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Comment by thow-58d4e8b | Hacker News Reader

I'm a supporter of nuclear, but this trope is overplayed. This winter Germany derived 5-10% of their electricity from natural gas - and even that is mostly due to cogeneration of heating, not for electricity needs. This cogeneration runs even if renewables provide a surplus. Calling Germany's electricity grid is "reliant on Russian gas" doesn't reflect reality

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Germany is Russia’s biggest gas customer. CNN has previously reported that Europe relies on Russia for around 35% of its natural gas, Germany over 50%. But with the threat of supply disruption following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Germany along with other European countries has been looking to ramp up LNG imports.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-02-...

These things can all be true at the same time:

We use it for HEATING. It cannot be replaced without "Sektorenkopplung" / switching to heatpumps first.

This is a chicken-and-egg scenario: gas is available so few switch to heat pumps; few switch to heat pumps because gas is so readily available. The goal over time should be to move infrastructure away from gas and towards electric, and part of that is improving the power-generation system. Don't think only about today; think about where things should be moving tomorrow. "Thinking only about today" is part of the reason Germany is still dependent on Russian gas and oil.

WRONG. New residential homes are forbidden to be powered by gas. Old residential buildings have to follow Gebäudeenergiengesetz GEG, so they have to be modernized and isolated.

This entire concept is called Sektorenkopplung.

what you say is wrong. most new homes still are powered by gas. on the 1st january 2025 you need to also have like 45% powered by something else. germany is powered by gas and the alternatives for heating aren't that better (oil and pellets)

For someone who's wrong, you use a lot of caps. Fact is, most German homes are heated with gas and that is partially due to the politicians who have been close to the O&G industry, and partially due to "das haben wir immer so gemacht."

Due to low ownership rate of apartments, why would a landlord invest more money in heating with heatpumps or using more efficient insulation materials when he would bear the costs, but the tenant would get the benefits? So they only do it when forced to, or it is cheaper to use renewables.

Most of Germany, including politicians and home owners would quite gladly stay on fossil fuels aside from some blowhards who talk more than act.

Agree, I'm also tired of this. Some variation of this comment has appeared on every story here related to Germany's energy situation for the last few years.

People should get out of the HN/SV bubble where the world view is narrowed to technology, yielding a strong hype for self driving cars and nuclear ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is a mischaracterization, gas for heating isn't converted into electricity first in most cases, so total energy share is likely much more significant than 5-10%, however, if the gas disappears conversions to electric heating are going to sharply increase electricity demand, increasing coal/other fossil fuel consumption.

> I'm a supporter of nuclear, but this trope is overplayed. This winter Germany derived 5-10% of their electricity from natural gas - and even that is mostly due to cogeneration of heating, not for electricity needs. This cogeneration runs even if renewables provide a surplus. Calling Germany's electricity grid is "reliant on Russian gas" doesn't reflect reality

Do they have the grid capacity to support people using more electric space heaters and less gas for heat?

My home uses gas heat. I suppose if there was some kind gas shortage I have to turn the thermostat down to the minimum needed to keep the pipes from freezing, then use space heaters to bring in-use rooms up to a livable temp.

Space heaters are currently not feasible in Germany due to high electricity cost (which could be fixed by reducing taxes on electricity used just for heating). Nevertheless, the way forward are heat pumps anyway.

> Space heaters are currently not feasible in Germany due to high electricity cost (which could be fixed by reducing taxes on electricity used just for heating). Nevertheless, the way forward are heat pumps anyway.

But you've got to have both tactical and strategic responses, and the tactical solution may entail taking a hit from higher prices (though if that hit can be mitigated by other policy changes, like temporarily reducing taxes, that should be pursued as part of the tactical solution).

Tactical/short term: massively reducing gas use and trying to mitigate the short-term consequences by keeping nuclear online to power electric space heaters:

Strategic/long term: Switching all the buildings over to heat pumps powered by green energy.

Wind generation slumped 30% in 2021 due to the minor detail of the wind being unpredictable and unreliable and they had to make up for the deficit through hydrocarbon. Sure, saying "gas" which is more peaker power plants instead of "coal" which helps baseload generation may be wrong, but let's not ignore the reality that wind experienced rare seasonal lows and the only replacement was burning more coal than ever.

https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1737041/wind-genera...

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-elec...

The reality of relying on things like wind is that you have to either over-produce, or have a backup, and the backup is usually coal.

If Nuclear plants had not been unnecessarily shuttered, Germany would be more prepared to weather the weather, instead of increasing coal burning significantly.

Wind generation is perfectly predictable. It is just volatile. But with enough storage (electrolyze it to hydrogen, then burn it in the gas plants), you can save the generated surplus for days without wind (and solar).

Additionally, new German homes are required, by law, to be build in a way that will not use 1. Gas for Heating 2. a lot of energy at all.

Additionally local energy storage and production in homes is encourgaged with 45% of funding coming from the German state.

It's wrong to characterise gas as "peaker plants", the UK has an enormous fleet of CCGT that would once have seemed like an obvious fit for baseload, but today they ramp maybe from 10% to 90% performing the same function as the Open Cycle turbines in a "peaker plant".

Coal normally makes no sense to back wind, which is why Britain has been shutting coal plants while building ever more wind farms.

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