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Comment by fred_is_fred | Hacker News Reader

How much did Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine and nat gas price and supply changes accelerate things?

Sadly we got a warning in 2014 with Crimea being seized and fossil apologists like Bjorn Lomborg argued against rolling out wind and solar faster in response.

Because he's so "reasonable" and "pragmatic", he didn't say we shouldn't phase out Russian gas, he just said solar and wind don't work and so we should invent some totally new type of energy for this purpose.

It's only with a few years hindsight that he's obviously a shill. You had to be paying close attention at the time to notice.

And sadly that kind of engineered delay is widespread.

This is just a conspiracy theory of mine, but how credible is the notion that in Germany, the Greens who campaigned (successfully) for nuclear shutdown were in fact funded by Russia?

Whether true or not, it is almost entirely Greenpeace, and your local Greens party, who are to blame for us being in this mess.

Without them raising panic about nuclear we could all be paying something closer to $40 - $80 a month for all the electricity we could reasonably consume, much like mobile phone plans / prepaid service.

That would still leave transport and agriculture emissions to deal with, but they’d be easier to solve if we had virtually unlimited process heat to generate hydrogen > synth fuels.

> if we had virtually unlimited

That's outdated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

It was the conservative CDU with the economic liberal FDP which decided in 2011 to stop using nuclear power in Germany.

At the time when the Greens were in power a decade later, it was already way to late to build out nuclear infrastructure again (not to mention the lack of fuel).

So yes, you've metioned a conspiracy theory without any substance.

The Greens continually pushed for renewables, which the (conservative) government largely ignored in favour of building gas pipelines to Russia.

Very unlikely.

- The greens opposed the Nord Stream pipelines for years. And have been opposed to relying on natural gas for a long time.

-Nuclear power is generally a contentious subject in German society. Probably because of Chernobyl and how a lot of the radioactive cloud blew into Germany. Whoever lived through this will have some dramatic memories of those weeks (kids not allowed to playgrounds/outside etc.). It was actually the CDU and FDP that finally decided the phase out of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster. (The Greens also voted for it)

- The Greens are very strong supporters of Ukraine.

I personally believe the nuclear phase out was a mistake, but it had broad support in the German parliament and society. The phase out would have happened even if the greens hadn’t voted for it.

In Germany, it's worth mentioning that being against nuclear power is (unfortunately) part of the identity and founding myth of the Greens. One of the precursors of the party is the anti-nuclear movement of the late 70s / early 80s.

You are giving them too much credit.

In 2010 A. Merkel decreed a 12-year delay of the nuclear phase-out schedule ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Chang... ), then the Fukushima accident happened (2011), then public opinion did demand a quick nuclear phase-out and no government could resist.

Hanno Klausmeier wrote what follows: CDU / CSU : Center right parties, Christian democrats FDP: Right wing liberals, moving to libertarians (Koch line) SPD: Social democrats, oldest party in Germany, old fashioned, a certain proximity to Unions. Greens: Rather left wing liberals, ecologic positions.

Who is in the government right now?

SPD the Greens and the FDP. Do they like each other? No they hate each other but they are forced to work together.

In the current political discussion the CDU/CSU (especially the CSU from Bavaria) are complaining the current government switched off the last remaining nuclear plants in Germany. The FDP which is part of the government is also criticizing the switch off of the last nuclear plants albeit being in the same government.

Now lets take a look which parties switched most of the nuclear plants off since Fukushima?

CDU/CSU: 14 FDP: 11 SPD: 9 Greens: 3

The question does not make sense because it does not describe what happened. It was the conservatives who took the decision to phase out nuclear power in Germany.

It is unlikely that the greens had much control over that, even if someone would have claimed it their victory at the time. That the greens would wield secret power over their political opponents would require a special kind of conspiracy.

It was done for economic reasons, like so many other political decisions are. The connections to Russian oil and gas companies on both sides of politics probably helped, but it would have happened anyway. Of course it was spun as a great thing for the environment, which it wasn't, but spin doesn't have to make sense.

Ex-politicians riding the Russian oligarch gravy train should be chastised, and rightfully so. That does not require any anti-green sentiment or conspiracies, just common sense.

Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily)

We must take into account the public money spent to build and maintain the electricity system. In France, for example, electricity is cheaper than in most similar countries, but nuclear power costs taxpayers a huge amount of money.

The problem is that it lead to investment on the expectation of high electricity prices in the future. Oil companies went and overspent on offshore wind concessions. When the prices dropped they were back to relying on strike prices that didn't offer enough profit and cancelled schemes. At least in the UK offshore wind has been somewhat stalled by that and by delay to grid connections.

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