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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

Can someone please explain to me, in an objective non political way what German leadership is actually doing in the last 3-4 years?

It seems like complete economic suicide to me, and they are just doubling down all the time. I can morally understand not using russian energy, but the consequences of this seem to have been completely ignored. Even worse, all nuclear has been shut down, doubling down on dependence on outside powers like the US, middle east, and france.

All this in the name of green energy, arriving at loads more coal production and political dependence. Plus now, every german older household is forced to change their heater, at a cost of 500bn-1tn euros over the next decade.

It's just worse and worse, the largest power in europe is basically destroying itself.

Why? Why??

Recent german industrial production data for reference: https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1699687261808263594

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> in an objective non political way

While your whole post implicates that you are leaning to the conservatice spectrum, I will try to be as objective as possible.

Germany has been ruled by conservative governments for the last 16 years. These governments have hindered innovation (see German internet speeds for example) and lobbyists made sure that nothing changed in regards of mobility, energy, city building and whatnot.

The russian attack on Ukraine has made clear that dependency on foreign states is not a good idea and that we have to act on that swiftly. Acting swiftly comes with a cost for the moment for sure.

Energy prices are already falling though for example, renewables are being build, probably like never before, see [1] at the bottom, and dependency on fossil fuels is being reduced steadily.

That could have been done slowly over the last 16 years, but conservatice politicians were busy doing... I don't know what.

Nuclear is and was never a viable option. While fans of this technology are repeating it over and over, the German reactors were EOL. Also: The energy companies were only able to run those reactors because that has been subsidized in different ways.

The economic downturn is somewhat more complicated, I think.

Lots of companies have used the pandemic to rise prices. While that might have been a real issue due to logistics during the pandemic, right now it's only greedflation with companies rising prices "because they can". That hits companies as well as persons and leads to people being more frugal and results in the economic downturn.

The "downturn" also might be a more realistic view of the situation, as the current government is not that leaned towards pampering businesses and lobbyists as the former ones. Former growth is in parts the result of subsidizing, tax reductions, low interest rates etc. These are all valid measurements to boost an economy, but someone has to pay the price for that.

Now, there's also a price to pay for modernizing the country at a larger scale and businesses have to pay their share, too. I think that's only fair.

[1]: https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Dossier/erneuerbare-energie...

> Germany has been ruled by conservative governments for the last 16 years.

Olaf Scholz was vice prime minister, and finance minister in the last governments. So I guess he was as responsible for the last 16 years as Lindner is today?

You forgot to mention that he can't remember details about one of the biggest tax frauds in German history. Personally I don't think that he should be chancellor at all, but I guess we don't have many choices.

> Nuclear is and was never a viable option. While fans of this technology are repeating it over and over, the German reactors were EOL. Also: The energy companies were only able to run those reactors because that has been subsidized in different ways.

This is simply not true, German reactors were perfectly fine and could've continue operating for decades to come, shutting them down so early was a political decision. Currently Germany got rid of their cleanest source of electricity while still depending on fossil fuels. At some point it will become obvious that renewables are not enough not power a modern economy and Germany will either stick to gas or become dependent on it's neighbours to stabilise it's energy grid.

Nuclear energy made up only 6% of the total energy mix. I wonder why everyone is so obsessed with these 6%.

Also please tell me, how, starting from tomorrow, we can ensure that we handle the waste products of nuclear power generation safely and easily. Please don't come up with things "there are some reactors which can burn it". We don't have these reactors yet. They are in development, maybe there's a prototype somewhere, but nothing we can use. We need solutions that work right out of the box and right now.

If not, we have to store the waste for a looooooooooong time and who pays for that? The tax payers. For a long time, maybe hundreds if not thousands of years ongoing from now, who knows.

Please note that the 22 billion Euro from the energy providers are just for searching a place to store the waste, not the actual storage itself.

edit: Just to note it, because some people might not know this. The decision to phase out the nuclear reactors was made by Merkel and made into law by her government. It's not something the Green party came up with one morning in 2022.

Nuclear was responsible for 30% of electricity generation in 1990, a bit more than 6%. And yes, you just store the waste in geologically stable rocks, it's not rocket science, we store other types of radioactive or toxic waste and it's not that controversial. I wouldn't mind having one nearby... oh wait, there is one nearby, and literally nobody cares. It's this radiophobic fearmongering that made nuclear overly regulated and unnecessarily expensive. We have a planet to save yet the biggest economy in the EU is barely making a dent in it's CO2 emissions.

So, the Green party has been ruining nuclear energy (and the whole country!) since the 90s? What kind of comparison is this? Letting nuclear power phase out was decided in 2011, nuclear was already down to 18% then. What point are you trying to make?

I don't care who's been running Germany, never said anything about greens, I don't know why you're so obsessed about it. I only wanted to correct your statements about nuclear not being a viable option.

> Plus now, every german older household is forced to change their heater, at a cost of 500bn-1tn euros over the next decade.

This is also simply not true. You are not allowed to install new heatings that burn gas or oil. Wood pellets, heat pump, etc, all allowed.

If you have a working heating, nobody is forcing you to rip it out. You are allowed to have repairs if it stops working. If it completely breaks down, there is also possibilities to get exemptions if i.e. a heat pump is not feasible. Maybe take a look at the actual law and not what some media is trying to read into the law.

I don't know if the oil industry's astroturfing is absolutely amazing or if people intentionally don't want to understand, but I swear every single legal step taken towards reducing our reliance on fossil fuels anywhere in the Western world is always filled to the brim with people misunderstanding what the law actually means.

But then it will lead to having less spare parts, less people learning the job of gas heater repair. You will kill the Market around Gas Heaters, you let the work force die and then you force indirectly people to move to heat pump. I have heat pump myself as long as solar energy, but I can see that even though it's true that nobody is forcing to, understanding how the market works, it is easier to see how it will be in the next years: We will just find people specialized in Heat Pump, it will be easier to install a new Heat pump than repair and maintain your older heater.

Maybe they’ve woken up and realised that the consequence of destroying the climate for humans is not having an economy to worry about at all.

You can’t keep kicking the can down the road forever.

I fail to see how this is the solution. China now produces more CO2 than US and europe combined. And it's growing. So is India.

Germany committing economic suicide will not save the planet. It's also not going to persuade china and india to change course.

> Germany committing economic suicide will not save the planet.

Actually will make the situation worse, since Germany uses the taxpayers money to support many other countries around the World.. Less tax money, less money to share.

> It's also not going to persuade China and India to change course

Even worse: It will show other Countries that the right way to move forward is to be like China and India, instead of being like Germany.

Just think about what will persuade China and India? Maybe Germany just wants to be ahead of the pack

China is doing a massive renewable buildup. Yes, they are also increasing fossil-based production, but that's because their renewable buildup can't quite keep up with total growth. China is persuaded, more than most others. (unfortunately India is a very different story)

Unless at some point we (meaning humanity) introduce a carbon tax based on how sustainable are the means of production of a country.

Another thing. China has more people that Europe and US combined and so does India. With your statement you are somewhat implying that we (European as Us citizen) have a right to pollute more per capita than Cinese and Indian citizens. I don't think that's fair.

> Another thing. China has more people that Europe and US combined and so does India. With your statement you are somewhat implying that we (European as Us citizen) have a right to pollute more per capita than Cinese and Indian citizens. I don't think that's fair.

So you've admitted China and India has more people, who want to consume more and produce more CO2 (don't make the mistake in thinking they are transitioning to renewables, they are adding them, but also adding shittons of coal power plants).

We have 2.3bn people that WANT to consume as much as the west per capita.

How is german economic suicide going to help? You bring down your own consumption for some moral reason, while completely ignoring what is happening in asia? How does that help anyone? It doesn't help the planet, it doesn't help yourself. The whole thing is some wierd suicidal virtue signalling. It makes no practical sense.

It's not that they directly WANT to consume as much, is that quality of life is tied to per-capita energy expenditure. Do you WANT to compromise on your comforts to go on-par with India's average quality of living?

China matches Germany in per-capita CO2 also, with a rising trend as opposed to Germany's trend which has been falling for decades.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=CHN~DEU

> It's also not going to persuade china and india to change course.

Seeing how China essentially took over global PV market share from Germany and Japan and will cross 500GW installed this year, doubling that number by 2028, I think they were already persuaded years ago - it's just that ramping up production to the scale of a 1bln+ country takes time.

And they're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts - it's just cheaper this way.

Which would make more sense if they had not shutdown all their nuclear power stations, whilst still generating roughly 40% of their power with gas/coal power stations.

So what do you suggest? Let's start bulding nuclear to have again in 15 years without a national industry to facilitate that?

The train is LONG gone and it's economic and political suicide to start now.

The whole "WhY DoN'T yOu BuIlD nUclEaR" is ignoring the large delays and over budget projects of modern reactors.

Germany literally shut down working reactors knowing that the power would have to be replaced with coal. That was known.

And yet it wasn't replaced by coal as that is getting phased out too.

There's coal, gas and nuclear for the base load. Nuclear went away and gas got too expensive. What replaced it if not coal?

You tell me, here's the statistics for electricity generation from fossil fuels https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

They also brought their coal phase out date forward by a decade, which seems like progress.

The shutdown was planned 3 years ago. The reactors were prepared for the shutdowns, maintenance was cancelled and also no new radioactive material was sourced for them. So, it was not easily possible to just revert the decision and just keep those reactors running. Even getting them back to a state, where they could be kept running longer would have taken several years.

More like 22 years: New nuclear power plants were banned altogether. The agreement became law in 2002 (Atomgesetz) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/history-behind-ge...

> Germany literally shut down working reactors...

They were EOL, I'm not sure what you expected them to do with them? I don't really care about whatever pro/anti nuclear stance you have, I think it's pointless to even discuss in the German context because that ship sailed years ago.

Prolong their lifetime like many countries constantly do? There are literally reactors from the 50s in operation, reactor life can be increased with maintenance and security improvements.

Didn't Germany just make a law that will cost 50 billion Euro and will - in the span of six years - save the CO2 that China puts out in a day. Brilliant decision.

Germany could shut down everything tomorrow and it wouldn't make a dent. Not making a dent _and_ ruining your economy will not make anyone follow your lead either.

The unsupported part of your comment is the "ruining your economy" claim.

Did someone with connections to the fossil fuel industry tell you that Contracts for difference would do that? They seem to have worked well to provide cheap alternatives to fossil fuels via market based incentives in many other countries and industries.

You didn't explain why you think they'll be such a disaster in this instance? Do you actually have a reason for thinking so?

> Not making a dent _and_ ruining your economy will not make anyone follow your lead either.

Can you stop parroting the incredibly stupid line of "ruining your economy", please? It's extensively used by the oil industry lobby/propaganda to disparage any change that will affect their bottom line, you are (willingly or not) just repeating bullshit from lobbyists. And looking stupid while doing it.

Looking stupid became fashionable around 2016.

Most German energy imports are actually from Denmark, which is mostly wind energy [1]. Gas now mostly comes from Norway. [2]

Don't know why you say we rely on France or even the US and the middle east?

[1]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/denmark-germany-sign-ag... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/where-does-germany-s...

Economic suicide would be continuing with business as usual and leaving all growth markets to the Chinese. What we’re trying to do is forcing companies who have grown fat on milking innovations from decades ago into adapting to the global market realities.

I mean, china is also committing economic suicide, so at least there's that...

But don't you see the wisdom in joining China's suicide, rather than just waiting it out?

We're replacing coal, nuclear and fossil gas with solar, wind, and storage (in form of compressed air, batteries, and power2gas).

Once this has been completed, we're free from buying coal, uranium (Russia? Niger?), or gas and stop emitting large amounts of C02 due to the burning of fossil fuels.

"Once this has been completed"

Especially the "storage" part is really far in the future, certainly not by 2030 or so.

Also, you are becoming dependent on countries like China for solar panels and other non-free or semi-free countries for rare earths, lithium etc. The sun may shine for free, but no one escapes a thorough entanglement in global trade networks nowadays.

> Also, you are becoming dependent on countries like China for solar panels and other non-free or semi-free countries for rare earths, lithium etc.

Bought a 115Wp rated solar panel earlier this year, made in China.

For the foreseeable future (years, or 20y+ rated lifespan of such a panel), I can generate power from that panel without making ANY additional purchases.

At the end of that lifespan, market conditions will be very, very different from today.

How does that "make me dependent on China, etc"?

Any renewable installed = long-term, independent power generating capacity obtained. Regardless where initial materials came from.

Dependency is hitting gas station every day & not being able to move car when oil company fails to supply gas station. Long term investments like solar panels don't work like that.

> arriving at loads more coal production

Where is this "fact" coming from? Coal is being phased out. Numbers for last year increased slightly, but that was due to gas, not nuclear shutdowns. For this year coal usage is on track to being at 2020 levels, which was an outlier year.

Source: https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE...

To be fair, Germany economy was already fucked, but the energy transition is accelerating the inevitable. Germany is the last of the industry-based economies in Europe and this while simultaneously being the country with the highest energy prices. That situation was never going to last. The energy prices will remain high for many decades even if a successful energy transition might bring them down eventually, so industry has been relocating outside of the country anyway. The transition to EVs has only made matters worse. A lot of German industry is being made redundant. And Germany in 2023 is still skeptical of the digital age and a service based economy. So yeah, the future is not bright either way.

But what the government is doing is partly ideology based and partly, I believe, the personal ambition of the economy minister himself. I think the American approach is much more sane and they will probably still end up being the global leaders of green energy tech.

> The energy prices will remain high for many decades

Bullshit. You can get a new contract for 30 Cent/kWh right now. That's the same price as in 2017 [1].

[1]: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Wirtschaft/Preise/Publikat... Page 47

There is a bit more nuance to this. The nuclear shutdown was a reaction to the changing sentiment regarding nuclear power after Fukushima (An overreaction in my opinion). It was decided to slowly phase nuclear power out (until 2020) and invest more in renewables. This was a rare occasion where basically all parties were happy. Greens because green and the rest because it made them look like listening to the popular mood at the time, with 80% being in favor [1].

Of course, as is tradition in the last decades, the law was done quickly, but the investing part was somehow forgotten. Instead, if investing in renewables, the reliance on Russian gas was increased (Insert joke about irony here).

Now it's 2021 and a new government is elected. Covid just ended and the war in Ukraine started. The nuclear plants are one-by-one shutting down, but the ones running are getting very costly extensions to have reserves. They are old, have not been maintained (because they were shutting down) and are too expensive, and energy companies don't want to keep them online anymore. The underinvestments so far take revenge. The reliance on Russia is now seen as a big mistake. In a years time, Germany changed that reliance (under a green minister's leadership, no less) by building LNG terminals and diversifying sources [2]. While still having the long-term goal of not getting in such a situation again.

However, Germany is extremely expanding wind and solar, with the goal of having 80% coming from renewable sources by 2030 [3].Right now, electricity pricing has nearly reached 2021 level and is continuing to fall. Gas is still higher but there is a big push for industries to change to hydrogen where possible.

> every german older household is forced to change their heater

Long term yes. If you need a new heater which can't be repaired, you need to get a heat pump. This will be subsidized. This will lessen outside reliance and be a part in taking climate action.

> It's just worse and worse, the largest power in europe is basically destroying itself.

I think that is a bit harsh. It's more that decades of ignoring problems and not investing have culminated in a bad situation. Neoliberalism has created immense investment bottlenecks, and Germany was lucky to survive that long. Now they have a lot of catching up to do. Which won't be easy, in no small part because Germany is not allowed to take on new debt (constitutional amendment) and raising taxes is a now go, because neoliberalism. So yeah..

[1] https://www.infratest-dimap.de/fileadmin/_migrated/content_u... [2] https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung... [3] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/schwerpunkte/klimasch...

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