German voters would prefer a more ambitious timeline to phase out coal | Hacker News Reader

German voters would prefer a more ambitious timeline to phase out coal

nature.com

56 pointsssijak24 comments

The crucial question that this article doesn't address is: replace coal with what? Germany has been closing its nuclear plants, which has largely negated the gains they've made in wind and solar. Once renewable generation during peak production hours for solar and wind is saturated not much can be gained from further increases in solar and wind capacity. The only alternative for non-intermittent energy production (besides nuclear) is gas. And gas still emits carbon, and creates energy dependency on Russia.

Gas produces less CO2 and (I think?) is free from fly ash. But I'd suspect renewables, hydro, natural gas, and biogas would fill in for coal.

sulfur and other pollutants. coal is the dirtiest source of energy. Coal would die anyway (modulo anthracite). Gas, solar, wind and nuclear is gonna be cheaper in the future.

I agree that there is currently a lack of general discussion/activity related to energy storage during peak hours of renewables (or active production during <antonym of peak> hours of renewables). Maybe it's just not yet time for that... .

I guess/hope that companies will jump into the energy storage sector (related to renewables) once there is demand and it becomes therefore financially interesting => some unorthodox ideas might come up in the future (which could be used as well for flat landscapes like the german one) (e.g. https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris... )

Storage.

By building out storage, of which there is a plethora of possibilities, then peak production from renewables can be stored and dispatched later.

Each unit of storage at that point can then displace some amount of baseline generation like coal or nuclear.

What kind of storage though? Last I talked to some engineers at powerplants here in EU, they said that pretty much all places where you can build high efficiency storage (accumulation lakes / pumping powerplants) are already taken and in use. Now they state of the art is considering even horribly inefficient storage ( < 25% ) and that's going to require a lot of space and resources.

Possibly power-to-gas. Methane production at 75% efficiency has been demonstrated a while ago[1] and claims of potential round-trip efficencies of up to 80% have been made[2].

This is relevant because Germany's existing gas infrastructure can store several hundreds of TWh.

[1] https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2018_009_power-to-gas-wit...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054421...

Storage at anywhere even remotely close the scale required to displace nuclear and fossil fuel generation remains a fantasy. To put this in perspective, California's largest energy storage facility has as much capacity as the Diablo canyon plant generates every five minutes.

There is a lot of research going on in this field. One solution I find rather interesting is to use the peak energy to generate gas using some bio-chemical reaction and then again burn it once you need to adapt to peaks [1].

You can also use the existing gas infrastructure to transport the gas from the wind-rich north to the industrial-rich south without having to build new electricity lines (which people are protesting against too).

Imho, it's a purely political driven decission to prolong coal usage and I SHAME the corrupting lobby-culture for this, as it's not in the interest of the people and only in the interest of a few companies and their share holder's.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811...

Edit: Spelling

Even the most efficient combined cycle gas plants are in the 55-65% efficiency range. The Sabatier process is also at maximum 70% efficient, so end to end efficiency is ~40%.

Furthermore, in order to convert co2 to ch4 you need a source of CO2. Extracting the small percentage of CO2 from the atmosphere is not feasible. You would have to somehow pump the exhaust of the gas plants into a containment vessel, but creating backpressure on a gas turbine interferes with the turbine.

Germany, as well as California, exemplify the problem with intermittent energy sources. Solar and wind are cheap to displace 30-40% of fossil fuels, but going beyond that involves solving extremely difficult engineering challenges.

Gas emits less CO2 per KWh than lignite. lignite is one of the most CO2 heavy energy sources. Gas is an opportunity that we can use to save tons of CO2, right now. Also, we've been importing large amounts of energy, It's illusory to assume we're able to become energy self-sufficient with renewables. Russia is not the only natural gas exporter and in the fully-renewable future we'll probably import renewably generated natural gas.

> Once renewable generation during peak production hours for solar and wind is saturated not much can be gained from further increases in solar and wind capacity.

What is energy storage?

The German voter is against coal (the young climate concious), against nuclear (the old green party supporters), against wind (everyone when it appears in their backyard), and the government killed solar in 2015 which resulted in approximately 80000 lost jobs.

What the German voter doesn't want is to consume less and/or save energy.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Buy nuclear energy from France. That’s the reality.

Don't forget building a new direct pipeline for sending billions to Putin.

although every €10 increase in annual household cost decreases voter support by about seven percentage points.

The boldness of the article’s title doesn’t pair well with this hidden detail.

Phasing out coal, with nuclear already in the process of being phased out, is going to be a multiple of those annual 10€.

It's a pity the Russian propaganda against fracking has been so successful.

From an article over at an HN post :

The Russians also lobbied behind the scenes against shale gas, worried about losing their grip on the world’s gas supplies. Unlike most conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in Western politics, this one is out there in plain sight. The head of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the Russians, as part of a sophisticated disinformation operation, “engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations — environmental organisations working against shale gas — to maintain Europe’s dependence on imported Russian gas”.

The HN post is at:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664593

If there is Russian propaganda against fracking is independent of the question if there are health risks and environmental impacts associated with fracking.

Also, German voters want the bikeshed to be green.

Election Results don't appear to indicate this though.

The Greens nearly doubled their result in the European elections, coming in second at 20.5% after the CDU at 28.9%.

They were up +4.6 points in Brandenburg and +2.9 points even in Saxony, making them one of the very few parties that didn't massively lose voters to the AfD...

Indeed, with the same trend happening in Switzerland, Austria and in EU parliament elections.

"very few parties that didn't massively lose voters to the AfD..."

I'm aware of the gains for the greens, but the simple truth is that there is indeed also a more opposite and i fear more "long-ranging" effect that leads to the rise of parties like the afd.

Similar to how many people are in favor of wind engery and at the same time are against having a wind mill in their proximity.

Has Nature come to this? Taking opinion polls and brandishing results?

Germans will get a more ambitious timeline by voting (or not). That's what shows what they actually prefer.

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