Highways speed limit in Germany would reduce CO2 emissions by 2M tonnes
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According to Wikipedia, "Human activities emit over 30 billion tons of CO2 per year..."[1], so that's 0.007% of yearly CO2 emissions. Germany alone emits 700 million tons of CO2 per year, so that would be 0.3% of their share.[2]
It seems like increasing adoption of electric vehicles would do a lot more to solve this problem. Ground transportation is responsible for 161 million tons per year in Germany (23% of their emissions).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#In_Earth's_atmo...
Compare Germany and France here:
> https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...
While the speed limit would save 2 million tons of CO2 per year, keeping the remaining six nuclear plants running and shutting down coal instead would save 35(!) times more of CO2 per year (70 million tons).
https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-shi...
... or we can tackle multiple areas at once, perhaps? I'm not arguing the Autobahn must be high on the priority list, but simply pointing a finger "this is worse" and then turning away is also not constructive.
Too often people jump on the first thing they see and also ignore externalities. How many frustrated autobahn drivers will oppose CO2 reduction efforts elsewhere?
Yeah, that is a good point. It must be weighed whether these particular 0.3% are worth it against other potentially contentious issues (and we should additionally consider whether it is likely to become more in the future, or if it's simply a large enough number to matter over the years regardless), hence also my cagey phrasing of "I'm not arguing the Autobahn [in particular] must be high on the priority list".
Still, though, simply pointing at cruise ships and forgetting about potential gains here is not the most constructive thing to do in my opinion.
I am not sure how to put this nicely. Autobahn drivers that currently drive at the maximum speed are already quite likely already frustrated. They probably would like to fly a plane and they are constantly hindered by other cars on the road.
In other words, they are the kind of egoists that are unlikely to support any form of CO2 reduction already.
Also from personal experience with some of the few highways in Germany without tempo limit ("most" have limits): If there is a truck going with ~80 km/h which is taken over by a bus going ~100 km/h and you take that over with 150km/h but there is nearly an accident because someone thinks it's a good idea to randomly accelerate to around 230 km/h or so on a not so empty highway you start wondering who thought that no tempo limit was a good idea.
But given that less than 10% of all accidents resulting in bodily injuries happen on Autobahns, it looks like there are for more important factors to consider than speed alone.
https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh...
(Which is what IMHO it the more important part in the discussion, is a cap of 130 km/h to low? Should it be 160 km/h?)
As a side note the statistics about accidents is not the relevant one in this discussion. The relevant on would be deadly accidents on highway vs. city vs. country side as well as deadly accidents on highway involving speeds > 130km/h and not involving speeds > 130 km/h.
And yes, if we look at deadly accidents of PKWs (~= normal car, i.e. not bus, truck, bike, etc.) then our country side streets are basically death traps.. But then if we consider they in Germany country side streets are often: Less maintained, seamed with trees, areas where wild animals might cross, used by drunk people going home at 3am, used by farming vehicles, used by people and bicycles, etc. it's not that surprising. And honestly there are a lot of country side roads where due to the road being worn down the maximal speed allowed is completely ridiculous.
Edit: Uhm, How did someone one a bicycle die in a traffic accident on a highway? ??
Overtaking someone without an empty lane of separation with a difference greater than 50km/h is unsafe any day of the week. You have no time to react if that person decides to overtake someone else, if there is something in front of them that they need to swerve around... on German dashcam channels the people that drive 180km/h+ get excessively angry when someone pulls to the left to overtake a truck and I just keep wondering if they have anger issues. I get that they feel like that person almost killed them but they're the ones trying to pass someone with a huge speed differential.
Perhaps we should address the differential if you want to address human safety. Put a speed camera in an unlimited section that just watches the speed difference between adjacent lanes. When too large, a cop can look at the recording and judge the safety of the situation for themselves. That's what they're doing with "smartphone cameras" now in the Netherlands: the camera spots that you are holding a smartphone and takes a picture, then 2 cops independently check the picture to see if the computer got it correct, and then you get a fine in the mail (which you can fight if you disagree).
Only if you do not get the electricity from burning coal and only if you can manufacture the cars in a way that the reduced emissions over their lifetimes are not offset by additional emissions during manufacturing and decommissioning.
Some more numbers for comparison, 2 Mt are 5.1% of Germany's passenger car motorway traffic emissions, 1.4% of Germany's transportation emissions, 0.27% of Germany's total emissions.
This is a really bad faith argument I hear, a real eye roller. It never advances the conversation, it is a proverbial “just asking questions.”
Why bad faith? You, your friends and the things you read never bring this up about electric trains and busses. If a Tesla doesn’t amortize by some napkin analysis, neither would an electric bus by that same exact analysis - just because someone somewhere doesn’t like Tesla, doesn’t mean there’s any truth to “electric car emissions don’t amortize.” Just because some article online somewhere says electric busses do and Teslas don’t also doesn’t make it true.
The worst thing the environmental activist community could do is lose Tesla as an ally. Nobody is going to give a fuck about some cobalt mines somewhere, as horrible as they are, or whatever more substantive grievance it is, if we have to endure another 20 years of excess emissions because environmentally conscious people second guess the purchasing of electric cars.
> If a Tesla doesn’t amortize by some napkin analysis, neither would an electric bus
That's not a given, these are two quite different vehicles with quite different usage scenarios. A Tesla might not actually get a lot of mileage in its lifetime, whereas a commercial bus would get as much mileage as possible.
Having said that, even if it were true that electric buses also are a net negative on emissions, then the obvious answer would be that we shouldn't subsidize those either.
Regardless, I see your point, and it's easier to switch one big coal plant than try to convince a million people to buy a new car. Better get those cars trickled in and work on the generation side in parallel. Just curious if this fun fact is really true.
The average American drives 13,500 miles per year. Are you sure their goal is to have our grandchildren drive our old Teslas?
PS. I'd love to own my grandparent's GTO, Cadallics, etc..
You are, on nothing but assumption alone, assuming you know this persons intentions, you know their opinions, where they got them, and other people just like them with their opinions.
Then you go on to ignore their actual argument completely, and say, essentially "who gives a fuck if we have another 20 years excess emissions if people end up in cars"
Well, presumably the OP does, because he was making a point as to why it is questionable that EVs are good for the environment.
You basically insulted his character and his argument by ad hominem, then said "who even gives a fuck? I just want everyone to own a Tesla!"
Source? Where did you pull that from? An entire power plant dedicated to maximizing power generation efficiency is somehow equally efficient to a car engine that fits in like a cubic meter?
> And I remember reading that at least some electric cars are not reducing greenhouse emissions even if they are charged with non-fossil electricity.
I'd suggest trying to find a link for this too, because people need to be aware of it if it's true.
And you mostly don't
> only if you can manufacture the cars in a way that the reduced emissions over their lifetimes are not offset by additional emissions during manufacturing and decommissioning
Luckily you can
At present, you can't guarantee that. EVs require more emissions during production, which must be offset during their lifetime. An unfavorable scenario would be having a lot of EVs that go under-used because of a trend towards less commuting. If you're planning to do very little driving, an ICE vehicle may well be better than an EV.
> ...battery pack costs may in some cases be as low as US$300 per kilowatt-hour today, and could reach US$200 by 2020. This cost development is notably cheaper and faster decreasing than I and many others expected.
The actual cost in 2020 was $137 per kWh.[2]
1. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/04/will-falling-battery-...
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/883118/global-lithium-io...
Before you proceed, please calculate how many miles you will need to drive to offset those emissions, compared to just using an ICE. You might save us all a lot of trouble.
130 km/hr (80 mph).
So, in addition to the obvious benefits, this speed limit apparently also reduces CO2 emissions. Honestly, not sure why anyone would argue against this.
But the full picture is to look at both sides. To gain this 0.3% emission reduction, what do we lose?
I love the speed-limit-less autobahn. I'm Dutch but now living in Germany, it's one of my favorite things. It's convenient that you often just go with the flow instead of having to look out if maybe you're doing 5km/h too fast. Definitely nice. But also, I really use it (160km/h+) maybe twice a year for a few minutes. It's fun, but only safe when you have at least 2 clear lanes and also damaging to the environment. Mostly I drive ~100 for the regular (non-pandemic) trips (to friends/family; work is by public transport).
So I'd miss it, but not a whole lot. The vast majority of people's trips would get longer by a marginal amount. Is that not worth it? I'm inclined to say it might be, but I ultimately don't know. I'd love a system where you get an allocation of, say, 30 minutes per year (and it carries over if you don't use it up), but that's not feasible. Or if a speed limit of 130 is posted, then that you can be caught exceeding it by any amount once every five years with a reasonable fine (not losing your license) unless you clearly created a dangerous situation (that's covered under separate laws already anyway). When lower limits are posted, it's always for a reason so there you just shouldn't go faster. Maybe that could allow people to do it if they're in a truly exceptional rush, or just want to, but still reduce emissions by virtually the same amount?
Or we just tax fuel at the price that it costs to take it back out of the air. Then it's simply your choice to drive as economically as you like. But that's also unfair if you live on minimum wage and need to commute by car. Or maybe the first, say, 75 liters a month are tax-deductible, same as with other deductibles? That would keep it affordable for necessary trips but still give the right incentive for those that want to waste fuel.
We have that limit, it is called mineral oil tax.
Common we can't just tax fossil energy with a bigger amount of energy. That's not gonna solve anything.
It definitely would be more efficient to just use that renewable energy directly until we're at 100% renewable energy, but we'll still have chemical reactions. Cement for buildings, creating plastics, space launches, currently airplanes (but it looks like electrofuels might become a thing to solve that), there are a bunch of things for which we'll need this unless we have some breakthrough.
Similarly, if you want to run your combustion engine on the Autobahn, I don't see the problem if you clean up after yourself in some way. Causing more emissions while cleaning up, as you argue, is obviously not cleaning up so that's not what I'm proposing.
Another popular route is to buy these credits, where supposedly someone else will not burn down a particular piece of forest because you bought it and so you can say that you reduced global emissions. While better than nothing, I'm not sure those are as effective as something easily verifiable like Climeworks (easy to see if the machine really poops out solid CO2 as claimed, and easy to see if it runs on renewable energy).
So we would need to reduce our fossil fuel usage by something like 90% to have enough energy from renewables to be able to extract the CO2 back (that's just new emission, don't even think about recouping the CO2 from over a century of fossil usage). It's not possible unless we drastically reduce energy consumption to pre-industrialization levels, but with 7+ billion people. It's gonna be back to riding horses.
Barring breakthroughs or divine intervention, there's not gonna be a magical 100% renewable energy replacement at current consumption rates. Fossil fuels are the "free" energy our world as we know it runs on, we don't just have a choice, or can tell people to clean up after themselves via taxes. It's just dancing around the problem, not a solution to anything.
These are all really big numbers so it's important to scale them down to something more comprehensible.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Physical_p...
We need to do everything we can. Every 0.3% chunk helps.
Seriously though, the time they spent discussing this could've probably been spent more productively discussing more environmentally impactful measures. This seems like busy work to be able to tell the voters "Look! We're doing something about the problem!".
When it comes to cars, the result would be some people would trade longer travel times for lower carbon emissions (while a lot of people do not regularly travel at high speeds on the autobahn anyway if ever). Another question is how indirect factors play out, e.g. will this lead to cars lasting longer because lower speeds will put less strain on engines and other components, or last less long because cars will be operated for longer periods of time per trip. Or e.g. lower speeds would also put less strain on the street requiring less maintenance and repairs.
My point, I guess, is that it isn't as simple as it sounds at first.
PS: the US had in 2019 about 110 road fatalities per million [2], the UK had about 26 [1], France 48 [3] and Germany 37 [4].
[1] From page 22 of https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[2] http://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/8...
[3] https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Road-deaths-in-m...
[4] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Traffi...
As a side benefit, it also reduces the chance of a server catching fire by about half.
(Disclaimer: I have nothing against paper straws or reasonable speed limits. But I know that other people do.)
- Transporting goods by rail instead of truck or plane. And while we're at it, cargo ships are huge polluters because they can save money when using low grade dirty fuel. Disallowing that practice would have a big effect, but that would require the global community to act (good luck with that).
- Increasing the use of public transport and other ways to lower the need to even drive a car, like (partial) work-from-home schemes, and political incentives driving their adoption.
- Increasing the efficiency of roads, first and foremost by getting smarter traffic flow control that reduces congestion (nothing in transport is more wasteful then a car just idling in a traffic jam). But even the quality of the street and type of pavement you use in roads can have a rather significant effect on fuel efficiency (regardless of whether the fuel is stored in a gas tank or a battery).
Reductions of emissions is one important piece of becoming carbon neutral, but not the only piece. Renewable energy sources and other technologies that will take carbon out of the atmosphere again play another important role in the complex solution that is needed. And e.g. with renewable sources Germany might not look too bad internationally, but we're greatly lacking behind our own goals, and mostly for political reasons.
Lowering of a speed limit to reduce emissions is a similar trade-off - it would increase travel time - a scare resource for many people. I'm not saying it should not be done, but the cost is far from zero.
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_fossilen_Kraftwerken...
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kernreaktoren_in_Deu...
But I guess symbolism is more important than actually doing something that effectively reduces emissions.
So let’s introduce a speed limit and shut down all nuclear power plants, yay.
It does nothing. 0.3% does not help. It is optimizing towards a local maximum and does not bring us closer to the global maximum.
We need to get rid of the whole concept of commuting to work via car. We need to reduce commutes altogether significantly. We need to reduce ICEs and use electric vehicels fueled by renewable energy instead.
If we accomplish those three, the speed of the remaining vehicles will not matter at all. If we do not accomplish those things, we are screwed anyway.
Introducing a speed limit will just give people the same warm feeling of a reusable shopping bag full of products with plastic packaging. People just want to do something, even if they know, it will not save them. And if it hurts the "enemy" and makes them seem like the good guys, all the better.
As for your comment on local vs global maxima i don't see any reason why optimizing a number should be non convex, such that local optima and global optima differ.
> People just want to do something, even if they know, it will not save them. And if it hurts the "enemy" and makes them seem like the good guys, all the better.
Maybe it is about boiling the frog and showing that German poltics can prioritize climate over perpetuating the current state of industry. Rail is helped by a top speed. Electrical cars are also made more efficient and less environmentally damaging when their top speed is lowered.
Absolutely not. Every car can go well above the speed limits of every European country except Germany's unlimited stretches for obvious reasons. I can perfectly well drive 160km/h to work in a median/average car, it's just not efficient. And enjoying your sports car is something you should really do on a race track. It can be safe to drive fast when it's totally empty, but you don't need a sports car to drive the kinds of speed where you want it to be empty.
This affects everyone roughly equally. Heck, it might even hit the average person worse because they wouldn't take random time off work to drive to and pay entrance and insurance for a race track.
At least for me it's not about spite; I'm a rich person myself. If someone wants to do sports on a public road when it's safe, go ahead, but also clean your fumes back out of the air when you're done please. It just turns out that we can't do attribution to atmospheric gasses, and historically we just conveniently ignored exhausts, so it feels weird to suddenly start requiring that you clean up after yourself.
They are both holy cows, but very different holy cows.
This may be in part due to licensing requirements. I'm led to believe that in Germany you have to demonstrate that you have some skill at driving to receive a license, plus it's fairly expensive. In the US, it varies some by state, but a driver's license tends to be under $100 (most states I've had to worry about cost around $50 or less) and all you really need to demonstrate is ability to park, stop at a stop sign, maybe turn around in a box, and use your turn signal. Sometimes there's a road test where you might have to drive around the block. Also, I'm not sure if Germany does it, but I'm not aware of any state in the US that requires you to test ever again except maybe if you lost your license. But then, I've lost my license a few times for various reasons, and only once when I was in Texas did I have to take the written test to get it back.
But there is a long lasting ongoing discussion if license renewals should be introduced, at least for people above a certain age limit (70 or 80).
In 2019 in the US, 20 people died in "school shooting deaths" meaning someone who was shot at a school of some kind
In Germany 0 people died in "school shooting deaths".
You are not seriously suggesting that the US does not have a gun problem?! Of course it has one. We can argue about how to solve it, but what you are doing is almost belittleing children who died like this.
Considering German drivers consider themselves particularly careful and attentive etc, that's unimpressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international...
If someone wants to blast down the highway at 200mph, and they can do it in an electric car or pay for the cost of sequestering the carbon, I say let 'em.
I wouldn't want to die on the battlefield of telling people to stop enjoying the things they enjoy and when we can just tell them to pay for its cost.
Increasing fuel prices for the sake climate didn't turn out that popular in France. So if you have another solution that is implementable, please share.
There is no vehicle I know of that uses the same amount of fuel at 60mph as it does at 200mph for unit of distance traveled.
Include the tax in gasoline per unit of volume and the people going 200+ will pay much more than those going 60. (Much much more)
However, I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon. Outlawing music or the Internet would be more popular in Germany than a speed limit on the Autobahn. Every couple of years some politician floats the idea, and inevitably, the public backlash is huge, so nothing happens. Nothing will happen this time, either.
Anyway, I have a gut feeling that moving all that cargo rolling around on the Autobahn every day to trains would have a bigger impact, but after decades of giving cars and roads preferential treatment and minimizing investments into the rail network, this would take at least a couple of years of intense construction work, which I don't see happening, either.
But like I said, I do not consider it likely because it is not popular at all. And frankly, we have bigger fish to fry, both where the environment is concerned and things like traffic safety.
2. Killing 100 people also reduces CO2 emissions, doesn't make it a good idea...
Most highways in Germany already have a speed limit and setting limits for the few areas where it's not the case sounds like a good think for me as I had some quite negative experience with people going way to fast (for the amount of traffic).
But I also feel that the 130cap is a bit low, while taking over cars I would like to be able to go a bit faster. Like ~145?? or so?
Wonder if we'll see an appetite for re-introducing it. I doubt it though. It's not the 70s anymore. Cars are safer and people are less likely to obey such things nowadays. I mean, most people go over 65 on highways.
The real question should be: What kind of virtue signalling is it that demands this (arbitrary) limit of 130kph? On most German highways you can easily go 160 in a modern medium-sized car. Electrical cars have much lower carbon dioxide emissions. So what's the fucking point?
I am really curious to understand why so many people see the absence of a speed limit as such a red flag. No one forces them to drive faster (source: I drive several hundreds of km per month around 120kph). Insurance companies already expect you to stay below 130 to get your full coverage. There are much more dangerous roads with speed limits in Germany. So why this fervor? I can only speculate but it really seems like some form of envy. There are people out there that do something unregulated and to some other people this is completely unacceptable.
I second that. It just isn't German to have something so seemingly unregulated. People will call the police when periods of rests are ignored or a machine is turned on on a Sunday.
> What kind of virtue signalling is it that demands this (arbitrary) limit of 130km/h?
A lack of a speed limit (in an industrialized country) is uniquely German phenomena. By introducing a speed limit many consequences follow that i generally agree with, such as reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, lower maintenance cost of roads (although putting goods on trains would do a more), discouragement of buying cars that go significantly above the speed limit, making traveling smoother for people currently driving below the future speed limit, making cars less attractive compared to trains for intercity travel.
The point is that national irrationality (or more politically correct Culture-bound syndrome) cause ineffeciency, whether we are talking about South Korean fan death or the percieved need to be allowed to drive as fast as you want both does unnecessary harm. We know it's unnecessary because every other (comparable?) country can do without.
Besides, I think it would self-sabotage their own automotive industry (which is the biggest part of Germans GDP). That 2 MT isn't gonna do anything, but the Autobahn is pretty much the only place that warrants buying nice expensive German cars (and for a lot of people cars become a huge motivation). So with a tempo limit it all kinda seems a bit pointless.
It's not realy arbitrary, it's the "Richtgeschwindigkeit" on most (all?) highways with higher speed limits (the speed which you are recommended to not go over by a large degree and where your tend to pay less if you get into an accident while going over it).
A bit above 130 km/h is a point at which the degree of death tend to noticeable increase in case of accidents, relevantly this includes the death of uninvolved 3rd parties.
> No one forces them to drive faster (
Yes, but other people drive fast and potentially into you, I have seen more then just one or two near accidents because of people driving noticeable above 160 km/h on highway areas where it was allowed but not recommendable due to the amount of traffic. And I don't drive a lot.
I also can forward the opinion my Dad has on this (who frequently needs to do multiple day trips spawning 300-500km/h and drives a car which can go ~200km/h). I don't remember the exact wording but it was basically something along side of:
A speed limit makes sense but 130 km/h is to low. Way to many drivers are way to bad on judging when the traffic allows you to go 180 km/h and when it is dangerous. To many people think that because there is no tempo limit they can go with 180 or more on a non empty highway and I have seen and been involved in way to many nearly accidents which likely would have been deadly (if they would have happened) which involved people going at such high speeds. I mean sure if the highway is empty and dry and I'm not sleepy then going with 180 km/h or even more can be quite fun, but I which people would only do so if the highway is empty and dry. [And then he went on, about people being even worse at estimating safe speeds if rain, fog or snow is involved and how he was more then once nearly killed by someone going way to fast under such conditions.]
(now back to my opinion): IMHO going fast is fun, but the highway is not meant to be fun it's meant to allow safe driving and going with really high speeds in the wrong situations you are not just endangering yourself. Anyway, idk if a cap at 130 is the right thing and there are also other factors like the environmental damage because of the ware of the rubber wheels, noise etc.
However I'm not advocating taking Germany's unlimited speeds away. It's up to them IMO.
Whow! Holy Cow! The final golfcarting show. Now one question remains: why produce cars going 200kph+ at all?
After lifelong indoctrination that cars give freedom and status, now a hiatus from speeding? My heart is bleeding!
What will the industry do now? And all the advertisment agencies? My my... revolution! We care about pollution!
With the experimental overhead catenary installed for lorries/trucks on 3 sectors of Autobahn now, I can even imagine bumper cars! Yay!
Aharrrharrrharrr!
edit: Thinking further about this it seems like this could profit from comprehensive roll-out of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_enforcement_camera
and section control.
Turns out we already have the infrastructure for it:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mautbr%C3%BCcke
(Nudge, Nudge)
However, what's the impact of reducing the limit from 130 to 100? Suddenly commute times increase by 30 percent. That can be disruptive for people with longer commutes, especially since afaik the Autobahns are good enough that you can live in $LARGE_CITY and work in $NEXT_LARGE_CITY if you want.
Insert a huge citation needed banner...
- most commutes aren't hundreds of kilometers, so a large share of your time is usually not spent on a highway
- you usually can't drive the maximum speed on the highway the whole time regardless
- you definitely can't drive the maximum speed on the highway the whole time during rush hour (which frankly covers most of the day if you look at traffic level plots)
- maybe try planning a couple commutes (yours, your friend's, heck even take that insanely long commute of this friend of a friend) in googly maps with traffic enabled and set to rush hour and with the two speed limits. (Don't actually know if gmaps can do speed limits, but maps.openrouteservice.org can and already tells you it's not a 30% difference.)
- even if it would be 30% on top of a regular, say, 20 minute commute, that's 6 extra minutes. You're hardly going to notice the difference but your emissions go from iirc ~7 l/100km to ~4.5 (source: my girlfriend's car, looking at the fuel use indicator, but it's hard to say accurately because gradients and wind and stuff throw it off and I don't have perfect recall). It will save you a bunch of cash, if you need a selfish reason to do this for.
I would like a max limit of ~160 km/h which would make driving the highways where such people appear over proportional often much more pleasant, also complement this with a awareness campaign about "Richtgeschwindigkeit" (~recommended max speed), accidents and insurance ;=)
[1] https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/life/germany-and-the-aut...
[1]: "On 26 January 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038. The move is projected to cost €40 billion in compensation alone to closed businesses. Coal was used to generate almost 40% of the country's electricity in 2018 and is expected to be replaced by renewable energy and natural gas.[18] 24 coal plants are planned to be closed by 2022 with all but 8 closed by 2030. The final date is expected to be assessed every 3 years." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Coal_power)
[2]: "As of 2017 Germany imported more than half of its energy" and "In 2020 a number of previously shut down fossil gas plants (Irsching 4, Irsching 5) were restarted quoting "heavy fluctuations of level of power generated from the wind and sun"[78] and a new fossil gas power plant was announced by RWE near the former Biblis nuclear power plant shut down in 2017. The project is declared as part of "decarbonization plan" where renewable energy capacity is accompanied by fossil gas plants to cover for intermittency.[79] A new fossil gas power plant will be also opened from 2023 in Leipheim, Bavaria to compensate for loss of power caused by "nuclear exit" in this region.[80] In 2021 plan to decommission Heyden 4 coal power plant was cancelled and the plant remains online to compensate for shutdown of nuclear power plan in Grohnde." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende#After_2017)
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2018/11... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_code#Speed_rating
Average, you might be right. Many people definitely drive a lot faster (I guess that's where the sibling comments "do you drive in germany" come from), but then they get stuck behind an overtaking truck etc., and then there are people driving slower so the average speed across all lanes might very well be 110 at busy times (and of course you're most likely to drive when it's busy, so that's what you'd observe).
The problem (emissions) might be from accelerating up to 150, then back down because someone driving 120 is overtaking someone else, the person behind you also has to brake, and repeat.
When I was 18 I always floored my crappy very old Ford Fiesta going around 158 km/h (on a good day, downhill and probably with a tailwind haha). Driving my family's nicer cars I frequently drove 200+ km/h. When there is a good amount of traffic I would see a more realistic average speed of 160 km/h.
Feels like people are actively out for you at that point, you'll have close-calls and will get nearly rear-ended by some Audi that wants to switch lanes where it shouldn't in no time.
Experience can vary widely depending where on the continent one lives. Some states do have low speed limits.