Comment by xxgreg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xxgreg | Hacker News Reader

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Phasing out coal in Germany is a political battle against a large entrenched century old industry.

The phase-out looks to be gaining traction in recent years. Deals are being made to retrain coal miners and fund economic redevelopment of heavily coal dependent regions. All players including the power companies, network operators, miners unions, green NGOs, central and regional governments have been in discussion about how to manage the phase-out. A schedule for when plants will be turned off is being written into law.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/spelling-out-coal...

Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing. See chart:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

From:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Where Germany has a bad record on emissions reductions is in other sectors such as transport and heat. Germany has had a centre-right political party running the show for 15 years, progress has been slow. The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.

The incontrovertible problem remains : wind/solar are intermittent, peak load sources (Germany doesn't have the geography for hydro)

No matter how you spin this, you NEED to pick one of either nuclear, gas or coal in your mix to complement renewables.

Of these 3, only one of them is low carbon. Of the other two, one makes your energy grid depend on Putin's whims, while the other causes tremendous fine particles pollution causing thousands of premature deaths today, in addition to carbon emissions.

> Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing.

But won't ever replace a base load source of electricity. Even after a 300 billion investment and spectacular share increase of renewables from 6 to 46%, Germany's emissions per kWh are 5-10 times worst than the best.

> The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.

Increased ambition is great but the facts above are unescapable. Are Die Grüne willing to drop ideology and face them ? That seems highly improbable.

Wind and solar, plus the already existing 6gw of pumped storage and increased curtailment gets you to 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent requires more storage.

Batteries can help to some extent for shifting day to day peaks.

Seasonal storage is more tricky. Germany has about 3 months worth of natgas stored in underground caverns. One approach would be to use this to store syntheticly produced gases from electrolysis.

Note so far everyone here is talking about electricity which only makes up a third of Germany's emissions.

Synthetic gases (non-fossil) will be required for high temperature heat, and chemical feedstocks for industry. For example some steel smelters in Germany are transitioning from coal to hydrogen.

Nuclear is a poor fit to an electrical grid which is mostly renewable for both economic and technical reasons. However it may be a good fit for running synthetic gas plants which can use both the heat and electricity and require 24/7 energy.

Regarding the Greens. They will be more willing to push back against the German car industry which should lead to increased reductions in transport emissions. Other sectors are likely similar.

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