvb2 1y ago
> Germany and piss poor energy policy - name a more iconic duo. I mean not always, they put feed in tarifs for solar in law at the end of the 90s. This led to a huge boom in solar production and it made the Germans very big in solar panel production. Unfortunately, like all other countries they were eventually outproduced by china. This model has been copied in a lot of places afterwards and only when a mature market for solar exists does it stop working (it becomes a subsidy for people that produce paid for by people that don't).
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
And yet, despite multiple attempts by those on the political right to slow it down, they've powered ahead with reducing coal and gas usage. Some of those critics focus on nuclear (Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears-german-climate-efforts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  Opposition to nuclear is 90% a "left" wing problem. Blaming the boogeyman "right" is silly in general, as left-right is a thought-terminating scale, but really silly in this case where it actually is pretty clear-cut. Greenpeace did great work on the peace front, but wrecked 50 years of carbon progress on the nuclear power front.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > Opposition to nuclear is 90% a "left" wing problem. Blaming the boogeyman "right" is silly in general The "left" (by your definition) also opposes fossil fuels but we're nowhere near eliminating those. Why haven't they succeeded? Surely mere "opposition" isn't enough.
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Why all the asinine “atomkraft? Nein danke!” Signs? The policy seems designed by 70 year old hippies.

Qwertious 1y ago

The problem was "compromise" - essentially as part of forming government the Greens and the CDU (Angela Merkel's party) agreed to an energy policy where they would phase out nuclear and replace it with a fuckton of renewables. But the actual govt did only the former without the latter (despite the previous agreement and the Greens' protest of Where Are The Fucking Renewables), thus leaving only coal and gas. Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.

MagnumOpus 1y ago
This is very much wrong. The Greens were never in a coalition with CDU/Merkel. (Merkel was in coalitions with the SPD/Social Democrats and FDP/Liberals.) Greens were in a coalition with the Social Democrats led by Chancellor Schroeder; Schroeder agreed to the Greens’ demands for nuclear exit and negotiated a board role at Gazprom for himself after his political career. Merkel initially wanted to reverse or freeze the exit timeline but bowed to public opinion to continue it once the tsunami hit Japan.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Yep, this is what I meant by "anti-nuclear eco-activists", "Gazprom oil lobbyists" and "toothless politicians" respectively.

hvb2 1y ago

> Germany and piss poor energy policy - name a more iconic duo. I mean not always, they put feed in tarifs for solar in law at the end of the 90s. This led to a huge boom in solar production and it made the Germans very big in solar panel production. Unfortunately, like all other countries they were eventually outproduced by china. This model has been copied in a lot of places afterwards and only when a mature market for solar exists does it stop working (it becomes a subsidy for people that produce paid for by people that don't).

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

And yet, despite multiple attempts by those on the political right to slow it down, they've powered ahead with reducing coal and gas usage. Some of those critics focus on nuclear (Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears-german-climate-efforts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.

philipallstar 1y ago
Opposition to nuclear is 90% a "left" wing problem. Blaming the boogeyman "right" is silly in general, as left-right is a thought-terminating scale, but really silly in this case where it actually is pretty clear-cut. Greenpeace did great work on the peace front, but wrecked 50 years of carbon progress on the nuclear power front.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > Opposition to nuclear is 90% a "left" wing problem. Blaming the boogeyman "right" is silly in general The "left" (by your definition) also opposes fossil fuels but we're nowhere near eliminating those. Why haven't they succeeded? Surely mere "opposition" isn't enough.
CalRobert 1y ago
Why all the asinine “atomkraft? Nein danke!” Signs? The policy seems designed by 70 year old hippies.