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Germany gets 25% of their power from renewable energe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_i

Germany gets 25% of their power from renewable energe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany It's possible

InclinedPlane 14y ago
You completely ignored my points, some additional facts (Germany is becoming an electrical power importer, relying on France's nuclear plants, is relying more and more on coal, and may end up increasing its CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, the US has actually decreased its CO2 emissions mostly by relying more heavily on natural gas and should hit 1990 levels soon, despite population growth.): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/germany-becomes-net-power-importer-from-france-after-atomic-halt.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/germany-becomes-net... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/merkel-s-green-shift-forces-germany-to-burn-more-coal-energy.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/merkel-s-green-shif... http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-coal-fired-plants-could-be-key-to-german-energy-revolution-a-854335.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-coal-fired-p...
reitzensteinm 14y ago
Yes, but that doesn't contradict InclinedPlane's point in the least. It's easy to generate a lot of renewable energy when you've got the old power plants ready to cover any shortfalls in generation capacity. Just because you can acheive 25% under those conditions by prioritizing renewables does not imply that you can push renewables up to 90%+. The wind can stop blowing for quite some time, even on a country wide scale. You either have to store the energy, import it from other countries or have backup power stations to cover the shortfall. The (free) book Without Hot Air is a fantastic read for more information. It's written by a no nonsense physicist that dives pretty deep into possible plans for a future energy grid, including all the messy details. And the details are messy. Any renewable energy plan that doesn't sound like a momentus undertaking is cheating by 1) Only talking about electricity, not total energy 2) Discounting embodied energy of imports 3) Keeping a country sized fossil fuel infrastructure around to fill in the gaps 4) Importing energy Sometimes all four.

Germany gets 25% of their power from renewable energe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany It's possible

InclinedPlane 14y ago

You completely ignored my points, some additional facts (Germany is becoming an electrical power importer, relying on France's nuclear plants, is relying more and more on coal, and may end up increasing its CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, the US has actually decreased its CO2 emissions mostly by relying more heavily on natural gas and should hit 1990 levels soon, despite population growth.): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/germany-becomes-net-power-importer-from-france-after-atomic-halt.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/germany-becomes-net... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/merkel-s-green-shift-forces-germany-to-burn-more-coal-energy.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-19/merkel-s-green-shif... http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-coal-fired-plants-could-be-key-to-german-energy-revolution-a-854335.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-coal-fired-p...

reitzensteinm 14y ago

Yes, but that doesn't contradict InclinedPlane's point in the least. It's easy to generate a lot of renewable energy when you've got the old power plants ready to cover any shortfalls in generation capacity. Just because you can acheive 25% under those conditions by prioritizing renewables does not imply that you can push renewables up to 90%+. The wind can stop blowing for quite some time, even on a country wide scale. You either have to store the energy, import it from other countries or have backup power stations to cover the shortfall. The (free) book Without Hot Air is a fantastic read for more information. It's written by a no nonsense physicist that dives pretty deep into possible plans for a future energy grid, including all the messy details. And the details are messy. Any renewable energy plan that doesn't sound like a momentus undertaking is cheating by 1) Only talking about electricity, not total energy 2) Discounting embodied energy of imports 3) Keeping a country sized fossil fuel infrastructure around to fill in the gaps 4) Importing energy Sometimes all four.