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Comment by crisdux | Hacker News Reader

Be careful what you wish for. Look at Germany for the best example of what you are asking for. Ignore the PR and look at the data. They have increased solar capacity, but are closing natural gas and nuclear plants to build new lignite coal plants(the worst of the coal burning plants). Since their focus on solar, Germany's CO2 reductions have actually slowed!

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It seems like the biggest problem is the retreat from nuclear, not the focus on solar.

Off topic so I apologize, but I saw your name, did a double take and had to say, "It's awesome".

Or the fact that the sun doesn't shine that much in Germany? Look at a world solar potential energy map. They are throwing money down the drain.

A combination of shutting down nuclear to just import from France's nukes down the road and use solar where they don't get much sun I would guess.

Ok, looking at the data, Germany gets over 40% of its electricity from renewables, while the USA gets less than 20%.

The US has multiple states larger than Germany I think. Regardless, it is much bigger and requires more work.

Germany has a population of 80 million people. The largest US state is California with 40 million people.

Population and load is only one piece to the puzzle. A larger country means a much larger and more expensive transmission grid.

> to build new lignite coal plants

Germany has reduced it's energy from coal by 20% over the period since the transition began. Please cite your reliable sources that show they are replacing nuclear and gas with coal.

Energy from gas is up slightly, about 7%, over the same period. Nuclear is down 50%. The difference is all replaced by solar and wind.

> are closing natural gas and nuclear plants to build new lignite coal plants

Do you have a source for this? Specifically the building of new coal plants.

Yes, since it is a political shitshow. Just today they presented a plan to distribute 40 billion to give those "poor" workers and communities depending on lignite a "perspektiv for the future" [0].

And I do see reasons for that. It's just that all of this would have been done ages ago if we had a lignite fukushima.

[0] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kabinett-kohleausstieg-101....

Because they took a stance on nuclear power and refuse to use it. The do not care about facts and safety of nuclear power, instead they choose to poison the air for surrounding countries and be the 9 out of 10 largest CO2 contributor of Europe. Renewables + nuclear power is the real deal in clean energy, having renewables + coal is definitely not going to cut it.

You're being super disingenuous here. The main priority of Germany's energy transition program was not to lower electricity carbon emissions; it was to phase out nuclear. They were far more worried about a 2nd Fukushima than global warming.

And as you point out, they are managing to reduce CO2 emissions anyway.

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