Hacker News Reader

Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

> Same thing happened in Germany.

Germany turned to coal? It didn't happen. Germany actually turned to renewables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

It did happen. Germany has shut down most of its nuclear power generation and is phasing the rest out by 2022. So far, 'researchers [..] found that nuclear power was mostly replaced with power from coal plants, which led to [..] about a 5 percent increase in emissions.'

https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-poweran...

Here are numbers:

Renewables 2019: 46%

Renewables 2000: 6%

Coal + Gas 2019 40%

Coal + Gas 2000 59%

Are the obnoxious wood pellets that spread fine dust included in the renewables?

Give me nuclear any day.

wood pellets are basically not used for electricity production in Germany.

Those are used for heating.

Phrase it how you will, but this chart shows it clearly.

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

Is this supposed to be a joke? How could you make an article about a 5% increase in 2020 when Germany has had the largest drop in emissions since a decade in 2019? It managed a 6.5% drop in total emissions even though the only thing that dropped were the CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. Just think about it. A rising population (influx of refugees), increased emissions in transport, industry, agriculture and somehow they almost managed a 7% drop while simultaneously increasing emissions by 5% in the electricity sector? No, the reality is that emissions dropped massively thanks to the introduction of renewables. Not as fast as many Germans want but it did happen.

That article is just pure bullshit that isn't backed by any numbers. If they had picked 2015-2018 then maybe it would make sense but 2019? That's either pure incompetence or there is an agenda behind the article.

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

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/rising-carbon-pric...

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/transport-and-heating-t...

"Turned to renewables" while burning 36% coal according to your graph.

Yes, if they've always been using coal, I guess technically they didn't "turned to" coal, but how is it better?

Meanwhile neighboring France, with its 70%+ energy generated from nuclear, generates about half as much CO2 per capita as Germany. Right now, and in the foreseeable future.

Germany sits on a huge pile of coal as its main domestic energy source. France doesn't.

Germany's industrialization has largely been driven by coal.

> Meanwhile neighboring France, with its 70%+ energy generated from nuclear, generates about half as much CO2 per capita as Germany. Right now, and in the foreseeable future.

In the foreseeable future France is reducing its share of nuclear and adds renewable. Reason: nuclear is too costly, too slow to build.

Germany has invested in renewable, since that scales better now and in the future. By investing into renewable Germany has also created a huge export market for this technology, that will have a large positive impact.

... And to Russian natural gas. [1]

For every MW of nuclear that was turned down, a MW of natgas was turned up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

Renewables 2019: 46%

Renewables 2000: 6%

Coal + Gas 2019 40%

Coal + Gas 2000 59%

Fact: Germany reduced fossil fuels coal+gas and increased renewables massively. Gas itself has increased.

The graph shows 36% coal and 13% natural gas for 2016, meaning coal and gas for 2016 is 49%.

There is the question of what this would look like if they didn't shut off their nuclear plants. It's my expectation that the nuclear would have replaced coal and natural gas.

EDIT: Changed incorrect 2019 reference to 2016.

https://strom-report.de/strom/

Share of electricity production in Germany in 2019:

Coal 19.5% + 9.5%

Gas 10.5%

19.8 + 9.5 + 10.5 = 39.8%

Interesting. The graphs on that website do not agree with the ones on Wikipedia. For example, for coal in 2016 Wikipedia says ~220 TWh but Strom says ~135 TWh.

EDIT: I see my mistake. I did not add both brown (~135 TWh) and black coal (~100 TWh) together (surprised to see those broken out, but it's a valid difference). In that case, the numbers still do not agree, but at least they are comparable.

[0] https://strom-report.de/strom/#stromerzeugung-deutschland-20...

I don't see it. Strom-report says for 2016:

150 TWh Braunkohle + 110 TWh Steinkohle. For electricity production.

> surprised to see those broken out

Braunkohle has domestic production, Steinkohle no longer.

Another chart... Note some stats are percentage of consumption, others are percentage of generation. These differ due to imports and exports.

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

Black coal is basically dead while brown coal might survive economically without carbon pricing.

This assumes that the nuclear reactors could ramp up and down on a daily basis. Germany's reactors weren't capable of load following to the extent required.

In fact brokdorf was taken offline early due to a failure during a load following experiment. It was only ramping by a small percentage of load.

It's more likely that keeping the reactors online would have made the coal phaseout negotiations harder, and made it easier for the big four power companies to prevent renewables from being deployed.

In my view it's more important to build up industry capable of constantly deploying new zero carbon generation, and exporting this technology, than to keep the reactors running for more than 35 years (the phase out agreement).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com