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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish.

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...

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Heating is one thing we have tackle, but also transportation which uses up 27.1% of energy in German. Individual transportation should be a main target, we would all shift from cars to public transport or bicycles. About 40% of distances driven with cars are shorter than 5 kilometers, a distance that's perfect for a bicycle. On top of that, car owners tend to underestimate the cost of their cars[1]

[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/energie/energieverbrauc... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01118-w

> Heating is one thing we have tackle

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.

Are you seriously shaming a non-native speaker for their English right now? smh…

eagerly waiting for you to respond in German

"Englische Sprache, schwere Sprache."

(There's a saying which surprised me when I moved here: https://lal.de/blog/deutsche-sprache-schwere-sprache/)

Yeah, targeting individual transport with inefficient public transport and bicycles while restarting abandoned coal power plants and abandoning running nuclear power plants is going to work wonderfully indeed.

> inefficient public transpor

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.

public transport can be efficient if done correctly and funded accordingly (Japan, Switzerland)

I'd like to add Singapore because they buy their excellent MRT trains from Germany.

maybe, I was just in Switzerland and people said that Japan is even better in terms of transit. If Singapore has reliable prioritized public transport, then yep, it's cool. What shocked me the most is that in Swiss, all tickets for any transport can be bought in a single app, and if you don't want extra hassle, you don't even need to buy it, just press a button and the app will calculate by gps what you need to pay. This + super precise arrival times...

Not one single kind of rolling stock in Singapore's MRT is made in Germany. Why do you just claim random things like that as if it were true?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singapore_MRT_and_LRT_...

Literally the 2nd item on your list is C651 made by Siemens which has design and headquarters in Munich, Germany.

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" ;)

Okay I give you that. I was wrong about zero. 19 trainsets out of a total of 594. 3%. And those were manufactured in Austria (like I said), not Germany. But yes Siemens is HQed in Munich. So I guess they bought them from there. True.

Not sure how one can interpret "Singapore because they buy their excellent MRT trains from Germany" and then those excellent trains are a mere 3% of Singapore's trains (with the vast majority being Chinese and Japanese. Even the French trains are more than 3x as many). But hey, whatever.

The linked article might help clarify things. The percentage of power from coal and nuclear power were both down considerably:

“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.”

With individual transport, you move ~2 tons of metal for a payload of one person, a weight/person ratio of 2.

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?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_3

You forget that most people don't live or work next to the rail station. That makes rail inefficient in the only way that matters to most people - their time.

(I say that as someone who takes trains to work most days.)

I think trains going twice as fast as cars and not being impacted by traffic goes a long way in making up for the last mile problem - even if you take a bike for that piece, overall you're gonna be much faster than if you're stuck in rush hour traffic.

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.

People don't live near rail stations because we have been subsidizing cars for fifty years while letting the rail network crumble.

They don't ?

Plenty do, or live a short bus journey away.

How is it a fair comparison to make the automobile have only one person but the rail car completely full? Rail cars are very rarely anywhere near full. Infact, they have to be run nearly empty most of the time in order to have a schedule good enough that enough people to fill the car up are willing to rely on it.

This is why so many are fed up with Germany and especially Germany's current government. You know, maybe people don't want to bike in a country where it's too hot in the summer, too icey/cold/snowy in the winter and where it rains constantly in the other two seasons?

This whole attitude of "I tell you how to live your life because reasons" is preposterous.

Biking all year is perfectly possible in most of Germany. There are enough good clothes to counter bad weather, snow and especially ice keeps getting rarer. Biking adoption depends most of the infrastructure and also whether your peers do it too. It has also many positive health side effects.

So? Take the bike when the weather is nice and the car when it's not nice. That still reduces the kilometers you drive by a lot. Nobody forces you to bike when it's 40°C or -20.

People aren't telling you how to live, they're saying that certain current practices are inefficient in a way that causes harm. An extreme comparison would be a murderer-for-hire telling the judge "don't tell me how to live my life, this is a free country!" but that's kinda what that sounds like. You're free to do what you want, yeah... until it harms others.

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...

I would like to see you cycling 5 km in the Alps against the wind in the rain. Cycling is fine. I do it 7 km to the work. But only because it is flat. And only when the weather is fine.

I've never really understood the point of comments like this. So, there are conditions where cycling isn't feasible. Sure. Does that mean people in general couldn't use bicycles more? No, of course not. Did GP suggest that everyone that lives within 5km of work must bike every day. No, not that either.

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?

"Alps" was a pars pro toto. See here for a complete list of mountains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_and_hill_rang...

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.

Fair enough, and thanks for teaching me the term "pars pro toto". Today I was one of the lucky 10k :)

"Synecdoche" is probably the more common term.

> I've never really understood the point of comments like this.

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.

I use a bike to get around pretty much whenever I can but I'd be the first to admit cars are suitable for a far wider range of journey types, and it's not exactly surprising that in most countries in the world people prefer to drive cars over riding bikes. The best we can realistically hope for is ensuring that whatever barriers exist now that discourage people from cycling (safety concerns typically being #1) are addressed and minimised. Though certainly in the case of Germany you can compare it to two of its neighbours (to the west and north) and reasonably conclude more can be done to promote cycling as a way to get around in towns and cities.

I'd love to see me cycling 5 km in the Alps, too.

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.

Electrically assisted bicycles are a real game changer for the short to medium commute, especially when the wind or the terrain is against you. Note that biking in the Alps isn't really a problem in Germany, more so in Switzerland or Austria. But even in the Alps the single villages are rather flat because they are built in the mountain valleys.

I'd like to see you drive your sedan through just 4 miles of Colombian Amazonas Jungle. See: Cars are impractical!

An e-bike would be the solution (not when it rains or snows, of course).

I'm fine with people in the Alps taking their car when it's raining and windy. That still leaves 99% of the population who can take their E-bike for short trips.

Oh you picked the wrong guy for your comment: I worked 10km away the winter before and got out the door at 6am, cycled to work and left a 5pm to cycle back home, often when it was dark again.

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

> transportation which uses up 27.1% of energy in German

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.

In the meantime, Switzerland is installing solar panels on train tracks [0] instead of, I don't know, people's roofs. There is so much promising tech coming out in terms of energy storage and we're seeing almost zero investment from governments. Everything's backwards.

[0] https://www.techspot.com/news/98944-switzerland-installing-s...

Why are people so obsessed with "solar roadways" or "solar train tracks"? This is a joke, a gimmick, it makes absolutely no sense. Well, except for the startups that are getting massive subsidies and grants for these clown projects.

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.

Most of the roofs you mention are not built to support load.

As someone from the Alps, I'd really see a source on that. Most alpine roofs are built to survive extreme snow loads. My father just covered his roof in solar and that roof was built in the 70s.

Thats why they are dismantled every year just before winder and rebuild after last snow melts.

Maybe in America?

Solar train tracks or roadways are a dumb person's idea what innovation looks like.

Solar on roofs is a solved problem, chinese make the panels, and hundreds of locals installers install it.

If you want grant money, you need something new, like a solar monorail!

The name's Lanley, Lyle Lanley. And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest—Aw, it's not for you. It's more a Shelbyville idea.

The people from Solar Roadways actually got support from several governments in the US. It's totally bonkers. They never had a proper functioning system. The whole idea is ridiculous and people pointed it out since the beginning. But it generated so much news that governments were so ready to jump on it. And they are STILL at it. So here we are, 10 years later, and still talking about putting solar panels in places where they will: break, get very dirty, be hard to fix and replace. We can't have good things because money and politics talk, not science.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OLnfNrCQM4

You get ad impressions from people who read the headline and think "that's a great idea", or "that's a stupid idea" or "wait, is that actually possible?" or "that sounds neat" and they all count towards the algorithm in a way that "Let's put solar on the boring places" doesn't.

On a graph, the money spent or the capacity installed has never been more than a blip of a blip but it gets eyeballs.

There's a sizeable portion of the voters, also sizeable here in HN (see the discussions StartX vs SLS), which demands a minimal government, no intervention, no trust in them and all that. I guess we cannot both have the cake and eat it.

Solar panels on rail tracks are an interesting experiment, but mind that they complicated maintenance work on tracks and require quite some maintenance themselves. (Think about oil and other dirt dropping from trains; stones and small tree branches etc being thrown around with the force of the train...)

But even if they are useable and beneficial: That's not an argument not to use other available space as well.

"The pilot project, which is expected to be completed this summer at a cost of $560,000, will see Sun-Ways use a regular train to lay down 60 solar panels on a 140-foot stretch of railway track near the city of Neuchâtel"

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"?

Solar on roofs kinda sucks. It's way more expensive to install and rarely at an optimal orientation. And they will get covered in snow for months out of the year depending on climate.

Government money would be much better spent on a regular solar installation on the ground. Much cheaper to install and maintain.

Cutting trees to put solar panels is a unpopular idea. Roof is a free space. "Optimal" orientation isn't always optimal for grid because distributing peak output time is a good thing.

The issue in Germany is that this transition is expensive, even more so after 16 years of decay of everything from the past coalitions.

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...

This is the new political landscape in Europe. By including the fascists, the conservatives roughly double their votes and don't need to compromise with the rest anymore. We're seeing this now in Finland and probably next in Germany. To me this is selfish and short-sighted in the short term, and outright dangerous in the long term.

There's even historical precedent in Germany, but in their greed I fear they'll repeat the same mistakes from 100 years ago.

The activist groups like Last Generation, etc are doing a brilliant job of making ecological movements look like complete buffoons at this time

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

the current coalition did massive ecological damage by not keeping the six nuclear power plants running. In 2021 they produced more energy than all installed solar combined. It would have been an easy move that would have granted us 10+ more years runway for the transformation of the heating systems. It's an illogical move to take that clean energy out and force massive costs on the people they can't really prepare for. The FDP is losing voters left and right, because they do nothing but stopping even worse politics from the coalition. They are the one thing holding back Germany from going into an unstoppable downward spiral. Germany is already rapidly losing parts of our industry, going into a recession while the burdens on social systems will soon explode. And instead of any solutions for the real problems, the SPD and Greens just want to increase taxes, driving away even more highly qualified people.

The current coalition did no such thing. They just came into power weeks before 3 of the 6 were switched off. At which point it wouldn't have been reasonable to reverse the decision to get rid of the last 6 reactors. A decision, which was taken by CDU/CSU and FDP. They decided on the switch off date and did nothing in the following 10 years to reconsider. They also did their best to not grow the renewables instead.

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.

That's dishonest. They had three month to reverse the decision on the first three in time of an energy crisis but refused to do it; they took another year not to switch off the next three. The decision HAD to be revised because of the energy crisis and lack of gas. They didn't.

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.

It is dishonest to claim the decision could have been reverted in the last 3 months. They were in no shape to be kept running. First of all, the fuel rods were spent and would have to be ordered and would have had long delivery times. But the biggest concern would have been maintenance. The maintenance schedule was of course planned with the scheduled shut-down in mind. So a lot of maintenance and refurbishment would have had to be done. So we are talking about a possible several-year downtime at least. Which makes the whole idea very questionable.

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.

There would have been NO road blocks for extending the lifetime. Westinghouse offered fuel rods which would have been delivered in time.

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.

No, that is not true. Maintenance was done with the respect to the planned life time. They couldn't just have kept running. That the previous government didn't knew about the Russian war onto Ukraine makes no difference. Gas prices have recovered to pre-war levels, so there is no extra need for the nuclear plants compared to before the war.

This is simple not true.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/politik...

You still pay teice the price for gas as before because we had 30yr low costs (below spot) contracts with Gazprom.

The article is about shutting down the reactors at the 31.12.22. As you know, they were not shut down at that date but ran some months more. That doesn't say anything about the long term maintenance requirements. And in any case they would have to be inspected before any further decisions to be taken as the article only states "they might be able to run further". But that was only an opinion, not a result of a inspection.

You have either not read the article or didn’t understand it. The PSÜ has little to do with the actual condition of the reactors.

I have read and understood the article. It is all speculation about what might or might not be necessary.

On a perhaps pedantic note.

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.

Sorry on the nitpicking - we will have to dig into our pockets even if government does something. Government does not have magic money it is also “our money”.

One would say government would levy fees on big companies but then companies will charge customers more.

Governments issue money, so yes they kind of do have magic money. Certainly a different access to money than private entities.

When they issue more money - money in my pocket lose value, still same thing.

This is not true. That only happens if the money supply exceeds the productive capacity of the economy.

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.

Of course yes, but most people seem to be waiting to let the government mop up the problems and aren't spending anything themselves that isn't advertised as a guaranteed investment like solar panels where the electricity company has to pay you for the service of dissipating your excess energy (bluntly put). We need to realise that, at least until the government starts spending big (because it's basically too late for the perfect outcome already, the best we can do is mitigate even bigger disasters), the only other option is do it ourselves.

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