In the last months of 2022, about a third of power production came from coal. In 2006, about a third instead came from nuclear plants.
Source (Swedish): https://www.tn.se/naringsliv/24056/efter-nedlaggningen-av-ka...
Officially coal is supposed to be phased out by 2030.
You are misrepresenting the data here, implying that coal production somehow has increased over that time period but in 2006 coal stood for about 60% of the power production. Coal usage is trending downwards, but during 2021 and 2022 it has gone up as a direct result of shutting down the nuclear plants and the reduced gas input.
The depiction has a breakdown of taxes also and the trend is what I remember. I must admit I’m not 1000% sure whether the page that links it is great though: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/13/german-household-elec...
That did the industry in Germany a real solid: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Schlaglichter-der-Wirtschaf...
Compared to 2015, it is down by 10% or so: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Schlaglichter-der-Wirtschaf...
Now, I certainly advise caution how to interpret these figures and how inflation is factored in, etc. are big factors. Having several family members across Germany working in industrial production, there is a common theme that “production is shifted abroad at scale” though… Also keep in mind: the industry didn’t pay these 35 cents/kWh prices, those were what consumers paid…
The past 17+ years of political failure did the German working class a real solid. When the head of a state advises people to “use a sponge and not shower so often to preserve hot water” it’s almost surreal that a government charging 45+% of tax of a countries GDP is unable to ensure people have hot water, heating or keep up the electrical supply for industry.
It is only common sense. Is it surreal that central planning does not work? We know that for a long time.
I am engineer, I was born in Spain. I have a company in Europe. For me it was completely nuts what the german Government did with the money, I worked on those projects because it was were the money was. Spending fortunes on solar panels(manufactured from coal in China) where there is no sun?
I was in favor of putting gas pipelines with Russia, but it was really nonsense not creating alternatives instead of a single provider. Letting a single bomb destroy your entire economy?
High taxes does not protect you against stupidity, on the contrary.
Germans are awakening to reality, and that is a great thing. It will take some time and pain though. But seems people only learn this way.
It is not as bad as in Ukraine. I was in Kiev one week before invasion, everybody was like: "Ohh, Russians will not attack, they never do". Those guys later had to improvise Molotov cocktails against tanks because they were ill prepared, never fired a gun.
You pay a high price for stupidity.
To be fair though the government of Ukraine had been preparing since the mini invasions of 2014. Probably a situation where you can never prepare enough.
As an example: if (!!) the 10% decline was adjusted by the official inflation, would you believe that it was 2% from 2015-2020 or would you rather go for 5% that reflect also real-estate and other commodities relevant for industry (e.g., if steel increased 50%, so might industry output simply because of price changes). So, the “official figures” could be vastly inflated and the situation could be a lot worse even.
I never made the claim you state either. The failure is the re-introduction now taking place.
Let me frame it in the IT landscape. If your storage kicks the bucket but you had no real backup, no procedures to bring back anything, and no spares you couldn't blame it on a random act outside of your control. If it turned out you had repeated warnings but instead chose to phase out backups and to replace the enterprise storage with SD cards from a shady manufacturer then you really wouldn't be able to claim "random act of God". And if when all is said and done you end up on the board of the shady SD manufacturer that kind of seals the deal on whether you are to blame or not.
First, because it is a result of their energy policy over the last decade(s).
Second, because the consequences of "the war" are driven by how they decided to react to it.
"The war" is being used as a convenient scapegoat. Everyone could see that the sh*t had to hit the fan one day because of the terrible energy policies in most of Europe... when that happens politicians are always very keen to find reasons "outside of their control"...
The US wasn’t the only one who warned the German government about the geopolitical risk they would be exposed to.
Angela Merkel shut down nuclear power in Germany and then tied our industry to Putin.
ApoCOALypse Now! [YouTube]:
The reactors only recently went online again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/18/business/france-nuclear-p...