Anyways, I don't understand the need to draw these types of "total" comparisons. If you have reliable electricity, a heat pump is probably great, if you don't, then fossil fuels are clearly the way to go.
There is no "one size fits all" energy strategy.
DOE mandates 80% efficiency for new furnaces, and high efficiency units are in the 90-95% range.
That doesn't seem particularly useful.
BTUs from hydrocarbon gases (and hydrocarbons in general) are phenomenal, and Natural gas is generally more of a waste product from oil extraction than anything, so is dirt cheap. The equipment required to use them (a typical furnace or boiler) is also cheap, low maintenance, well understood, and widely deployed everywhere.
Most cold climates use fossil fuel heating.
Heat pumps aren’t terrible, and are vastly more efficient than resistive heat for heating. If the only energy source is cheap and electric, it’s an easy win.
But for areas already widely using fossil fuel heating (such as Germany), switching to heat pumps will increase electrical demand by at least an order of magnitude - best case - and since peak heating demand tends to happen when it’s winter, better have adequate storage too. Germany also has very expensive electricity, so it will dramatically increase costs unless extensive amounts of insulation are also done, increasing capex.
So, if we look at price, and especially if we include capex, it’s only competitive in niche contexts or if we expect fossil fuel costs to be immediately and rapidly increased 4-5x. Even then, if done widely it will break a lot of things unless there is a lot of grid upgrades too. Increasing capex.
It’s why Germany is struggling to switch off. They’re not the only ones.
The were once the leader in nuclear energy. They really should have kept that lead, and built more nuclear plants and aggressively switched to electric first solutions such as heat pumps, EVs etc.
Instead, they are winding down their nuclear power plants, and increasing their reliance on fossil fuels in the near to mid term, at the very least, which means issues like this will plague them for some time.
No idea why they didn't pursue more energy independence when they had the chance
When the policy was started, the USSR had fallen, the world was on the upswing, etc. etc.
optimism, enthusiasm, etc.
These issues were all called out at the time.
Just... what is your plan with this? The reality is, North European countries are now wholly reliant on there not being a cold winter again. If you check three simple things: the number of MW of heating demands, the lithium prices for a MWh, and the god damn ninety-fifth percentile worst weeks for wind+solar at >45 degrees North, to get the number of hours. You can do this, and ask people with money in the game whilst you're at it. The answer is not ambiguous, and it is no where fucking near regardless of what a Twitter bro with 50 MWh in a desert will prat on about. So why. The Fuck. Haven't you?
This is not saying that technological advancements like SMRs can't change the economics to be more favorable, but it's really not the case if you wanted to start building a plant right now.
So either:
1) we’d need to do massive investment right now (on the order of wartime economic reorganization) for renewables, which no one seems interested in. And while plenty of people seem happy to say things are fine but that don’t even come close to penciling out in reality.
2) maybe actually get better at nuclear.
3) have some non-trivial percentage of the population either freeze to death during some “unexpected” winter storm that was entirely predictable, or go back to fossil fuels (if they can) on an emergency basis.
Or, my guess at the most likely outcome;
4) pretend everything is fine until a bunch of people die, then blame those people for their moral failings. Then start panicking.
Compared to France (70% from nuclear power, natural gas for heating in only ~1/3 of homes) this hardly looks like leadership.
As for the reasons: There has been a series of events where nuclear reactors weren't properly handled and where politics colluded with the operators to sweep it under the rug. No matter how safe the technology _could_ be, its management was horrendous.
One such example was a "passively safe" reactor that by now is a glowing mess for 40 years already, and will remain so for another 60-80 years before it can be dismantled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor
Key quote from that Wikipedia article: "The report listed hidden or downplayed events and accidents and described serious concealed problems and wrongdoings. For example, in 1978 operators bypassed reactor shutdown controls to delay an emergency shutdown during an accident for six days."
As long as people argue about the merits of the technology, they miss the German discourse on nuclear power completely.