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Comment by fdgsdfogijq | Hacker News Reader

This opinion is actually what is causing the current Ukrainian crises. Politicians in American and Europe deprioritized carbon energy so as to boost green energy, which left us vulnerable to an attack from Russia. Very poor geopolitical thinking

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It's poor thinking even if you leave geopolitics out of it. Solar power in Germany is a terrible idea from first principals. Wind is a bit better, but there's not enough energy there to power the country. A legit criticism of nuclear power is that it's expensive to build plants, but Germany is shutting down plants that have already been built. The net result, they're burning a lot of lignite and imported natural gas. The result, higher energy costs and much higher carbon emissions. For genuine environmentalists it's a disaster.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany, Germany currently gets ~30% from wind and 10% from solar in 2020.

You're saying at 40% of current energy needs they've entirely maxed out Germany's solar and wind potential? That there's no more acreage left for new panels and turbines?

Yes you can build more wind and solar but people need power also during the dark and sometimes windless winter months. Storing enough power isn't currently feasible so it's basically either coal, gas or nuclear.

Maxed out? No probably not. But by the end of 2022 they will have spent 680 billion Euros on the transition. All the low hanging fruit is gone, so getting another 40 percent of their power needs from renewables will cost more than that. They're going to have to do things they haven't been willing to do so far, like building wind turbines near residential areas. And that still only gets them to 80% of consumption.

So sure, renewables are great, and it's good that Germany is doing so much to reduce carbon emissions. Because that's the point of renewables: reducing carbon emissions. And if that's the point, why on earth would you shut down nuclear power plants and switch to burning lignite???

Russia's leverage over Europe comes from a European reliance on carbon energy.

Germany has made the mistake of backing out of nuclear energy.

I was unaware nuclear plants ran on carbon.

The claim upthread was "American and Europe deprioritized carbon energy". Germany has also grown green energy dramatically faster than they've reduced nuclear. It's a pity they didn't get a couple more years on it; I suspect that plays into Putin's timeline a bit.

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