It's hard to believe that the self-driving tech will develop well at this rate.
This is impressively wrong. German coal power production in 2023 was at it lowest in 60 years.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-coal-power-pro....
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1413285/electricity-impo...
The graphs are clear: coal shrunk from 33% to 26% of electric power generation last year. Some people expected an increase. They were wrong and the greens were right.
This is in part due to the fact that Germany is now able to import more energy compared to 2022 which saw a decrease in gas availability but also a reduction in nuclear energy production in France due to technical issues.
The question is just exactly how large.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
The question is if you are producing enough energy at the time where it is needed by the consumers.
When Germany imports energy, coal based energy in Germany is 50% down. Imports are replacing coal. (Which should be obvious, because running coal plants has fuel costs, solar and wind have no fuel operating costs)
2. This is a 18th century view. Modern states since the 19th century operate on the comparative advantage idea. e.G. Germany imports nearly 100% of electronics (toys, tools) it is using. Countries do not need to produce everything they need, they can import from other countries.
Do you have a source for this?
The sources I seem to find contradict this assertion:
- https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix#:~:text=Ene...
- https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependen...
> 2. This is a 18th century view. Modern states since the 19th century operate on the comparative advantage idea. e.G. Germany imports nearly 100% of electronics (toys, tools) it is using. Countries do not need to produce everything they need, they can import from other countries.
This is not how energy works, especially not renewable energy.
When it's sunny in Germany, neighbouring countries will also be producing and trying to export solar energy at the same time.
But for the world the total use of fossil fuels is going to keep growing long-term unless we mass switch to nuclear, which is unlikely. My 2c.
I live in a manufacturing city in .de btw, and the "badly hit" manufacturers are hiring.
Look for the total industrial output instead.
If not, then the comparison doesn't make any sense.
With dropping demand and rising inflation, Germany has a bad economy (just as bad as the UK, but due to different reasons, the UKs main driver is Brexit).
Third, in a crisis Germans spend (even) less money for longer, while people in the US earlier overspend their credit limits. Which boosts the US economy, especially after a recession it growths earlier and faster.
Because of the bad economy BMW and other companies in Germany did not hire as many people as the US did (also compare US to German labor laws as a reason why Germany is well behind the curve when it gets to economy growth).
Ah well, I have expressed my point, it is not a popular one at HN.
Nuclear is expensive to build [0]. It is expensive operate, even with the massive subsidies of insurance and waste deposit costs by the taxpayer.
On top of that Germany has no exploitable Uranium deposits any more (after delivering Uranium to the USSR for decades, mine was closed 1990), so Germany would need to import nuclear fuel, e.G. from Russia (as the US does [1]). I don't think depending on Russia for energy security is a good idea.
[Edit] Hard coal and ignite usage is down https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c...
[1] https://kyivindependent.com/german-customs-detains-ship-load...
This is incorrect. Uranium is quite common and could be supplied by Canada, Australia, Kazakstan, Niger and a few other countries.
But it doesn't matter. It's not possible to lead a factual discussion on nuclear energy in Germany. Since the 1970s it has been mainly an emotional / ideological matter.
You got the mindset exactly, thank you for the demonstration.
It's not a matter of parameters, policy, economies of scale etc. Nuclear cannot be made economical, it's a "mathematical fact".
What is incorrect about "for example from Russia, like the US imports uranium from Russia"?
U.S. nuclear power plants imported about 12% of their uranium from Russia in 2022, compared to 27% from Canada and 25% from Kazakhstan, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
And a bill was passed in 2023 to ban imports from Russia - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-passes-bill-bannin...
"The United States last month announced a $2.7 billion plan to boost domestic production of uranium fuel, while France last year announced a big increase in its own ability to turn raw uranium into usable nuclear fuel." - https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/04/us-nuclear-reactors-rus...
"deliberate manner"
I assumed from your other post it was clear cut.
It feels tedious when you move goal posts each comment.
For example a nuclear power plant has employed 700 people. A solarpark does not need a lot of FTE employees to operate (+ low maintanance).
That does not include waste deposit costs for hundreds of years and real insurance costs without subsidies by tax payers.
There is also no excuse for gasoline powered cars. But gasoline powered cars are the majority of sales. Or diesel powered trains, which are the majority of trains in the US. Or eating meat. Or flying in planes.
The US is burning more coal than Germany, and probably should build more nuclear plants to replace burning coal. But the US doesn't.
People do whatever they like, not things they should do.
If you care about the environment, nuclear is the only sustainable option at the moment. The plant costs have a very long time to recoup. Lots of plants built in the 80s seem perfectly capable of going until at least the 2050s without any danger and have requested license renewals to do exactly that. Each additional year further drives down the total cost of ownership.
I'll also note that people stupidly think only in terms of CO2. The truth is that a lot of the "forever" chemicals used in tho construction of wind an solar (along with loads of other toxic sludge) pose a much higher risk to the planet. If life on the planet starts getting killed off by the chemicals we spread everywhere, the temperature increases in a few hundred years don't matter in the slightest. We'll last way longer fighting CO2 than we will against the dangerous chemicals we're pumping out.
There are dense locations near the equator where the wetbulb temperature has gone over 34-35 degrees celcius, which is higher than is survivable by healthy adults for more than a small handful of hours. These extreme events will keep getting worse, leading to heat stress, prolonged school closures, etc. Not all of these people have access to air conditioning because we're talking about countries with less than $6k GDP per capita. Eventually this will drive climate refugees.
A few million climate migrants are insignificant in comparison to the loss of the lower layers of the ecosystem that cascade upward into mass die-offs though ironically, that would make the manmade CO2 issue go away...
Per capita CO2 emission is twice as high in the US as in Germany.
(depends on people of course, I never owned a car and I never bought electricity from coal plants, my parents did and I moved out when I was 18)
"How about per-square-kilometers?"
Not sure what that metric would be useful for? Can you give me an idea?
I would be interested in the metric "sum ton CO2 per capita" from 1945 to 2024 (Or 1871 when Germany was founded, or 1949 when Germany got its constitution)?
Arguably it seems it's a good idea to run nuclear power, if it's not more costly than solar, provides 24/7 green energy, and also jobs.
As I wrote, its not as costly but more expensive than solar. Currently tax payers are subsidizing nuclear with billions of Euros.
Most energy is needed during the day time.
Energy usage has been leveled across the day due to the demand of big power plants in the 50s and 60s, as they produce energy in the night and companies wanted to sell that, so society had to adapt.
Not sure where you are based, in Germany wind blows at night.
But electric car sales are up year-on-year; who cares if one car brand isn't?
> and we are introducing huge tariffs on electric vehicles from China
This may or may not happen; it's not clear that the impact will be huge in the long-run if it does, as the manufacturers will likely just set up shop in Europe (similar to how European manufacturers build a lot of their US-market cars in the US to avoid punitive US tariffs).
It's kind of unclear just how much this organization actually is Greenpeace or not. That being said, extremist political parties and movements (e.g., UKIP), are so often financed by Russia as a form of covert ops that I wouldn't be surprised to find that they were a significant backer of Green Peace proper as well.