Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023
ise.fraunhofer.de
ise.fraunhofer.de
This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030?
I also still see stickers here, calling for the closure of a nuclear plant in Belgium. These people live near one of the biggest coal mines and power plants, but tihange is what scares them.
Looks like we'll have to dig in our own pockets if we want to be part of the solution, government isn't going to do it, even in a principalistic country as Germany. We'll get to +3°C or something but at least you can tell the kids of 2060 that you at least did what you could...
[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/energie/energieverbrauc... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01118-w
What do you mean inefficient?
Multiple things can be done at the same time on the country scale. Improve bike infrastructure and public transit, encourage EVs for those that have to drive, decarbonise energy generation, electrify heating and industry, etc.
With high-speed rail, you move ~400 tons of metal for ~450 people, a ratio of ~0.9. [0]
This does not even account for factors such as inherently more efficient transmission from steel to steel vs rubber/concrete and the more efficient electric engines of a modern train compared to the combustion engine. Neither does it account for the fact that rail goes at more than twice the speed.
How is public transport the inefficient option, again?
(I say that as someone who takes trains to work most days.)
Plus, in the context of the looming climate catastrophe and the energy crisis caused by a war of aggression by our former primary energy supplier, that concern seems really petty anyways.
Plenty do, or live a short bus journey away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singapore_MRT_and_LRT_...
Also a quick Kagi search could have pointed you at "Siemens Mobility awarded contract to deliver CBTC on Singapore’s 8th & longest fully-underground MRT Cross Island Line" ;)
“The electricity production from lignite was down 21 percent, hard coal was down 23 percent, natural gas was down 4 percent, and nuclear declined by 57 percent, compared to 2022 values.”
There is a difference between primary energy and usable energy. An ICE car is 20-30% efficient while BEVs are +90%. Electrifying all transports will vastly lower the primary energy use.
For every solution it's easy to find a situation where that solution doesn't apply. So what? That doesn't mean the solution is worthless. Last I checked, the Alps didn't cover all of Germany - did they move recently?
And this are the raining days: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1892/umfrage/... It is raining more than half of a year in many cities.
As a Dutchman who doesn't enjoy cycling, especially alone (for function rather than leisure), I do see their point. It's just not an alternative for me. I'll put up with it if it's <1km of flat land with safe infrastructure, but beyond that I'm opening up a public transport planner. Also in NL, most trips are >1km and/or carry more freight than fits in a backpack or on the rack (?bagagedrager) (could take the bike in hand and hang your bags from the handlebars, though).
I'm happy to pay a bit extra for Climeworks to take the CO2 out of the air again that was added while building the wind turbine for my electricity-powered method of transportation.
But to each their own. Cycling is also healthy, especially if we'd no longer be surrounded by combustion transportation. I'm all for bicycle infrastructure and promotion.
It's only a question of the right outfit, not the weather, otherwise everyone on the Bahamas would cycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz6FeQLuHQ
The proper Alps, not the bit I went up when trying to take an ill-advised shortcut up a minor hill a thousand kilometres into EuroVelo 15.
Hardly any call for it in the context of "commuting", given the combination of low population density and low employment density.
we have _to_ tackle or we have tackle_d_?
duh ...
--
i am german and i find sloppy use of language annoying especially if it invites orthogonal interpretation. people should reread what they write publicly and then fix it if necessary.
(There's a saying which surprised me when I moved here: https://lal.de/blog/deutsche-sprache-schwere-sprache/)
This whole attitude of "I tell you how to live your life because reasons" is preposterous.
Individual transportation will always remain an option, but it might be prohibitively expensive for most people to be their main mode of transport when one has to refund the environmental damage it adds.
As for cycling specifically, you and me both as I said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36601619 We agree there, but it's not going to be compulsory to cycle...
[0] https://www.techspot.com/news/98944-switzerland-installing-s...
There are still millions of open-space square meters all over the country. Think of flat-roof warehouses, supermarkets, parking facilities and more. Those places are easy to access, easy to install, easy to maintain. These train track installments however.... hard to install, require non-standardized panel sizes, non-standard wiring, special equipment, are in a dusty/dirty uncontrollable environment, maintenance is only possible in coordination with the train company. My guess is that these things are 4-5x more expensive on a per kwH basis, if you consider the total cost of ownership.
If you want grant money, you need something new, like a solar monorail!
On a graph, the money spent or the capacity installed has never been more than a blip of a blip but it gets eyeballs.
Government money would be much better spent on a regular solar installation on the ground. Much cheaper to install and maintain.
it's not like all of Switzerland is doing this on all rail tracks. It's 60 small panels. A tiny experiment, nothing more. Who says they are "instead of, I don't know, people's roofs"?
But even if they are useable and beneficial: That's not an argument not to use other available space as well.
And that makes the current coalition unpopular, along with an eternaly bickering liberals(in nothing but name) trying to block any spending. Add onto that Conservative tabloids continously firing against green with every scrap they can get, and we're looking at fascists polling over 30%.
I I fear that the scraps of progress the current government achieves will be rolled back by a fascist+ Conservative coalition in three years...
But if you look at the article we are commenting here, that doesn't matter as we now have record levels of renewables, quite compensating for the switched off reactors.
The production has NOT been compensated. We just produce less and import more. It will take years to compensate the six reactors - a lot of time and CO2 emitted.
If a prolonging the life-time of the reactors would have been desired, the previous government should have done it. Then the necessary steps could have been done without a long downtime. And mind you: they were shut down so early because the previous government hat decided to do so. The initial plan allowed for much longer run times.
They had all the normal maintenance (every 2 years) and were in pristine condition, much better than most other nuclear reactors on this planet. Only the 10 year interval was pushed out, but it's just an additional check to further increase safety over the long term. No downtime would have been required, especially no multi-year downtime.
The previous government did not know that Russia was to attack Ukraine and gas flow was about to stop with all the effects on energy availability and prices.
In fact I kinda hope they are a lobby financed agitprop operation because I couldn't think of a more entitled group outside of the London Houses of Parliament
Why does energy used never include the sun directly?
In the summer we use less heat because the sun is giving us the energy instead. So maybe we should be counting the heating we don't use during the summer as renewable heat instead.
I suppose this would help account for efficiency also. If a house is deemed to need X kWh to heat a year. The difference between the gas used can be used to derive a figure for the 'renewable' energy used, whether from renewable electricity, solar heat, or negawatts.
One would say government would levy fees on big companies but then companies will charge customers more.
If the government didn’t issue any money and economies continued growing (which wouldn’t happen because you need slack in the money supply to allow for growth) there would be deflation. So the government could issue money in a growing economy and still see deflation, until the ratio hits a tipping point.
Statistics are a peculiar thing.
No wonder this map usually has the worst air over those countries:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...
An averaging feature would be nice instead of having to compare hundreds of potential outliers manually, though
Even right now you can see that Germany is about 10pts higher than the rest of Europe, and Poland another 10pts on top of that. It's a shame that map doesn't have historic data as it would be easier to see.
1.5C is guaranteed within a decade.
People need to quit telling themselves silly narratives.
https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg
It's mind boggling.
References: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...
I assume you wouldn't seriously argue that rivers are the limiting factor to deployment of nuclear energy.
Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it.
The ironic thing to me is that Germany is so anti-nuclear.
And with the world economy stabilizing after that mad man’s actions it’s again making a lot of sense as nuclear continues to be far more expensive than other renewable alternatives.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport enters the chat
True France's infrastructure is not resilient enough on climate, they are also a bit in denial over that. Everyone have their weaknesses.
On a per-kilowatt-hour basis nuclear waste is pretty damn clean. The end product is carefully encased in absurdly over-engineered containment vessels. Environmental leaks are rare to non-existent. The aim is to store it underground where it will pose far less of a risk to humanity than the raw ore did before it was dug up.
So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.
[0] https://meta.eeb.org/2017/10/18/french-state-owned-company-c...
It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel.
> And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from France's hunger for energy [1].
Uranium is not a large contributor to nuclear energy cost anyway, so this is no argument against nuclear energy.
> So yes, France's energy is cleaner, but it's a complicated picture.
I don't see how it is "complicated". Nuclear is clearly much better than Germany's coal+renewable. (Renewable-only was not an option since wind and solar are extremely volatile.)
It is wrong and a lie. Most uranium bought by (EDF) France lately come from Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and Ouzbekistan. Definitively not countries you can name as "Colonies".
>The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons).
No, it was made for bad reasons.
>Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time being until renewables push coal out of the mix. What Germany gains, on the other hand, is the removal of the most expensive form of energy
_Existing_ nuclear reactors are the cheapest possible source of electricity. You already had to build them and will have to close them. Left is the cheapest part, of actually operating them.
Using lignite only slowed the reduction of coal, nuclear was almost completely replaced by renewables.
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
You can see here [1] that on a time frame of 2000 to 2022 Germany is yet to replace reduction of nuclear generation (Kernkraft) with renewables. Construction of renewables in 2023 has only accelerated 50% relative to 2022 [2].
[1] https://www.tech-for-future.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/... [2] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....
Not to mention all the previously closed plants.
Every MW of nuclear shut down while coal is still running is coal displacing nuclear.
What entire EU gained is getting to support often unstable electricity grid in Germany. So we all gained a lot by the looks of it.
Importing will likely be "cheap", because we all agree to collectively pretend that externalities like CO2 emissions or catastrophic pollution from coal plants are not a thing.
Can't see how any of these options are good.
"In 2023, Germany lacks 15 to 20 gigawatt of secured power output”. This comment was from Harald Schwarz, Professor for energy distribution and high voltage technology at the Brandenburg University of Technology. EU Fact check rates this as mostly true.
The claim that germany has sufficient capacity for its energy needs is just wrong.
Competitive even without a strong government regulation to enforce people paying for externalities, and even working against the entrenched intests of fossil fuels.
A solution which is rolling out at a truly astonishing rate.
What happens in Germany is irrelevant compared with what has happened globally due, in large part, to Germany.
Error over time: 0
There is absolutely no reason the (ex-west) German nuclear power plants could not have been life extended. They were extremely reliable and about 10GWe of modern PWRs were finished in the late 80s. They could have easily be extended to at least 2030 had there been the political will at not a huge amount of cost. The RoI with current/previous high energy prices would have probably been 100 fold.
I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.
Of course recent months changed that since a lot of our gas used to come from Russia. If we went all-in on nuclear we could reactivate (East) German uranium mines that were closed shortly after reunification. But (traditional) nuclear also loses on economic factors, on top of being politically untenable.
Reminds me of my gf who picked cigarettes back up to help her quit vaping.
Like what? Surely nuclear is much cheaper than coal if we take at least some of the externalities into account?
Carbon emissions are arguably not even the worst aspect of burning coal…
Only reason nuclear energy is not viable is the people pushing against it, which means less nuclear plants are being built and prices skyrocketing.
If people would have pushed for nuclear energy like they push for wind and solar, then we would have no coal or gas burning plants by now.
- high electricity generation costs
- "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant"
- If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can?
- Unsolved long-term waste storage location
- Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society
- We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the energy needs of a couple generations, even though there are more sustainable and cheaper alternativesCoal has been added after nuclear was stopped but what you said is not happening at all. Look at the actual data instead of random Internet comments and populist articles by biased journalists:
Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
While lignite was in fact re-added, Germany only slowed the reduction of overall coal power and did not stop or reverse it as constantly proclaimed by commenters who care more about politics than engineering.
So Germany displaced nuclear mostly by renewable energy - WHILE ONLY SLOWING THE REDUCTION OF COAL when they added lignite. So still less coal than before, just not as fast as before.
The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.
They were counterfactually. This means that if nuclear hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.
> The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.
No, people should complain about Germany. Nuclear power can replace coal. Which is why France produces much less CO2 than Germany:
Renewables can and do replace coal, as they obviously did in Germany. It does not really matter if you are ideologically aligned with another energy source, for whatever reason.
Poland will stick to coal because of local economic interests, it has nothing to do with nuclear.
> They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before.
Well.. there is no reason why there shouldn’t be zero coal use before anyone starts shutting sown nuclear power plants. For one thing the issues with nuclear waste storage are a joke compared to the radiation and other pollution continuously emitted by burning coal…
And before teaching lessons to Eastern European countries, remember that the West had 50 years after the WWII to build up the economy and infrastructure. It would be only fair to let Eastern European countries to develop for the same period, without demanding them pay the costs of higher energy prices.
I don't have the numbers with me so I cannot check this right now, but I believe your comment to be incorrect. Germany must have more CO2 emissions than Poland from Coal alone since Germany is the largest user of energy from coal burning in Europe.
If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewables not happening.
Investment in renewable energy is not a value in itself. France has much lower CO2 emissions because they invested in nuclear energy which can replace both coal and renewable energy.
> If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewables not happening.
But an expansion of nuclear could have happened, replacing coal. Wind and solar themselves are highly volatile and require an additional stable energy source like coal or nuclear.
20 years later Flamanville 3 is still not finished and the EPR has been a disaster overall. Their current plants are starting to fail, they are producing less and less every year and had to rely on neighbors to supply electricity for them last year.
So there is quite a real and possible alternate timeline where Germany invests in nuclear instead of renewables and now it's still producing more than half of its electricity from coal because the nuclear plants are not finished and at huge cost.
I'm taking the current reality in a heartbeat.
Very unlikely. Nuclear (in the West) hasn't been expanded in the last 30 years, partially due to overblown safety concerns but also due to cost issues. There has been no hugely successful nuclear build, all that tried took almost as long as the renewable industry has existed in any real sense and cost absurd amounts of money. Looking at other large german projects during that timeframe, it's unlikely there would have been more than one plant opening. The hope of nuclear advocates is that by increasing economies of scale in production and reducing it on the individual plant level the economics of NPP will work out in future. I'm highly doubtful but hope they're successful.
> Wind and solar themselves are highly volatile and require an additional stable energy source like coal or nuclear.
For wind and solar to make sense, you need complimentary power sources. Wind and solar do have very complimentary characteristics (night/day as well as winter/summer), but not perfectly. This means "base load" power sources which should run as much as possible like (lignite and somewhat black) coal or especially nuclear work very badly (economically), due to the high cost of the plant and low utilization factor. B
In a fully renewable grid, most of the day power will solely come from wind and solar, probably with batteries filling the gaps during morning and evening and some form of long term storage like P2G/Hydrogen/... will cover dunkelflauten (time spans without solar nor wind) during winter. There should be overproduction during most of the time.
In an almost fully nuclear grid, solar might be used during summer to cover ACs or similar things, but storage is still required to avoid needing build enough NPPs to supply peak power usage. France uses large amounts of hydrostorage on the alps and the european power grid to reduce the NPP overcapacity needed during the day.
This is in contrast to gas, most forms of hydroelectricity, batteries or (hopefully) P2G/Hydrogen, whose costs primarily scale with the amount of energy, not power.
Building an grid almost only based on nuclear and wind/solar without some form of flexible generation is economically nonsensical. Both can be used in the same grid to some amount, but don't complement each other well.
EDIT: https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the... explains the duck curve and the issues for base load power sources because of it nicely
Should be at zero before anyone even starts thinking about closing nuclear power plants.
I don't think this is a coincidence because when Diablo Canyon was extended, the first thing that happened is that they asked for a billion dollars so they are able to even run. Nuclear is an expensive distraction and a hog of resources (time and money)
> That would imply that Germany should be criticized more than the US, but this cannot be.
This is tangential and there is also no need to resort to whataboutism for no reason.
Furthermore there can't be whataboutism because Germany is a leader in fossil fuel reduction this century. So there's nothing "bad" to accept and to do whataboutism about.
And coal is scheduled to be decommissioned completely. We'll see if Germany can stick to the schedule of doing that by 2035. But that's the official plan so far.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...
And exporting during winter 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, ... 199...
France is now exporting like it was doing before winter 2022.
An exception doesn't make a rule.
https://www.google.com/search?q=germnay+nuclear+lignite
I swear, sometimes HN users can be so pedantic, they'll demand source that the earth is round or that the water is wet.
I used to be afraid that ChatGPT would make our jobs redundant, but seeing how people can't find basic info by themselves and need to ask humans to spoon feed them, I think I can breathe easily that our jobs are safe.
Without a citation, any statement of ostensible fact is just unfounded rumor.
As a reader, if you're unsure of something, use common sense and in the age of powerful internet search engines and LLM chat bots at your fingertips, it's up to you to quickly check for yourself, and only ask the poster for sources when you were unable to find the corect information by yourself, otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time.
... or, if you prefer that, straight from the German government statistical office itself: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Energ...
As the moment of writing, Germany is producing 12% of its electricity with coal.
The question is valid, as there is a huge amount of misinformation going around those topics.
How? Surely you wouldn’t need to burn as much coal if nuclear plants were still running?
> and mostly not for nuclear plants.
electricity is fungible.
It doesn't matter what electricity the coal is intending to replace, as long as _any_ coal is being turned into electricity, that's coal that could not have been burned if a nuclear plant was generating that electricity instead
Which is irrelevant. Electricity is not the main purpose of coal.
The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal. In 1990, nuclear power plants were producing 153TWh in Germany. Today, coal+nuclear together is producing about as much.
5 years ago it was significant higher. And in 5 years it will significant lower again. Germany is in a process of change.
> The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal.
Which is wrong. Nuclear can't replace gas, which coal is replacing. And Nuclear plants have no fuel anymore and lacking up-to-date certification. There was zero chance to continue running since 2019, even if we ignore all the other problems.
France: 43
Germany: 398
https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg
The reason? Germans hate nuclear and prefer coal as a stable energy source.
Nuclear phase-out is part of the Green party identity; the CDU had Merkel going against nuclear after Fukushima and can't really go back, the FDP agreed, the SPD is also against it.
And as we've seen recently in the state of Thuringia, AFD has garnered the top with 35%, that's far from "most people would never consider to vote for".
The earth receives 5000 times more energy from the sun than mankind needs! It is free. Just use it.
And their politics is all neoliberal, of course they drive people to the right, it's the only alternative that doesn't threaten capital.
The AFD is currently the second most popular political party in Germany and the strongest in many parts. It's also better described as center-left.
- stopping immigration
- stronger rights for police and authorities
- emphasis on classical gender roles, ban of LGBT "propaganda" (as they call it)
- lowering taxes and reducing government size
- leaving the Euro zone and creating a new currency
And since they are taking these positions to their extremes, it seems entirely fair to call them "extreme right". No other parties would keep literal Nazis among their leadership.
That's not true. Both endeavours are long - if you wait to start electrifying heating until the grid is fully decarbonised, you'll be waiting for a decade before starting another decade-long thing. If both are done in parallel it sill, of course, be much faster.
The rise mostly results from this reduction because of the nuclear phase out.
These are not the actual numbers but an example:
June 2022: renewables 15TWh, total 40TWh = 37.5%
June 2023: renewables 15TWh, total 30TWh = 50%
First, if demand is not there, installed capacity isn't fully utilized. Since production costs of existing renewable installations is lower than carbon-based plants, a lull in demand will automatically increase the renewable percentage, that's neither good nor bad. But in fact, installed capacity is rising: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/bild/installierte-leistung-zu..., so no, the record is not only due to lower production.
Second, until 2022, renewables were actively hindered by the various Merkel cabinets. The roadmap going forward is way more aggressive, but of course planning takes some time. So a "rapid build-up" is still a multi-year thing.
Renewables were not actively hindered, Germany just decided to stop paying 30-50 cent per kwh in subsidies because it's stupid. Also, this is a seperate discussion.
This is only an example. Also CO2 emissions per capita does not provide us with a complete picture. (For example, if a country emits CO2 in the production of export goods, to what extent should the emissions actually be attributed to the importing countries?) By phasing out nuclear energy, Germany has made a major contribution to environmental protection. However, since this is a completely different category of environmental protection, it cannot objectively be offset against presumably associated CO2 emissions. In an open democratic society, such considerations are therefore not the task of a technical elite, but of the people as a whole. As an individual, of course, one can always take a different view of such majority opinions on the matter and campaign for them to be revised. However, one should always be aware that the weighing of such alternatives is fundamentally opinionated.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-per-capita-marimekko?...
That’s such a random claim to make…
On the HN/startup crowd note, that includes mandates that business in the office be generally conducted in French if you have 25+ employees, and there's significant enforcement powers to those mandates now.
Beyond that, the economy has lagged that of other provinces over past decades, although in recent years that's been less true - remains to be seen if that performance is a break with the long-term trends or not.
-----
More subjective:
It's generally going to be the "big government" model. Highest taxes on high earners in Canada, generally a reputation for more social services, more regulations.
Climate's pretty rough to many, although not extreme by Canadian standards. Still, it's a big difference from Southern Ontario or Vancouver.
Montreal is basically the only major "world" city, Quebec City is about the only other one of some national/international significance.
While it may look big on a map or as a number, in reality nearly the entire population lives in a relatively small corridor and much of the land area of the province is virtually uninhabited and in many cases basically inaccessible short of a helicopter or serious wilderness expedition. It will not feel anything like being 4x the size of Germany even if it technically is, for an example.
-----
Anyway, the power is cheap because it all comes from large hydro plants up north, they're blessed by geography in that sense.
Thank you!
But yeah, Germany is handsome and awesome.
According to the modeling of the Fraunhofer (base assumption), we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay), double renewables to eventually achieve twice the carbon footprint of France by 2030. The base load is so high in Germany and renewables are so unreliable, that we need >100% installed capacity from “conventional” sources. The storage and “smart grid” is not really feasible or likely to happen imho.
More info: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
Disclaimer: I have PV, use ground heat in my house; I’m totally pro zero emission but Germany’s ideological decision making makes it impossible whilst pumping up prices beyond affordable.
And Germany is actually a world leader in capturing biogas, which has negative GHG emissions even after being burnt.
Having said that, Germany still burns black and brown coal so a switch to more gas instead would be a positive for them. They'd have plenty of supply if they shift to heat pumps for heating and decarbonise industry currently using the rest.
Notably, green gas, not fossil gas. You can call that conventional, but it's not adding CO2 emissions. According to their study, the CO2 factor would fall from 460g/kWh in 2020 to 150 in 2030 and between 3 and 9 in 2050. You can't just go "meh, twice as much as France" and ignore that the scenario starts at 15x France.
You already need that really. A grid going at 70% generation capacity is already considered overloaded.
Too late for that and not for a lack of trying. The IEA has been consistently, hilariously wrong regarding solar growth for almost two decades:
https://zenmo.com/en/photovoltaic-growth-reality-versus-proj...
Meanwhile a prototype 15MW turbine is already producing power:
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/12/30/vestas-15-mw-prototy...
China also supplies the bulk of Germany's solar panel demands.
I think those are subtitles are hard to judge and most likely downplayed by incumbents.
Imagine what that price would have been if the renewables hadn't been there and they bought only "green" gas plants instead.
Or "green" nuclear, but we don't talk about that in Germany anymore
I know very little of its economics, like that it typically takes 7 years to pay it back and lasts 20-25 years, but looks like a good way to generate renewable energy and will likely soon take Germany to 100%.
It's a goal for the government and for many years it has been pushing forward. I dislike many things here, but I can't say I don't admire the country's ability to execute on this and other subjects.
I really don't get why the US and other strong countries don't invest as much on it.
There is some environmental impact(birds etc) and downsides, but overall looks like one of the best ways to generate energy until we have fusion energy. Also creates many jobs.
Birds are not an environmental issue, it was just a made up talking point that was debunked. Windows and cars are responsible for an order of magnitude more bird deaths.
Can you share the reference? Thank you
Are you talking money or energy? Energy takes about one year, not seven.
The wind turbines are only there to hide the giant, coal-powered power plants that Germany had to restart because the tree-huggers who run that country decided to ditch nuclear.
I very much doubt the veracity of this article.
I don't doubt the veracity of the article. We've been seeing similar and growing numbers for years. I don't get the hate to wind and how energy generation can easily become a political subject.
At the same time, no animals are living in and near wind farms. Plants that require pollination don't grow because no bees can live in or near wind farms. Building wind farms, also means less space to grow crops, so there will be a food problem. Wind turbines aren't producing energy when the wind doesn't blow.
Nuclear plants would have been a much better solution to the problem.
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga...
We're going to create massive hydrogen infrastructure where we produce it from sea water of the North Sea and then transport it inland using a pipe system to reach a low number of mega hubs, where high energy industry will plug in. Included will be some pipes crossing the border, surely into Germany.
On top of this, our king went to Portugal to secure massive deals with Portugal. Apparently it's easier/cheaper to produce Hydrogen in the Mediterranean. Some of it will be produced there and then shipped to Rotterdam, and then fed into the pipes.
We're the gods of big infra and also very cheap, so you can be sure that this is going to work.
Germany also shot themselves in foot by shutting down all nuclear plants and started burning coal.
Did GE then start consume so much less energy compared to 2022? No it did not. GE -produced- less energy, in particular less non-renewable energy. But to compensate, it imported more energy. And all this imported energy was non renewable; much of it was LPG that was imported from oversea.
No doubt the entire discussion on HN will be about nuclear.
The first half of the article blames the Ukraine war. The second half of the article blames China for being more competitive.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-12/germany-w...
Why should a rich country keep its industry and salaries flat for so long?
The reality is that not everyone is built for a office job, not everyone has the skills, education or intellectual capacity to work in a service-based economy. Yet, these folks could make a decent living for themselves.
They should remember the day they are going to vote.
We are at the peak of solar energy And every night, germany imports electricity
The data from january 2023 is really funny, too
German renewable energy policies have been a failure at securing human prosperity.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
Bullshit. That chart looks the same for many developed nations. A strong downtrend. Just a few examples: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...
That is a graph of countries with failed energy policy. It has been a long time in the works.
because I think that is just completely silly. Efficiencies will trigger Jevons' paradox and result in energy use rising. What we're seeing in these graphs is a squeeze as Asian nations outcomplete the developed countries combined with a series of policy failures in the West as we choke out our own energy and industrial bases.
Depends of the place... Improvements in computers & electronics (new TV uses less than half what the old one used 10 y ago), new transportation technologies, better building insulation, diminishing meat consumption... The high energy prices and regulations are two good pushers on that.
> Efficiencies will trigger Jevons' paradox and result in energy use rising
Only when the prices follow the efficiency. Also, this statement has not applied for electricity in the EU for the last 20 years despite plenty of growth https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Overall, how do you propose to fight climate change in the coming 5 to 10 years?
Picking on this as the most obvious example - the first thing you mention is consumer electronics efficiencies as being linked to a reduced energy use in the last 10 years, but then you linked an article showing that German per-household electricity use rose in the last 10 years. It is a challenging to connect those things.
The issue you have here is you're pulling ideas out of your hat with no evidence. If you do some order of magnitude estimates and have any statistics on hand, you're going to find that you're just wrong. The evidence points to Europe being midway though a deindustralisation and likely going through a big drop in living standards as industrial capital starts to decay.
Their energy policies are likely to be somewhere between shattering the living standards of the poor in Europe through to plain old catastrophic as the consequences of relying on Russian gas and Chinese manufacturing start to bite.
> Overall, how do you propose to fight climate change in the coming 5 to 10 years?
I don't. The Europeans are fighting climate change and their standard of living is starting to collapse. There are riots in France and war has come to the continent again. The Chinese embraced fossil fuels and got something like 40 years of peace and prosperity where their lifestyles improved a jaw dropping amount.
The people "fighting" climate change
(1) Achieved nothing.
(2) Are suffering for it.
If they'd gone all-in on prosperity in the 80s and tried to make nuclear reactors work, ironically they would have done more for climate change and for their own citizens. Unfortunately, the environmentalists carried that battle and now everyone gets to suffer.