> Mining uranium is cleaner than coal? We had mines here in Germany and they were definitely environmentally very dangerous. Much more cleaner. All mining is d

> Mining uranium is cleaner than coal? We had mines here in Germany and they were definitely environmentally very dangerous. Much more cleaner. All mining is dirty, but Coal mining is moreso. One thing that causes this is the large amount that should be mined. You get mountaintop mining in which the whole top of a mountain top is removed to get to the coal. Another method is underground mining (in which at least 5000 people die each year in China alone). The scale at which coal is mined causes environmental damage of a completely different order. > Surprise for you: coal prices are not the same in the world. The types of coal are different, the mining is different, labor costs are different. It depends. The country in which I live is the 4th largest exporter of coal. The prices of low grade coal (with high sulphur and mecury content) differ since it is usually used locally and not exported. The advantage of this is that it is cheaper but the disadvantage is that it pollutes much more. High grade coal are generally more expensive and roughly the same price worldwide (it is a commodity). This is just like gold prices or steel prices. > Why would you excluded hydro power from renewables. I excluded hydropower because it is the only viable renewable energy source (e.g. the 3 gorges dam is an impressive 20+GW). But unfortunately there is limited opportunities – when all the dams are built you cannot scale it up much more. > That France does not export much energy from renewable sources is no surprise, they have betted all their money on nuclear power plants. Yes, and they are a large net exporter of electricity (Germany is not). With a smaller population and a smaller economy France produces as much electricity as Germany. > A Blockheizkraftwerk will be run on gas and later on biogas. You know that gas power generation pollutes a lot? You know that gas power generation is more expensive? (Most countries that have gas generation power plants only run it at peak times). > and later on biogas. Biogas is a pipe dream. Enough biogas will never be created for power generation. > gas is much less environmentally dangerous than nuclear materials or coal, ... Gas is much more expensive than coal. Your source of gas also runs in a pipeline from Russia over some unstable areas. I doubt that it is a good idea to bet energy security on Russian and Ukrainian relations. > Germany already has high energy prices. It should get ready for still higher prices. > It is still number one exporter in the world. It will become a lot less competitive with higher energy prices. > Countries like China are far behind. It shows in their environment also. The Chinese economy is growing by 8% per year – much more than Germany (that is/was in a recession). China is also becoming less polluted as time progress. > the goal is to reduce energy consumption, create new technologies and get rid of the old energy wasting industries. You can reduce energy all you want. But you still have industries that require large amounts of cheap energy – e.g. metallurgy. An aluminium smelter uses 1GW+ whether you like it or not. Those jobs and industry will simply switch to countries with a more sane energy policy.