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.
https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...
But it's already at 5% of the electricity grid, and that's about what would be needed in a mostly renewable grid. That's the only use of gas we want long term, the rest should be phased out anyway. It's a big, epensive engineering project, but not as big and expensive as building lots of nuclear.
As your article says, think of it as a way to get rid of methane emissions from farming, with storable energy as a bonus.
You *CANNOT* phase out gas plants , coal plants and nuclear and solely rely on renewables as of today (and the next 30, 50???) years in an industrialized nation like Germany.
And maybe don’t paraphrase the article like “hey its a challenge but possible”. We don’t have enough agricultural space to cover our demand. The number of (ethical,infrastructure,price) problems is so long that the idea defies reality. But you are talking about IDEOLOGY and in Germany, if you have the right IDEOLOGY, reality doesn’t matter any longer. That’s other people’s problem.
Jan Seven rechnet damit nicht. „Aus volkswirtschaftlichen Gründen ist es nicht darstellbar und auch nicht zu rechtfertigen, Biogas in dem Maße weiter zu fördern oder bestimmten Umbauszenarien zu folgen.“ Biogas sei verglichen mit den anderen erneuerbaren Energien die mit Abstand teuerste Energieform. Auch, weil Lebensmittel, die in Biogasanlagen zum großen Teil genutzt würden, teurer geworden seien. „Deswegen sehen wir beim Biogas eigentlich überhaupt keine Kostenreduktion, die wir bei Solarstrom und Wind massiv gesehen haben im letzten Jahr.“ … “ Diese Energiepflanzen belegen 15 Prozent der deutschen Ackerflächen. Insgesamt 1,5 Millionen Hektar, die eigentlich dringend benötigt werden, um dort Lebensmittel und Futter anzubauen, sagt Jan Seven. „Auf diesen Flächen wachsen keine Lebensmittel, es wachsen keine Futtermittel für die Tiere, die wir in großer Stückzahl halten. Die Futtermittel importieren wir aus Brasilien. Wir haben eine direkte Konkurrenz zwischen Teller und Fermenter.“ In einem Fermenter werden in einer Biogasanlage die Rohstoffe erwärmt und zersetzt, sodass Biogas entstehen kann.”
But the article also states that non-food based manure biogas could be expanded to 3x current with no impact on food (well, except to make German meat and dairy more GHG friendly). Food waste is another source that doesn't compete for land. Coal mines and landfills leak methane. New satelitte tech can pinpoint small sources and fine people that don't capture it, providing both a stick and a carrot.
So, the small amount of unavoidable gas usage, can be met by capturing stuff that would otherwise be released as methane. We already have gas storage and gas turbines. We can mix in green hydrogen too if need be.
50% is the capacity we need, not the amount of energy that needs to be supplied.
Here's a Wartsila projection for Germany suggesting 8% "flexible gas" is what's required, with 59% of peak capacity. That is, a very small amount of the year, it's used a lot. Luckily we already have large amounts of gas storage built. (Also, we've done a complete loop on this thread: "Gas generation capacity is different from GHG and other pollutants caused by actually burning fossil gas. Don't be fooled by people implying they are the same.")
https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy...
We are missing 50% in gas plant capacity.
Your happy collection of “nice happy ideas” isn’t gonna cut it at the scale we need it to happen within 7 years. I’m so tired of this nonsense by people like you.
This isn’t some elementary science fair project. It’s people gambling away the economic foundation of Germany over some “would be nice” ideas.
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.
https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...
You already need that really. A grid going at 70% generation capacity is already considered overloaded.
I think (and I might be wrong, but the ballpark should be right), we will have 600% capacity installed in renewables and 100-150% installed in conventional capacity by 2030. So shifting to renewables means like 700+% installer capacity, which means that when sun shines and wind blows, you will only be able to use 1/7 of the electricity produced during the day whilst also potentially running the gas turbines full steam at night. We have observed this a lot this year in Germany (e.g. wind was taken off grid because solar produced too much whilst gas and coal only delivered a minimal (?) operational load).
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
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/p...
That isn’t really an option: https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...