EU coal and gas collapse as wind and solar ascend

I agree, but I wonder what will happen to the middle east in the future once the transition is complete. What might they be thinking today about this?

The Houthis/Iran blockading cheap Chinese things from reaching Europe might even be an environmental blessing in disguise.

It is an important point - here in Australia we don't have adequate onshore fuel reserves and we have only two or three remaining oil refineries, meaning the vast majority of our fuel is refined offshore and imported. This means basically our entire transport industry would fall over in (if I recall) around 20 days if our shipping was blockaded.

But I think you're wrong on one point - going green isn't an economic hit in the scheme of things - even not counting the possibly incredibly high costs of climate change into the future (food insecurity, more frequent and more severe weather disasters, etc.) - renewable generation is cheap, and storage is also getting cheaper every year. Energy efficiency improvements have also seen demand trending down even as populations increase and there is a push towards electrification. Meanwhile nuclear has always been pretty expensive, and coal and gas prices have been fairly high in recent years. With some demand management, more distributed storage, new battery technologies, economies of scale etc., the cost of highly renewable grids is not likely to be a big deal.

Well, U.S. produces a lot more oil than it consumes and can supply most of Europe's net imports this way. Counting in Canada, in a pinch, North America and EU put together, can make do with just the (fossil fuel) energy supplies of their own.

So what you say was the case 20 years ago but no longer. Energy supply-wise, U.S. does not care about Middle East at all, and Western world overall, only somewhat cares, but it's not a major concern, not like it was in 1970s let alone not like it was in 2000s.

This is the main reason why China is accelerating renewables. Renewables solves their energy sovereignty problem which they are very stressed about. If they decide to invade Taiwan, they have no easy solution to an oil blockade. They only have ~3 months of strategic reserves. They're fine on coal (albeit they can't really expand use that much, they can just keep it steady), it's oil that's the issue.

https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/03/22/chinas-economic-secur...

The other 4 reasons are smog over cities, growing political leverage of the domestic renewables industry, climate change, and the improving learning curve making it financially pragmatic.

I think this provides a framework for how to market renewables to a domestic conservative political audience. It's cheaper, yes, but primarily it's good for national security and sovereignty. It's even better for individual sovereignty if we're talking about individual household solar, whereas oil and gas makes the individual beholden to the state or corporations (or worse, a foreign hostile state).

I don't agree that the "vast majority" of government motivations for green energy are "geostrategic". Some of it is but much is clearly driven by genuine concern about the environment by elected representatives.

If Germany were most motivated by energy independence they would not have closed so many nuclear power plants. There are in fact lots of decisions that politicians make that are inconsistent with aiming for strategic benefits but are consistent with an earnest (and sometimes quixotic) concern for the environment. If the UK was so bent on energy independence we would have made more progress on heat pumps. Yet gas boilers (lifespan: 15 years) are still being fitted today. In truth, governments thing about energy security a bit, they think about green stuff a bit and they aren't always very effective agents of change...

I also think you're not right to imply that energy production largely happens as a result of government direction. In fact, energy prices are high at the moment and the prospect of profit drives development of green energy a great deal (not that subsidies don't have an effect as well).

To be honest (and I hope I'm not straying into a personal attack here - that's not intended) I think your viewpoint sounds clever because it is cynical. Cynical views - especially the attribution of an ulterior motive - usually sound clever. But I think your post is at best partly right and perhaps even mostly wrong. Political realism is a drug to take only in small doses.

But also need to consider industry hallowing out due to lack of access to cheap gas as feedstock not energy, see EU's contracting PMI. At the end of the day, it also matters for geoeconomics if you don't have access to cheaper inputs than your competitors, especially if it leads to industrial death spiral that's difficult to recover from the longer it lasts.

The geostrategic impact is the most important point my eyes as well. Except for the USA, Norway and Britain pretty much all of the West's oil is from autocratic countries. Every wind generator, every solar panel that we put into use now will reduce that consumption for decades to come. Only an increase of energy consumption would work against this, but for example the EU is very much pushing it's citizens to save energy, even something small like LED light bulbs will contribute. Putin's war on Ukraine and the outfall in form of the EU reducing its gas addiction will mean that Russia is loosing millions of gas consumers not just for the duration of the war, but forever. Europe replaces its gas heating installations with other systems and pushes for better insulation. No one will go back to gas no matter how Putin's insane war ends. As a cyclist I'm not a fan of car and the current EVs, but once batteries take that big hurdle and production isn't reliant on China, all the money sent to autocrats to buy oil and lithium batteries will stay in the West. I'm all for that.

The linked article is poor. The original report covers all the different aspects to the reduction in fossil electricity generation.

See https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electri...

For a summary look at the "What drove the record fall in EU fossil fuel electricity generation in 2023?" graphic.

The reductions are as follows:

* -90 TWh - Rising wind and solar generation

* -50 TWh - Rebound in hydro and nuclear generation

* -94 TWh - Electricity demand fall

The area graph "How the EU's electricity mix has evolved over time" gives you a good idea of the impact renewables have made on electricity generation.

The Chinese are not adding coal and nuclear because it is cheap (it isn't, even for them) but because they can't yet produce enough renewables to completely cover their needs. They have a very rational plan for eventually transitioning away from coal. But it's a long term plan.

However renewables are covering most of the new generation at this point and certainly much more than they were expecting even a few years ago. What happened there is that price performance improved much more rapidly than expected; so world + dog, the Chinese included, are rolling out wind, solar, and batteries as fast as they can. A second thing that they probably weren't expecting is that they just became the top car manufacturer in the world. And most of that success is based on Chinese battery companies being extremely successful. So, they are churning out a lot of batteries. And of course grid and domestic batteries are also booming. Batteries are important because they help improve the capacity factor of existing solar and wind. So, they are deploying more capacity than planned and it's performing better than expected.

At this point things are actually looking pretty good for renewables and we can expect some of the coal to start disappearing from their grid pretty soon. Coal plant pollution is a big issue in China and they'll want to get rid of coal as soon as they can afford to. Coal is at this point a stop gap solution for them a necessary and costly evil. Getting rid of nuclear is less important to them but I would not be surprised to see a few of their planned construction being postponed or cancelled as they might simply not need the capacity and nuclear plants are expensive.

A complicating factor is the bursting real estate bubble in China. That's going to impact funding for all sorts of things. Including new electricity generation (renewable and non renewable). But they'll likely focus on reducing the expensive stuff; which would be nuclear plants. And they'll double down on the parts of their economy that actually do work; which would be renewable energy, EVs, etc. Their export market is looking very strong. So, investing in renewables boosts those exports too.

>With all the battery and solar production being added in the next few years I think they will also rapidly remove coal from their grid.

Is this irony? You can't seriously think the Chinese Communist Party will stop using coal until they run out of it. Why would they? They are a terror based dictatorship that harvests organs from "undesirable" people for profit, and perform an actual genocide today as we speak. Do you think they care about man man made climate change? Why would they? The poorer and more desperate people are the easier they are to control. One doesn't have to look far (North Korea) for examples of this.

You can't trust a single number that comes out of China, their own foreign affairs guy admitted their numbers are "man made" a couple years ago. Also deindustrialisation of the West is in their great interest so they will pretend they are "ditching coal" while opening new brown(the dirtiest kind) coal fired power plants every week or so.

You know when they will stop using coal? When there is another way to generate energy that is predictable, cheaper and relatively easy to build. Neither renewables nor battery storage is that. Especially when you have huge deposits of brown coal just beneath the surface nearby.

I honestly do not fault Europe for not pursuing fracking. If you haven't spent much time over here it's not easy as an American to appreciate just how little "empty space" there is on the continent. There is really no where that doesn't impact communities of people. The us can easily afford to basically throw a few little towns in Oklahoma under the bus and no one really notices or cares. That's just possible here. Too many damned humans, and too many teetering systems. Could you imagine the outcry if a fracking induced earthquake took down a 13th century church someplace? No one wants that.

The 4 last old nuclear plants which were switched off last year wouldn't have been switched to coal if it wasn't for Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine.

Coal in Germany will end in 2030 anyway and the renewables are built at a pace to support that.

Natural gas is not "clean". Moreover, it is well known that the biggest problem with gas is the production of methane during extraction that is MUCH more dangerous than CO2.

Regarding Germany, the switch is temporary (geopolitical), and they still produce less CO2 every year as planned and have a strong CO2 phase-out plan.

> US managed to do more about their CO2 emissions than Europe. That's because thanks to fracking the US move a large share of their energy generation towards natural gas, which burns 'cleaner' than oil and coal

The climate benefits of the lower CO2 emissions from burning gas, instead of coal and oil, are partially offset be the greater methane emissions. Then again, you can't compare natural gas CO2 + CH4 emissions to only CO2 from coal, as coal production also releases CH4.

As long as methane leaks from the natural gas supply are below 4% or 5%, gas is better than coal.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-90839-7

Fracking is bad not only because it generates CO2 but it's very polluting as well. This is why it's not popular here. Emissions aren't the only thing. The Netherlands just shut down their gas fields because it's causing too many earthquakes.

And I really applaud Germany's decision, the coal is temporary and will be replaced by renewable too. Nuclear is just too expensive, long-term dangerous and sensitive to mess with. Again, emissions aren't the only thing that counts. And this also plays into the nuclear discussion because nuclear advocates often claim very low death tolls from nuclear, but ignore environmental pollution problems.

Regarding the US switch to natural gas electricity and the closing of coal plants - it seems that a good fraction of the US-produced thermal coal is still being shipped overseas, particularly to India(36%) but also The Netherlands(13%), Egypt(9%), Morocco(7%), Japan(6%) and China(5%):

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-thermal-coal-...

> "The thermal coal export earnings were the second-highest since 2017, following 2022's $5.7 billion. The total volumes were the highest since 2018 and came as U.S. power producers cut the amount of coal used in electricity generation to the lowest this century."

Someone probably needs to explain to the green clean energy enthusiasts setting policy these days that it really doesn't matter where you burn the coal, at least from a global atmospheric standpoint (though not for local pollution fallout of sulfur and mercury and arsenic). However, hindering fossil fuel exports appears unlikely for any US government, see the LNG exports to Asia and Europe over 2023:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-was-top-lng-expor...

Germany tried to do the same using russian gas, but then the war happened. Europe really needs nuclear.

Comparing 1980 to current according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... :

Europe had ~8 billion tons of emissions vs vs 5.5 for North America, and the recent numbers are 5 for Europe and 6.3 for NA. I think they managed to do more in the wrong direction.

Isn't that just catching up? The EU moved to natural gas decades ago.

The gas reserves in Europe mostly don't require fracking to extract, neither do those in Russia.

Click the larger countries on the electricity map. All but Germany have significantly more gas capacity than coal.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

The Germans had very little nuclear power (and would probably have taken decades to build a single new one even if they had wanted to). The German decision to quit nuclear had basically no impact on EU energy generation. (It had an effect on German emissions, but even that effect is small).

This myth keeps on perpetuating. But if you look at the numbers, coal generation in Germany has basically been in a slow decline since it peaked about fifteen years ago, which is also when they started getting rid of nuclear, which was never a big part of their energy generation. Coal usage could have been declining faster of course without that. And recent events have made Russian gas a bit less attractive and they burned a bit more coal. But now that the gas crisis is contained, they'll get back on track cleaning up the energy economy. Winter is coming to an end here and absolutely nobody is talking about cold showers and lowering the heating here anymore like last year.

LNG is expensive so they have some incentive to get rid of their dependency on that. It doesn't really make sense to use that for electricity generation.

I'm not super hopeful they will be able to completely get rid of coal by the 2030s like they have been insisting they will. But it will eventually get done. And it's one of those things where the more coal gets shut down, the more attractive it gets to get rid of the rest as well.

That's also why they got rid of their last three nuclear plants. I agree, not their wisest move, but on the other hand it kind of focused them on a future without nuclear. Which, like it or not, seems what they've committed to. I don't see that change anytime soon. Those three plants disappearing is in the past. It's done. Next up is shutting down brown coal. That's something some parties are still resisting. But they are under a lot of pressure to get rid of this embarrassingly dirty industry.

That's good US has lot catching up producing 14.8t CO2 per capita in 2022 while for Germany it was 8t.

> the Germans had turned their back on almost emission free nuclear power, and in practice had turned towards very dirty coal.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, coal was shrinking even faster than nuclear in Germany. Coal usage only temporarily went up in 2022 as emergency measure.

America has 2x the German per capita CO2 and 3x the UK per capita.

All have reduced this stat over the last few decades so the US might have reduced more absolutely, because they were so high in the first place, but the EU appears to be outpacing them and extending their lead.

So it's weird, but unsurprising to see this painted as a triumph for fracked gas, and used to attack Germany's progress.

> Average household power prices for 2023 are 45,73ct/kWh in Germany

And they are set to increase this year.

About half of that price is taxes.

One idea that is catching on is shifting taxes and green levies from electricity to gas as the grid gets cleaner.

You can also sometimes make exceptions for specific use cases, e.g. stop charging the extra fees on electric trains or EV charging or any other use of electricity that is directly displacing fossil fuels.

Most of the costs are acquisition cost which is squarely due to the Ukraine war.

2022 was really hot, where did you get the "especially cold"?

It was a constant refrain that Europe got a lucky break from the weather right when we needed it due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The original report is more comprehensive and may answer some of your questions

https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/european-electri...

Some context from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabo...):

> On 8 February 2023, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on his Substack page in which he alleged that the attack was ordered by the White House and carried out utilizing American and Norwegian assets by mining the pipelines in June during BALTOPS 2022 with a subsequent remote controlled detonation. The post relied on a single anonymous source, whom Hersh described as having "direct knowledge of the operational planning." The White House responded to the story by calling it "utterly false and complete fiction". Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that those allegations are "nonsense". Norwegian commentator Harald S. Klungtveit challenged the accuracy of Hersh's claims, such as the notion that Alta-class minesweepers had participated in BALTOPS 2022, or that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had been cooperating with US intelligence since the Vietnam War, when he was a teenager and fervently opposed to NATO. Subsequently, Hersh stated that the trail the German investigators were following on the "pro-Ukrainian group" that used a rented yacht was a false flag fabrication created by the CIA and fed to US and German outlets.

It's too late to prevent all climate catastrophes. It's not too late to prevent most climate catastrophes. Late is better than never.

Energy efficiency had improved - especially lighting. Wouldn’t this explain the numbers more than a decreased standard of living?

> We didn't have to do this by squeezing people's living standards. That energy is needed to promote high living standards.

What exactly has been the impact in living standards?

We haven't squeezed living standards? Take two examples: LED lights and heat pumps.

Replacing incandescent bulbs and direct heating hasn't made us poorer. Just more efficient.

Many countries have decoupled economic growth from energy use.[1] My personal theory is that we were stuck based on the marginal cost of fossil fuels. Given the fossil price of energy we had already exploited nearly all avenues.

Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels and massively scalable. Thus we will once again be in the state with more energy available than what we can use, and we will reliably find new ways of utilizing this.

Nuclear is the antithesis to this. It is more expensive than fossil fuels which means relying on it will entail degrowth compared to our fossil equilibrium.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling

Grid-scale energy storage is lower cost per kwh than many fossil fuel peaker plants. The solution to the intermittent energy problem doesn't have to be fossil fuels.

I'd like to mention the role of corruption in Germany in all this: Gerard Schroder who was essentially bought by the Russians the way I see it.

He initiated the push to close German nuclear reactors and push for renewables + Russian gas for base load to replace clean nuclear. After which he got a nice job with Gazprom in exchange for his "good work".

Russia won, Germany (and by extension all of the EU) lost IMO. EU essentially funded part of the war against Ukraine in the early days, because Germany had made itself (temporarily) dependent on Russian gas.

The only country in Europe who was immune to all of this outside influence and even benefittted: nuclear country France (the biggest net exporter of electricity in the EU last time I checked).

> but trying to go 100% renewables is very expensive.

Any source for that claim? I mean, yes it’s not exactly cheap. But neither are the alternatives. Expensive compared to what?

I’ve seen several studies that indicate that going 100% renewable will be cheaper than the energy infrastructure we have today. Either in a 2050-perspective with the technology/prices we have today (Marc Z Jacobsen). Or on a shorter timeline assuming continues technology and price improvements (Tony Seba).

> Sadly, the final nuclear reactors were shut down last year.

I think it remains to be seen which path was the right decision. France has recently had some very expensive and long outages. They had to import power from Germany for long stretches during the energy crisis. France has also had some downtime due to hot weather, something we’ll be seeing more of.

Most of these nuclear power plants are old. And if they can’t be relied upon as actual base load, what’s the point?

I think going 100% renewables could have some major benefits in focus (no need for government to spend resources on regulating nuclear power) and synergies (you get lots of excess cheap electricity that can be used to make hydrogen which can be used to decarbonise steel and fertiliser production, and you invest more in battery R&D which also benefits cars and off-grid applications).

We’re also starting to see that advanced geothermal could become a viable alternative to nuclear. I believe that would be a huge Hail Mary to the energy transition because it’ll be easier to get people from the oil and gas section aboard. That will give a lot more political willpower for the transition.

Offshore wind has availability (proportion of time that it can generate power) comparable to nuclear.

Why is this post above downvoted? The opinion in the last sentence aside, the post is just stating facts.

Whether one supports the German plan to rely on gas-peaker plants or not, it is undeniably expensive to build and maintain plants that are not fully utilized but rather only act as a backup for times when renewables produce too little. The German government just decided to subsidize the construction of these plants with the equivalent of 17 billion USD [1]. It is already clear that more subsidies will be required [2].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-agrees-subsi... [2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/kraftwerksstrategie-das-si...

Is Jane Fonda still alive?