What is Germanys dystopian madness?
Without the investment to date in wind, coal dependency would have been massively greater.
While Germany is a net exporter for electricity, it does import a large chunk of its total energy usage (electricity plus stuff like fuel for cars, heating, et). Stuff like coal or gas or oil. In 2017, it was from 70% of imports and 30% from energy harvested locally [0]. It's quite impossible that this can all be converted to renewable power sources originating in Germany.
So what will likely/hopefully happen is that the closer partner countries will supply electricity to Germany via cables, while countries from further away will send Hydrogen generated from renewable sources, that will then be burned in the already existing gas plants.
[0]: https://www.weltenergierat.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/810...
If 30% coal today is bad, >>30% coal, the alternative, would have been correspondingly worse.
But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based on fossil fuels.
Even if every German building was using heat pumps, they would still be burning TONS of natural gas to keep the electricity flowing consistently, because they have no long term energy storage solution to pair with renewables, especially through the long, dark winters when the sun rarely shines.
It would be stupid to build storage there is not renewable generating capacity to charge. When there is such capacity, they will then build out storage. In the meantime the correct place to spend is on generation. Which, in fact, is what they are doing.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/ger...
https://www.dw.com/en/european-commission-declares-nuclear-a...
(Does that count as gaslighting? Sorry.)
So no, they don't want to label it green energy, they only prefer it to other fossil fuels and nuclear but the goal is to phase out natural gas as well.
Is the state-owned DW/ARD not a trustworthy news source?
So the news itself is correct but the headline abbreviates this very badly.
https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/insight/future-drax-old-...
Even in the best case, when you cut down a tree, burn it, and plant a replacement you've still released a bunch of carbon into the atmosphere. So carbon in the atmosphere will be raised for 20-50 years.
When people have looked into the source of these wood pellets the claims of the pellet companies often don't line up with official records - like saying they didn't log an old-growth forest, when they held the logging license at the time it was logged. Or claiming they only use sawdust and low-quality wood, when their output volume is much greater than the amount of low-quality wood you'd expect [1].
And supposedly the trees get replanted - but the company doing it got paid when the pellets were delivered. If in 5 years time they decide to do something else with the land, they can do.
The government turns a blind eye to this to hit their 'renewables' targets.
Global warming is a global, long term issue.
Focusing on a single tree is pretty much the canonical opposite of the wrong perspective to bring to it.
For the replanting side to work, growing fuel trees needs to be profitable. When it is, capitalists will replant out of greed, and the system will hum along by itself.
Nuclear fission is clean energy.