Or then they talk about how some countries have miraculous levels of an energy independence and social services and then look at their total population.
Most data you find will be using data that's massively out of date and be off by at least 2x though...
I had another facepalm moment when I read about EU planning to go nuclear again. That would've been amazing and smart in 2015 - but now? Yeah, it's dumb af. And that's coming from a German living at the northern end of the country.
It ignores storage, over-provisioning, aggregation of uncorrelated sources etc.
Not to mention that wind typically has a much higher capacity factor than 10%.
I don't know what the true number is, but I think this is a low effort take.
PV it varies by how far you are from the equator, 10% is realistic for a Northern country like the UK or Germany whereas in Africa you might see 25% or even 30%
Going nuclear was sane in the past and sane now. If Germany wants to prove expanding nuclear is dumb it should try first to have lower annual emissions, while spending less than double the cost of entire french fleet.
France is the biggest winner in EU- it'll build both nuclear and renewables achieving deep decarbonization
My bad on the EEG i thought that stopped since I do not pay it anymore directly.
But there are many more cost factors. With co2 tax, gas and coal firming are getting very expensive. Add to that massive transmission and distribution expansion/upgrades costs for distributed grid, add massive curtailment costs and you get what you get
In 2015, Germany produced about 650 TWh of electricity. In 2025, it’s around 507 TWh, a drop of roughly 22–23%.
Consumption has also declined, mainly due to efficiency improvements, higher energy prices, and weaker industrial demand.
Per person, that’s about 7,900 kWh in 2015 vs ~6,000 kWh in 2025. France is at roughly 8,000 kWh per person today, so basically where Germany used to be.
This happened despite adding about 100 TWh from wind and solar combined over the same period.
Wind is still volatile and hasn’t really ramped much in recent years, while solar is growing steadily, but mostly helps in summer.
And that’s the core issue. Solar output in summer is roughly 3× higher than in winter, so just adding more solar doesn’t solve those cold, dark winter periods without massive storage or backup.
To get back to 2015 production levels of around 650 TWh, Germany would need to increase output by about 30%. With solar growing by roughly 13–14 TWh per year and wind not increasing much recently, that puts you close to a decade just to get back to where you were, while 2030 demand is already projected at 700–750 TWh.
Given that Germany still imports around 70% of its total energy, it’s hard to call it a “facepalm” to suggest nuclear as part of the mix.
Also worth noting that Germany is still slow on smart meter rollout, with only around 2% of metering points using smart metering systems so far. That limits how much consumers can respond to real-time prices. During tight periods, this can increase reliance on imports and contribute to higher prices in connected markets such as the Nordics.
If sodium-ion, or some kind of thermal, or some kind of gravitationnal (except pumped hydro), or whatever techno comes up that makes it possible to handle this dunkleflaute thing (i learned that word today, love it already :) [1]), then Germany will already have the panels and windmills.
If for some reason, there is a great chemistry already advanced in the labs, is it possible that Germany buys a GWh battery before the first few EPR-2s come out of the ground ?
That's one hell of a bet to make. By refusing to reconsider nuclear, Germany is basically betting on some sort of breakthrough (or continued gas supply, which, well, is betting on geopolitics...)
So maybe "carving up mountains" isn't such a crazy plan, after all...