... 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:...
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 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.
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.
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).
Share of electricity production in Germany in 2019:
Coal 19.5% + 9.5%
Gas 10.5%
19.8 + 9.5 + 10.5 = 39.8%
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...
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
150 TWh Braunkohle + 110 TWh Steinkohle. For electricity production.
> surprised to see those broken out
Braunkohle has domestic production, Steinkohle no longer.