Without nuclear no risks tied to a major accident, dependancy towards uranium providers, hot waste disposal, overcentralization, overcentralization, proliferation, daunting building and decommission projects... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 )
Not a bad deal.
If Germany could at least reach the 90s levels of France, that's why I would consider that some work in progress already
But let's role with it for second. Renewables are, unfortunately, not at a point yet where they can cover 100% of demand. We cannot change the current mix neither. So, what would be your proposed way forward to "solve" climate change? I am really curious, because most of the time people just ignore the time schedule behind those transitions (power plants have to be built, grids to be extended...).
> assume you mean, was built, there was no war in Ukriane or elsewhere involving Russia, and hence no lessons to be drwan from it!
And what about the talks with Azerbaijan and the increase imports from Algeria then? (both great countries aligned with the EU I'm sure). More pipelines are planning to be built following the war.
Unless of course, you want to go pre-industrial that is.
Building more gas pipes after the Russian war is pure insanity, even if you don't care about the environment
There's not many places you can get gas even if you don't care about the environment.
And yes, getting gas from Algeria was a problem before the war as well.
Realistically,the only good choice in the EU is Norway.
So, no fossil fuels from oppressive regimes then (I'm all for it, really, the sooner the Saudi can no longer pay the way into everything the better). Which leaves us with what exactly?
Renewables, meaning sourcing from China. And nuclear, just remind me, where does the reactor fuel come from again?
So yeah solar panels imports are also a big issue, I'm worried that China will close off the exports at some point.
As for nuclear, it's not as big of an issue as you think, most of the value is in the plant, there's lots of countries exporting the raw material which are not much related and storage is pretty easy. (Conditions may apply of course, some nuclear grids are much more dependent than others but it's possible to be relatively independent with it)
Fossil fuels are a diplomatic, environmental and economic issue, even if you don't care about the environment, three's lots of other downsides.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-elec-by-source?time...
Before 2010 and the privatisation of the grid, France only had a single working gas plant on the whole grid and not even connected to the pipelines, it was a plant reusing factory gas. Those gas plants are brand new and there to support the new wind and solar installs.
Check the construction dates here, it's really obvious: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_centrales_thermiqu...
The only grid that got shot up was the Ukrainian one. And even then gas still flowed through to Eastern Europe...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-carbon-...
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?facet=none&country=...
When will it be done? What really is the answer to the challenge?
Germany has ~140 GW of installed renewables when it needs about ~70GW of electricity.
When I was writing this (before I forgot to send it on a cloudy morning) 140 GW of installed renewables in Germany are producing a grand total of 14GW of electricity.
Germany needs 61GW.
Right now it looks like all of Europe [1] is busy burning gas and coal because it's cloudy, and there's very little wind.
So what happens when everything becomes electrical? Say, Germany needs 150GW of electricity, builds 500 GW of renewables, but those only produce 50GW (10% of installed capacity, like today)?
[1] Except three countries with stable electricity generation: France (nuclear), Sweden (nuclear + hydro), Norway (hydro)
Hopefully we build better ways for storing large amounts of energy.
This is heavy industry, nothing can be done in a jiffy.