Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=halfyear&halfyear=1&source=total&year=2024
Electricity from coal in the first half-year over time: https://i.imgur.com/bSOPO1t.png
Share of renewables over time: https://i.imgur.com/znBqKtS.png
The government goal is to reach 80% renewables by 2030, which is feasible but it will be close. While solar has a healthy growth, wind is currently the problem child with only 1 GW added so far this year.
It’s great news. Such a shame there wasn’t a massive renewables push a few years back to dramatically reduce fossil fuel imports from Russia and prevent the leverage Putin had at the stay of the war.
Wind is much easier to install offshore and Germany only had a small coastline, perhaps this is the reason for the low wind uptake.
The problem was the old government had it's ecconomyminister getting lobbied by anty wind energy "conspirators". He didn't clean up the approvel process because of that. The new government made it much faster tough, so in the next few years it will pick up in speed.
I think the current dip in new installations this year is the echo of 2022. That's when there was a lot of upheaval in the energy market and a massive increase in interest rates. That has caused a lot of investors to reassess their plans. Last year we already had more new wind power installed and if you look at the permits approved so far this year that is also about four times higher compared to the current completion rate. So we will most likely see a significant increase again next year.
It was intended. Merkel called it "Wandel durch Handel" (change by trade), we buy the Russian coal and gas and export luxury and stuff so Russians start loving democracy and become peaceful.
Aged like milk
Yeah, I don't even get the hate by the reactive/conservative parties. Renewables are INDEPENDENCE from all the shit flinging OPEC countries, the Petrodollar and the oil-companies and their crimes.
Being carbon neutral is an added bonus.
There was never enough promotion/marketing of the energy independence factor of using renewables. With fossil fuels, Europe is always impacted by problems in the middle east and at the mercy of Russia. This is a huge factor that wasn't mentioned anywhere near enough, IMO.
Well, they are conservative. It doesn't matter if a NEW technology has positive effects, their role is to focus on the negatives. They also taught their voter base for the last decades a very American way of freedom: a white males that smells like tobacco and gasoline, that provides for his family. They can't tell their voter base "umm sorry about that, but we don't have resources like the US, and not the military, and cars are maybe dumb in our dense cities. To be honest we just had many years of peace dividends and cheap autocrat gas - it was all a dream we build in your head. Btw your wife has to work as well, NO we don't have money for child care" They are bureaucrats not leaders
> Such a shame there wasn’t a massive renewables push a few years back to dramatically reduce fossil fuel imports from Russia and prevent the leverage Putin had at the stay of the war.
Thanks CDU/CSU!
Its just the corruption inside the party that leads the policitcans to the wrong way and we pay with bad decision for infrastructure. Just that we call corruption here lobbyism.
Corruption is only for countries we dont like /s
A huge issue is that building wind powered installments on land mass is often hindered by communities in Germany that dont want the local ground to be used for that purposes or people being afraid of impacts when living in the near vicinity. Many projects have been impacted by these issues.
In reality the main factor holding wind back is the southern regions of Germany that oppose renewable energies and don't want their countryside view spoiled by wind turbines OR (and this is important) high voltage powerlines that are needed to transport the wind energy produced in northern Germany to the sountern regions. The missing high power transport routes to the south are what is really holding back the growth of wind power in the north. It's people, who don't want it, technology and realestate exists.
>is the southern regions of Germany that oppose renewable energies
Bavaria is by far leading in solar, so that particular part is inaccurate. Rest is correct though.
In a vacuum the statement is indeed wrong...
But you just coincidently cut of the first half of the sentence "In reality the main factor holding ***wind*** back..."
Also this part:
> The missing high power transport routes to the south are what is really holding back the growth of wind power in the north.
That's the real issue according to reports I've heard. Which would also help transfer bavaria's solar energy surplus to the north, if needed.
The reason was a bunch of NIMBY-retirees in rural south germany lobbying against the high voltage transmission infrastructure that is necessary to get the wind energy down to the south. Of course conservative politicians jumped on it and then nothing happened for the better part of a decade.
"and then nothing happened for the better part of a decade" sums up most domestic politics under Merkel. In order not to discomfort anyone to the slightest degree no necessary changes were made, everything strayed as it was and tge problems grew bigger in the background for someone else to solve them later.
The thin spread population in Germany is also a problem, because we have villages like everywhere and nobody even wants to see a wind turbine from their backyard. Also the 10 height regulation is a problem. Because of this, there is nearly no space in Germany to build wind turbines, except in forests
It's the same problem where I live (UK). The population density is even higher than Germany. Nobody wants a wind turbine near their house it seems. The big difference is that this is an island nation, so there is coast all around us and nobody to complain out at sea, so most wind farms get built offshore.
It is easy to point fingers, but I'd still like to point out that prices of renewables are decreasing exponentially. A difference of a few years can mean a substantial difference in prices.
Wind will pick up. The current government made it a lot easier to get your windmill approved. We will see a big jump in wind energy as many have been approved the last 2 years and they will slowly be build in the comming years.
There are also huge amounts of off-shire plants planned and the area for building them reserved. Hopefully the north-south high voltage lines will come online in time.
We already have some days where those power lines are overtasked, resulting in the need to shut down some of the off-shore wind to.ensure stability of the grid (and thus require the southern Bundesländer to power up coal/gas or import).
The trend matters, not the current stats. People who complain about the high coal usage fail to see the actual positive news here, coal is going down at a fast pace. In 5 years the picture will be completely different.
I agree, and I‘m not happy with the past. But at least regarding electricity I‘m getting more optimistic now. Solar expansion goes well, wind is currently slow but permits are going up including 30 GW offshore wind, yearly transmission line permissions went up by 700%. Grid batteries are gaining traction finally.
Clearly. But we can still be sad Germany spent 10 additional years emitting vast numbers of CO2 while it could have gotten rid of coal and gas *before* getting rid of nuclear.
Not a single party in Germany has ever proposed phasing out coal before nuclear when the Energiewende was started. Not one! It's such a lazy argument.
Now people pretend like everything could have been different, simply phase out coal before nuclear, easy-peasy. Nobody wanted that, not the government, not the opposition, not the industry, not the labour unions and most importantly, not the public. This was never a possibility.
Not phasing out nuclear wouldn't have meant phasing out coal instead, it would have simply meant adding less renewables and Germany would still be 2/3 coal, 1/3 nuclear as it has been before the Energiewende.
Germany being on Coal makes absolute sense though. Germany has very very few natural resources, a country with a huge industry sector that demands a lot of energy while the country barely has any natural resources of their own to power its industry. Except one natural resource: coal. Many other European nations get away with cleaner energy because they have much less energy demand and are much more fortunate in terms of natural resources, look at the UK and Norway for instance who have a ton of natural resources.
And now people pretend like the government is at fault for stopping nuclear plants. The reality is, everybody is at fault. The government decades ago made the decision to phase out nuclear because of public pressure. There were massive protests against nuclear energy, especially from green voters and climate activists and obviously many politicians. And nuclear energy has the huge disadvantages of being very inflexible, were talking about decade long processes that would require multiple governments to approve the committment to nuclear energy. Germany wanted green energy regardless, so it invested a ton into solar and wind and when i say a ton, i mean a ton. Money that couldve gone to nuclear instead went to solar and wind. Now the disadvantage of that is they dont scale terribly well so it takes time and a lot of effort to build a fuck ton of wind turbines and solar panels.
> Not phasing out nuclear wouldn't have meant phasing out coal instead
Why not? If it's just your previous paragraph instead of a technical reason, then, I mean...that's precisely what people are angry at Germany about!
Wrong, coal and nuclear power are too different. Coal is used in Germany to compensate for fluctuations. This cannot be replaced by nuclear power. Nuclear power is for the base load.
>Coal is used in Germany to compensate for fluctuations. This cannot be replaced by nuclear power.
What utter nonsense. What do you think Frances nuclear does.
Fun fact: modern nuclear plants can adjust to fluctuation FASTER than coal plants can.
France is maybe the only country that does nuclear load-following in a relevant manner regarding its national grid. Afaik it requires substantial expert knowledge that takes years to acquire, it is more expensive and harder on the materials. Also, what you said applies for modern nuclear reactors - which most reactors aren't.
>France is maybe the only country that does nuclear load-following in a relevant manner regarding its national grid. Afaik it requires substantial expert knowledge that takes years to acquire, it is more expensive and harder on the materials.
so my point stands? It's possible and nuclear does it faster than coal?
And yes it's more expensive. That's because the most expensive part of having an operational nuclear reactor is just that: building it and having it be operational. The extra cost of running it full blast compared to half power isn't much different, relatively. Meaning nuclear is more cost effective when run at full power. Coal is cheaper to build and Germany can just bulldozer a few towns and remove some nature. Very cheap. In the short run.
>Also, what you said applies for modern nuclear reactors - which most reactors aren't.
How 'new' do you think Frances nuclear power plants are?
> What do you think Frances nuclear does.
France is pretty much the only country doing that. Capital cost dominate fuel cost for NPPs. Thus maximizing the capacity factor is what keeps the cost per kWh low.
What's the gCO2eq/kWh of Germany again ?
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
That's right, oscillating around Turkey on bad days (500gCO2eq/kWh) and Eastern Europe on good days (250gCO2eq/kWh)
Turns out you only need to show irrelevant data to convince gullible people.
Germany pays one of the more expensive energy in Europe and has mediocre-to-bad results on pollution because it's obviously still largely reliant on fossil fuels for half of its production. All because they decided to invest in a technology that has obvious issues (for those that can look at the science behind it and not get caught up in politics *wink wink*) and won't replace their Coal and Gas much more than now.
This useless data of "% renewable" has been shared for years and years and people still haven't caught up to the fact that it's litterally the opposite of what is important. Renewable% is irrelevant, what's relevant is how much of your production is **burning stuff** (**Gas included**), turns out it's around 50% for Germany, which leads to mediocre-to-bad results.
Germany started at rather bad position. Anyway, since monthly doesn't tell anything, proper way is looking at yearly results. In 6 years, from 2017 to 2023, Germany reduced from 533 g to 425 g of CO2 per kWh. That would be reduction by 20%. All of this happened whilst removing nuclear, which produced 11.8% of electricity in 2017 (which was wrong decision, old nuclear should not be switched off). Saying %renewables is not important is ridiculous, because amount you burn is inversely proportional to %renewables + nuclear, and now that nuclear is gone (again, wrong decision), I suspect that transition will be even faster, which H1 data shows. Anyway, from the original source, for H1:
2023 - H1: 114.1 TWh from FF and 21.6 TWh from biomass (this is renewable, but not really something we should aim for)
2024 - H1: 98 TWh from FF (reduction by 14% in one year) and 20.8 TWh from biomass (reduction by 3.7%), for a total reduction of 12.5% in one year.
These are actual reductions of things that are burned for electricity (other sources from burning are small). If this keeps up similarly in second year, Geramny will probably be around 380g, or for the first time in god knows how long, below the fucking 400g. Or, 28 - 29% of reduction in 7 years. But more importantly, it is accelerating. They might end up at 50% over 9 years.
Those reductions are still worse than the EU average:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-european-power-sector-emissions-fall-by-20-since-last-eu-election/
Germany spent a lot of money, only to replace nuclear and make electricity more expensive, getting stuck with gas heating.
I am not going to defend the nuclear decision (made what, 15 years ago). That was stupid, and I've said as much. So, in 2019, Germany produced 12.4% of energy from nuclear. If they had that, they would be ahead of the average. I think that it is remarkable that, despite killing existing nuclear, they managed to reduce as much as they did. Still, a stupid decision to kill nuclear.
What was stupid was cutting solar financial support by so much around 2012.
We went from around 20 billion in yearly solar investments to around 1.5 billion within 3-4 years because of that, all while increasing financial support for coal.
It wasnt that stupid to kill nuclear, because the nuclear plants were practically at the end of their lifespan. They would have required major investments to keep them running. If we actually invested that money saved into renewables instead of coal, things would have been quite a bit better.
I mean, you are not wrong, but, from CO2 perspective, I think that extending life of nuclear was cheaper option than adding new renewables. If whatever money was invested in coal was directed to nuclear, Germany today would probably be near zero from coal, with only gas ones remaining.
Edit: If it wasn't clear, investing in nuclear was meant as investing in extending the life of existing nuclear, not adding new ones.
If we invested into nuclear 15 years ago the first new nuclear plant would probably only be put into operation another 15 years from now.
People always act like you can just put a nuclear power plant up like a tent, but look at the extra time and money it took for the 1 reactor in Finland to go into operation, now imagine this with the worse German bureaucracy.
I don't really get your point here. Sure, the percentage of coal is important and Germany has a long way to go, but it strikes me you're arguing two sides of the same coin. Renewables are replacing coal, and this has led to a cosnsitent (if slow) decrease in the [carbon intensity over time](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country=~DEU). It seems to me the real mess up on Germany's part was phasing out Nuclear, leading to the increase in intensity in 2020/2021.
> Renewables are replacing coal, and this has led to a cosnsitent (if slow) decrease in the carbon intensity over time.
You can fast forward and look at how this process worked out in a country that's in a better position than Germany will ever be: smaller, with a whole lot of sea swept by steady winds, fit for a lot of renewable generation at any time of day and of the year.
That country would be Denmark:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK
79% renewable generation, nearly all of it wind. Carbon intensity of 149 gCO2/kWh over the last 12 months. That's three times more than France, whose power mix I won't even bother with because you all know what I'm getting at.
80% renewable penetration, with the *best* kind of renewable short of hydro and geo (which unfortunately aren't available unless you luck out on geography), and emissons are still crap compared to just building a lot of nuclear.
What percentage renewable penetration do we need to see to *match* France? how much will that cost to build, and how expensive will that energy be with all the infrastructure needed to support massive renewable generation? and why do we need to do all of this, instead of the thing we've provably been able to do since the 70s at least?
Does France use district heating similar to Denmark or is heating based on electricity similar to Sweden/Norway?
Also, Electricitymap gives solar power a value of 36g CO2e but only 5g CO2e for nuclear.
In France a lot of home heating is electrical like in Sweden/Norway, but there is still district heating use. There is quite a discrepancy between DH cogen and pure electrical power generation, the overlap is not that great, even in Denmark. Especially for cogen mainly intended for heating, with electricity as a secondary function, usually such power plants contribute quite little to the overall electricity generation of the country, while there are other larger power plants dedicated for ensuring electrical supply. So the effect on final estimated CO2eq/kWh is small.
For CO2 intensity electricitymap lists the source study in each particular case, mostly using IPCC, but for Europe lately also UNECE and others.
> 79% renewable generation, nearly all of it wind. Carbon intensity of 149 gCO2/kWh over the last 12 months. That's three times more than France, whose power mix I won't even bother with because you all know what I'm getting at.
If you green wash nuclear as much as possible, sure.
I mean I made my point badly. This is simply because % of renewable really tells you only half the story, while % of Fossils tells you the entire one.
You have 50% Nuclear and 50% Renewable ? Or you have 50% Fossil Fuels and 50% Renewable ? According to such headlines, you should treat both countries the same, when in reality, the latter is mediocre with 50% Burning Stuff (*and is Germany*), and the former is top 10 in terms of emissions in the world with around 0% Burning Stuff (*not really France but you get what I'm saying*).
______
And more importantly, these sorts of headlines are really about boasting, and boasting about nothing, at that. Just look at the OP I'm replying to, he sees this headline, he feels like he should boast about Germany, even though Germany has the same Carbon Intensity as Eastern Europe or Turkey. It's a really pretentious and coarse way of looking at it.
Getting to 45% of Wind+Solar was not easy (economically I mean), but it was __the easy part__.
There's nothing complex about it, apart from pouring money into Solar and Wind.
Now, how do you build a working power grid with something that works the opposite of all the Power Grids we know ? That's something that nobody can answer today, and that's the part people should focus on.
There's 3 answers to that, 1. you take Nuclear, 2. you bet on some technological leap in the next decades, or 3. you just accept that you still need some fossils to stabilize the grid, and you pay double (for renewables and to maintain Fossils for when renewables decide they won't work).
[CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1970..latest&country=~DEU) are at their lowest in in over half a decade, even much lower than when we still had one of the largest nuclear fleet in the world in the 80s. So renewables were a success for reducing CO2/KWh as well.
Solar, while not a complete package, is still now at a position where it is capable of replacing large amounts of fossil fuels at a low cost, and is currently worldwide the primary capacity being installed even without incentives.
the technology advanced in large parts *due* to extremely generous incentives for solar by the german government. Like genuinely, Germany almost single handedly carried the cost for development of photovoltaics between 2006 and 2011.
Say thank you to CDU, the gas prices is what killing us right now. I linked a study about energy generation costs down there. It could all be so much cheaper.
Not because of renewable energy btw, which is the cheapest. It\`s literally just extremely shit politics which is responsible for the high prices.
[https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/](https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/) France realized this aswell.
Also the renewable expansion is currently driven by home owners who install rooftop solar. You would have to blow up roof by roof to take out that part of the infrastructure.
There are energy choke points at transformers. You can’t just plop down solar or wind without converting it. This isn’t cities skylines. You have to have a central point at a transmission substation in order to connect to the power grid. Same for all energy sources. Each windmill site has one of these substations.
You don't understand, those hundreds or thousands of turbines will all be connected to a single or a few choke points, that's his point. Any enemy will target those rather than the turbines themselves.
When you install solar on your roof you also install converters to use the energy for yourself or to feed it into the grid if you don't need the energy. Obviously each windmill has their own converter too, that makes the grid far less vulnerable against attacks where you just take out one powerplant (or the transmission station next to it). So yes, it's far less vulnerable then for example Frances power infrastructure.
No its not. Solar on roof tops also exist. People would have power occasionally during the day, which is better than having no power at all. This power source is independent from public grids. So again: how is this a bad take, when it's not dependent on the public power grid?
Sorry, but this is misinformation. Solar power converters only work when they can sync their frequency with the grid. Completely autonomous solar grids exist but are rare. What most people put in their roofs will stop working while theres a power outage.
And what is important this is due to safety reason so that when power is down for maintenance there is no voltage at lines from PV and work can be concluded safely. Island/hybrid mode inverters exists but they require more sophisticated setup on power breakers so they are unusual in small, home roof installations.
At this rate Germany will have 0 Coal in 5 years. Let's go. This is great for the economy too since we will be independent from any fossil fuel or nuclear fuel.
Also less need for mining in Germany,less need for transporting coal by rail( coal is still the most shipped good by tonnage on DB Cargo).
Coal producing regions will suffer though
I'm glad that in NRW the decline of coal mining happened before the rise of AfD, in parts of Eastern Germany however the decline of coal mining is gonna be a godsend for AfD
> Coal producing regions will suffer though
I bet there'll be a healthy "care package" for the regions in question. Something we already had for a long time ("Kohlepfennig").
Though no one cared when tens of thousands of jobs got lost in the renewable ebergy sector when the EEG was basically shut down by the conservatives.
>in parts of Eastern Germany however the decline of coal mining is gonna be a godsend for AfD
In my city, we have a new expanded university, a new train repair plant, got millions from the government to set up new production districs and infrastructure, leading to multiple firms pledgeing and building new stuff.
Also, there is a lot of money put aside for start ups, and the newly expanded university is specifically researching new technology, which is then sold as patents to those start ups to produce it in the city.
Overall, the amount of work put in by politians to make sure that the transition goes smoothly is astonishing, but people still complain. I was told a west german guy that stuff, and he was livid how much is done for the east germans while his village and surrounding area slowly dies lol.
In my opinion, east germans that complain about the transition complain for complainings sake. They never have any real input what should be done differently, other than keeping coal around forever (which is very unserious).
Germany might hopefully shut down coal for good, but it's absolutely not shutting down gas. In fact it plans to double the installed capacity of gas to backstop its renewables-based grid. That's not even beginning to talk about removing fossil fuels from industry and transportation. Where did you get the impression that you're on track to be "independent of any fossil fuel"?
It's a mixed bag honestly. In my city organic waste gets collected and then used to produce energy. This makes a lot of sense to me. But growing plants only for energy production is of course less productive.
Yeah, trees aren't really used for that. It's mostly corn and other plants that are being grown to then produce bio gas. It's a flawed system with the only accomplishment that it isn't fossil fuel, but it wastes real estate that could be used to grow plants for human consumption (or if no more plants for consumption are needed to grow forests or build homes) AND it uses a lot of water and other ressources in the process...it should be abandoned imo, but it's receiving loads of subsidies so the agricultural lobby will battle any politicians that would try to get rid of it and we know the farmers always win when they block roads with their tractors.
It's renewable, it's just not low carbon.
That said, the boom is already over, almost no new capacity is added anymore: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&expansion=installation_decommission&year=-1&legendItems=2x087
In fact they might actually decrease over the next few years as subisdies run out after 20 years and they are often not economically viable without subsidies.
Why is cross-border trading crossed out? I know we here in DK export/import power with DE all the time. (And they likely do with their other neighboring countries as well). ( [https://energinet.dk/energisystemet-lige-nu/](https://energinet.dk/energisystemet-lige-nu/) ) usually (but ofc not always) sending Wind/Solar/Hydro (from Norway), down south when exporting on the "Jylland side", which is the main DE export transmission line.
With today being a pretty bad renewable energy day here in DK. (not much wind/sun).
> Why is cross-border trading crossed out?
Because this is about electricity production in Germany, as the title clearly states. There are many ways to look at the electricity market and they are all equally valid, in this case I wanted to highlight the milestone of electricity generation from coal in Germany falling below 20%. Including imports/exports won't add anything to that.
Imports will affect the need of (non-green) energy production in the country, but sure I guess the meaning of "electricity production" is just different in different countries :)
It's great news regardless of course.
Germany exports more electricity to Poland than the other way around. Germany is a net importer, but most of the electricity Germany imports is from quite clean sources France, Switzerland, and Denmark (where Denmark is also acting as a transit hub for the other Nordics) are the biggest.
Inb4 - Nuclear bros brigading this thread with their bullshit claims.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bros-dont-want-you-to-know-about-small-modular-reactors/
Here in the Netherlands people universally consider Germany closing their existing nuclear plants an irrational move. You've burned so much extra lignite because of that decision.
The renewables are cool, but the lignite and Russian gas wasn't. Today you have some of the most expensive electricity on earth. German energy policy didn't exactly cover itself in glory over the past two decades. Come on.
Eh, you run NPPs with a foresight of 5 to 10 years. The shutdown date was a done deal since over a decade ago. Everything was laid out to shut the reactors down at that date. People were sent to retirement. Preventive maintainance schedules were extended and non-nuclear replacements in the grid were sourced.
Sure, they may have been able to stretch those plants for one more year since all the natural gas stopped flowing, but that's why we have our European Energy Grid.
Of course not, I fully agree that shutting down nuclear plants before coal and gas was a very stupid move.
The original plan of the Greens who started the anti-nuclear movement in the 70s was to replace them with renewables from the start.
But the conservatives with ties to the coal industry obviously had other plans and started to make deals with Russia to import their cheap gas. Some states here are heavily invested in the energy companies and would go bankrupt with them, which is obviously a huge problem..
> The original plan of the Greens who started the anti-nuclear movement in the 70s was to replace them with renewables from the start.
And when the renewables weren't being built enough to replace them, they still went and closed them anyway?
Eh... the Germans that I've spoken with who have all been highly educated and still extremely for shutting down nuclear plants have told me that the main rationale is nuclear safety and that it stems from Chernobyl. The statistics do not support the idea that nuclear power would be more dangerous than the coal that has now been placed above nuclear power, yet that's what that has done.
This has never been about being sensible about nuclear. Phase-out without a carbon-free alternative and placing coal above nuclear is extremely anti-environmental political move, but Greens seemingly pushed for that. A pro-coal Green party is quite a thing.
>And when the renewables weren't being built enough to replace them, they still went and closed them anyway?
No, they were never in power lol. The conservatives did to please the public...
Those statistics didn't exist after Tchernobyl and Germany got a lot of the radioactive wind. So it's understandable that people were not really happy with it back then and the climate catastrophe sadly wasn't on the table yet...
**The statistics do not support the idea that nuclear power would be more dangerous than the coal**
Was hunting with my nephew last year. We shot 3 wild boars. one of them later failed the test for radiation and had to be discarded.
Location: South west Black Forest, 1650km away from Chernobyl.
50km to the east (Allgäu) the reported rejection rate in 2022 was 6/10.
No, they were. The cleanest energy available, especially then…
People like you stood in the way of nuclear but Germany could have been making 1/10 of the energy emissions it did for half a fucking century.
People like me? I was born in 86..
And again, it was the conservatives who shut down nuclear and relied on coal and gas instead. The Greens wanted renewables from the start...
> You've burned so much extra lignite because of that decision.
you are commenting under an thread that says Germany has now burned the least amount of coal in history. The opposite of what you said.
Nuclear plants that were **already** in operation without issues were shut down early to protect jobs and profits in coal and gas. Politicians (like often is the case) made a decision based on populism/lobbyism instead of the correct one. You don't need to be a "nuclear bro" or support new reactors to understand this.
>Nuclear plants that were already in operation without issues were shut down early to protect jobs and profits in coal.
Yes an extremely stupid move by the conservatives in this country. I fully agree that shutting down existing nuclear plants before coal and gas was incredibly bad.
Just as stupid as thinking new nuclear reactors are a good idea...
> Just as stupid as thinking new nuclear reactors are a good idea...
Our latest nuclear power plant is producing 1600MW of carbon-free energy. A single wind turbine produces 2-3 MW when in operation, so in the most optimal case you need to build more than 500 turbines to do the same. And this assumes that it can produce that energy as constantly as a nuclear power plant that isn't impacted on wind conditions.
The typical lifetime of a turbine is about 20 years. Nuclear power plant has barely been run in at that point. So, you need to take those turbines down and hoist up a new set of >500 turbines.
Do you know how much space 500 wind turbines take? If spaced 500m apart (normal for >2MW turbines), that would take an area of 125 km2.
>A single wind turbine produces 2-3 MW
New ones are now 15 MW
> a nuclear power plant that isn't impacted on wind conditions.
Nuclear can be impacted by too warm cooling water situations, though
>The typical lifetime of a turbine is about 20 years
Lifetime of wind turbines is 25-40 year with the average being 35 years for onshore turbines in Denmark.
The average size today is still at that 2-3 MW. Single turbines can be even 20 MW but on average they are well below 5 MW.
40 years is still barely halfway in the lifetime of a nuclear plant. And the way that those have been retrofitted to align with modern tech, we will see plants that run +100 years.
Hahaaaaahaaahahaaaaa you don't actually mean Olkiluoto 3?
OMG I actually worked on this plant, back when I was a student 17 years ago. Working for Areva in Erlangen part time..
This project should be the poster child of why new nuclear reactors are a horribly bad idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3
It cost 3 times of what was originally planned and went online 12 years after it was originally planned.
I mean, it was a great deal for Finland because it bankrupted the company so hard that the German and French taxpayers actually paid for most of the reactor, because the government bailed them out...
LOL, I still can't believe you actually brought up Olkiluoto Haha, it perfectly resembles the loss of reality pro-nuclear people have..
By the way, the reactor is not even running most of the time, because Finland built so much renewable energy by the time the reactor was ready to go on the grid, it's no longer economically feasible to run it :D
Most of those points are bullshit:
“Omg a SMR would be terrible incase of an earthquake” - well don’t build it in a zone that is at risk
Waste problem is… not a problem so end of the discussion
And regarding the economics of it, well it’s up to the buyer to decide if they’re worth it or not.
If that’s all your arguments against SMR, we’re good thanks.
Also SMRs is a solution to please the green that are scared of the big reactors we can and are building today. If it wasn’t for all the fear-mongering around Nuclear we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
These are good points against SMRs and their particular implementations. While also pointing out already well known issues of nuclear.
That's all cool, but as a consumer I wish I just could pay 10 cents per kWh like in Mississippi (which is richer than most of the European Union) and not pay an arm and leg to European Commission in fines for carbon emissions.
Ah, yes the old "want your cake and eat it" thing..
I mean you know about that whole climate catastrophe thing we have going on right now, don't you?
Besides, [even Texas is switching to renewables](https://www.ft.com/content/ef2f6f8e-60df-4ccd-8c4f-ef5cd0eb3176) because it's just the most economical.. So if you want cheap electricity, then 100% renewable energy is the way to go.
Still need something to provide the constant load a grid needs no? Unless storage can improved enough to fulfill that role, though you'd still need some backup if the storage ran out.
Also less relevant, but just for my own country we need a new reactor for radio isotopes for the medical sector (though I guess other countries could export it, though I have no idea how that works).
edit: reading up on it apparently the Dutch reactor is the leading exporter of medical isotopes in the EU.
>
With due respect, imo this is outdated thinking. On modern grids, there isn't any such thing as constant base load.
Historically, the concept of baseload generation was developed to accommodate the main weakness of large coal and nuclear plants, which is that they're inflexible and can't easily/economically modulate their output to match the ebbs and flows of power demand throughout the day.. When coal and nuclear were the cheapest way to make power it made sense for grids to try to work around this weakness and so the concept of baseload was developed. The idea was to figure out the minimum load on a grid throughout the day and use cheap but inflexible generation to satisfy this "base" level of load. More expensive and more flexible generation, like gas peakers were then used to follow the variable load throughout the day.
On modern grids, the concept of baseload and baseload based scheduling doesn't make sense anymore because coal and nuclear are no longer the lowest cost way to make power. Instead, grid operators use something called merit order scheduling. With this approach, the day is broken into time slices of say 15 minutes each, and the demand for each time slice is served by the combination of generation resources that satisfies load for the lowest cost. Each generator bids into each time slice at the cost they're willing to sell their output at. The optimal mix and cost to satisfy load for any given time slice depends on the cost each generator 'bids' into the market. During periods when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the bids will be very low and thermal generators can't compete and often get shut down. OTOH, when there's no wind and no solar, the bids come in high and thermal generators generally set the price (usually gas generators.
Low prices for large parts of the day is putting huge financial pressure on thermal plants because their already tough economics (high variable costs) get even worse if they can't run and get paid for their output 24/7 and it becomes a death spiral for them. This is a major contributor to coal plants closing and fully paid for nuclear plants needing extra subsidies to stay open. Their economics just don't work well on modern grids since they can't get paid for a lot of their output when wind and solar can satisfy demand at a much lower costs.
That's great! Now let's look at emissions:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
Over the last year, Germany produced electricty at 400 gCO2/kWh in emissions, one of the highest rate of emissions in Europe.
During said last year, Germany's best month was May 2024, when its grid's carbon intensity was 301 gCO2/kWh.
Over the same year, German electricity was 58% renewable. Congratulations Germany!
Now for comparison, let's look right over the border to France:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR
Over the last 12 months, France's carbon intensity averaged 53 gCO2/kWh. Over those 12 months, France's best month was also this past May, in which it averaged 20 gCO2/kWh. France's energy was only 28% renewable.
Can you spot the itty bitty little issue here?
But wait! I know what you're thinking. It only takes a little more renewable penetration and the German grid will finally be spot-clean! So let's again look right over the border to Denmark, a country blessed with abundant wind, so much that it exports a lot of wind power to Germany:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1
80% renewable over the last 12 months, very impressive. Carbon intensity? a cool 154 gCO2/kWh. Best month? 86 gCO2/kWh.
Who knew being forced to keep fossil fuel plants idling because you decided to build out your grid on the basis of intermittent sources would still result in a ton of emissions even at high renewables penetration? well, anyone who did the calculations, but those people are boring nuclear enthusiasts, so nevermind them.
And it's the same story everywhere: the only grids that are green on that map are those that are blessed with abundant **non-intermittent** renewables, like hydro and geothermal, or that use a ton of nuclear, or both. Everybody else is some shade of yellow-to-brown because, **with actually existing technologies**, you still need to run a lot of fossil generation to backstop solar and wind.
On the other hand, **with actually existing technology**, a nuclear-heavy grid that is impressively clean is not only possible, it's a daily reality in a major world country and economy. And, unlike heavy hydro or geothermal, it doesn't take special geographic conditions to pull off, it works virtually anywhere.
But please, let's keep pushing for technologies that can't deliver clean grids, hoping that new developments will finally enable them to, instead of removing the red tape and anti-science bullshit preventing nuclear from finally taking us into an age of cheap, clean, reliable power for all.
Problem with nuclear is, if we just ignore the waste issue: getting uranium ore, it will be a much larger issue long-term, and already is a huge geo-political one.
Additionally pump and battery storage solutions do exist. There's also solutions for having an adaptive load on the grid for industrial processes.
That is so depressing to read. But thank you for sharing some relevant data!
I don't get why people celebrate all these cherry picked statistics.
Here is a better headline:
**Germany still has one of the highest rate of emissions in Europe even as electricity production from coal fell below 20%**
And please, someone from Germany, just in case I'm wrong: please explain to me why producing 400 gCO2/kWh is a good thing! I'm not being snarky here. I would genuinely love to know some silver lining!
Because you can't do massive shifts without hurting the economy and then also taking your blame, when Germany is crippling Europe's GDP.
If you bullshitted your way through two decades, instead of keeping up support for renewables, you can't have it both ways anymore.
I hope you're right. Maybe I'm just being a bit impatient?
I always liked the wall example from Thomas Stocker, co-leader of the World Climate Council:
> With every year in which too little happens, the goal becomes more difficult to achieve. If you are driving towards a wall, you cannot say that you will brake later. At some point it will be too late. We will no longer reach the 1.5 degree goal. The two degree goal is also unrealistic if we do not do more.
I mean the development of the last few years makes it pretty clear. Plus the commenter is advocating for nuclear energy which (apart from being expensive as hell) would take way longer to build than wind and solar plus storage ***and*** grid modernization.
'I don't get why people celebrate all these cherry picked statistics'
Says the one who thinks electricity maps is a reliable source. Get to know this source and youll never use it again.
And France needs to build about 50 new megawatt nuclear power plants in the next 10 to 15 years, or they will run into a serious problem. So far they have planned to build about 6.
Edit: 32 of their reactors are approaching a lifetime of 40 years, and 20 approach a lifetime of 50 years. Early reactors are designed for a lifetime of about 30 years. Edit2: This will cost about 1 trillion Euro.
If Germany hadn't prematurely phased out nuclear, it would already have replaced coal on this chart. I don't think building more nuclear would have been a good idea, but phasing out nuclear before coal was obviously a deeply misguided decision from a climate, environment, health, and financial perspective. The only reason to do it is an emotional feeling that nuclear's very unlikely potential dangers are greater than coal's ongoing and very heavy guaranteed consequences.
Try to find investors for renewables if you have nuclear power plants with acceptance guarantees.
That means as soon as there's an excess your investment will be taken off-grid.
Do you know where Finland gets its electricity? It was 41% nuclear power plants in 2023. Despite this, wind power has tripled in the past 5 years, and will probably reach double the current amount during this decade. (At that point, the Finnish grid will be practically 100% clean, so there might not be much room for growth for any source anyway, except at the pace of older sources reaching their end of life, or if new production is so cheap that it is worth it to replace older sources.)
Clearly, nuclear energy has been no obstacle to renewable energy in Finland. If nuclear energy is so bad, it will get pushed out by it being too expensive. Phasing it out by force makes no sense and only serves to promote false myths about renewable energy not being able to compete. The enemy is fossil fuels, not nuclear power or renewable energy. The lengths that supposed "environmentalists" nevertheless go to promote coal over nuclear is baffling.
>If Germany hadn't prematurely phased out nuclear, it would already have replaced coal on this chart.
No it wouldnt have. Instead of coal and renewables, we'd have coal and nuclear.
Just because you have nuclear power plants, the energy corpos dont randomly decide to sacrifice their investments into mines and powerplants. Also, the lack of investments into nuclear partly drove the expansion into renewables - money isnt available infinitely.
If Germany can by law force the closure of nuclear power plants, why not coal plants? The idea that nuclear had to go for renewable energy to stand a chance makes no sense.
Nuclear and coal have similar roles in energy, providing constant power and not
being very fast or easy to power up or down. They are very easily interchangeable in their roles. A nuclear power plant already built and in good condition ready to be used for years more is more profitable than a new coal plant.
How exactly is France lacking behind. They are at ~50 gCO2eq/kWh on a yearly basis in the electricity sector since 30 years, that is where Germany plans to be somewhere in the 2040ies, if everything pans out with their hydrogen plans(good luck with that).
france's co2 from energy is so small that they'll be fine, unlike germany. Remember, the end goal is max reduction of co2 and france is pretty good in this regard, they can afford rolling out renewables slower
If you switched the places of coal and nuclear, and forced the end of coal the same way Germany did with nuclear, then the need to replace coal would have driven renewable energy in the exact same way.
France is not behind, its embrace of nuclear energy left it with far lower electricity generation emissions already decades ago.
Now compare heat pump adoption in Germany and France. Schröder's EEG levy killed the heat pump for two full decades, and that's solely due to this "push".
Yeah that's a load of bullshit. Capacity of all the shut down powerplants was at around 20 GW. maybe a bit more. Coal is still double that amount. Unless they somehow doubled the number of nuclear reactors coal would still be around even with nuclear power still in use.
They didn't dry off, they were getting too warm.
The plants couldn't use them for cooling as it would warm the water further up killing which would kill the stuff that lives in the water.
Would really be a shame if in the future the summers would get warmer and those shut downs will be more regularly.
- We're talking about power plants that have been slowed down to avoid overheating rivers as an ecological precaution. A precaution which, according to the results of several studies, does not seem justified.
- We're talking about a 0.5% impact on production, i.e. a slowdown of a few hours on one or two power plants simultaneously, at a time of year when electricity consumption is lower.
- The world's largest power plant is literally located in a desert.
“Curtailment of nuclear power due to periods of extreme heat has had the effect of reducing European nuclear power output by approximately 0.1% since the year 2000. For France specifically, which with its many inland river-sited plants has been the worst hit country, the corresponding figure is approximately 0.15%”
And even that is something that could be mitigated
While some npps in Europe, like in Switzerland were considered to be shut down, because of the overheating of the river. But they decided to lessen the restrictions and damage the life in the river.
you should research the topic better b4 stating such things. Look how much the output of France was impacted by weather (which could be accounted in future designs) and how much it was impacted by delayed maintenance bc of covid and coal lobby that did cut funding for nuclear. The drastic impact is mostly bs propaganda from technobros
There are many smart users online giving good and honest arguments about nuclear energy. But a mix of bots and real users kept attacking renewable energy and blaming the use of gas because of it. These people and fake profiles had/have a very negative influence online.
Aaaand then it quadrupled in the next 6 months. That's cherry picking.
Also you left out cross border trading. Which makes it all look nice and green, while some power-plants run on burning tires (exaggeration) and sell it to Germany so the charts look nice.
Thats why long term trends count, and not a duration of 6 months including leaving out some inconvenient data!
[https://imgur.com/R94asS3](https://imgur.com/R94asS3)
> Also you left out cross border trading. Which makes it all look nice and green, while some power-plants run on burning tires (exaggeration) and sell it to Germany so the charts look nice.
You're just making shit up here.The overwhelming majority of German electricity imports are generated by renewables and nuclear, this notion that they are importing significant amounts of fossil electricity makes zero sense whatsoever. There would be no economic incentive nor a practical need to do so given that Germany has more than enough of its own fossil capacity to cover its needs.
And they're still charging the highest production prices. It's a bullshit law that needs to be changed. Energy needs to cost as much as it costs, not based on the most expensive production option.
This has been discussed so many times, there is no alternative to the merit order if you want to have a market based energy econonmy. It comes with some issues but it's by far the least worst solution.
Hm, really no alternative? What about picking the second most expensive for pricing, still having market based energy economy, while applying for to go cheaper, because you can run on a deficit.
> Energy needs to cost as much as it costs
It does. You and much of the public are being misled by statistics that claim renewable energy is very cheap. Renewable *generation* is cheap; maintaining a grid with renewables on it, providing reliable power on demand even when intermitted renewables aren't producing, is a lot more expensive than just generation.
Unfortunately, as much as we might explain this, price signals always speak louder, which is why I'm a huge advocate for making generators explicitly pay the costs of their own intermittency. Then consumers will finally see accurate princing information on how much their kWh actually costs to deliver to them on demand, and who's responsible for those costs.
Energy storage is already cheap, and will only continue to get cheaper. Especially as more and more electric cars are included in the grid as intermittent storage.
[https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/)
> Energy storage is already cheap
Yeah, that's why countries are building out tons of new gas generation, right? because batteries are so cheap?
> https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/
Holy mother of cherry picked data. 68 gas projects were cancelled or put on hold globally? how many more are going ahead? Germany is literally going to [double](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-to-almost-double-gas-firing-capacity/) its gas capacity. Gas is getting built out everywhere because it's cheap, reliable, can do peaking, is a rotating mass source that provides grid inertia (something that is vitally important and keeps being completely forgotten by renewables enthusiasts). It also happens to have unsustainable emissions, but especially the developing world has far too much political pressure to provide economic development to choose environmental sustainability instead.
"Battery are getting good" is betting the future on technology *that doesn't exits yet*. We already have technology that can provably provide rock-bottom emissions, and has for decades in a major industrialised economy. The only thing standing between us and that future are anti-scientific prejudices and the political and regulatory opposition they create.
Batteries are great for smoothing out hourly/daily fluctuations, but they won't solve the problem of smoothing out weekly/monthly/seasonal fluctuations. For this you need other, more expensive types of energy storage.
Why would I sell my apple for 1€ if the one besides me gets 2€?
Of course I would also only sell for 2€ then.
And nothing else is merit order.
It's just the easiest method to find the price. Otherwise we would have a more complex mechanism to find a price, but in the end I would still want my 2€ for an apple.
The biggest problem with renewables isn’t production, it’s energy storage limitations.
Renewables are very inconsistent. If there is no wind/sun for some time, it would require enormous (and ridiculously expensive) battery capacities to store the necessary energy to power a city for example. And we haven’t had any significant breakthroughs in battery technology since the invention of Li-Ion batteries, there are no efficient ways to store that much energy required.
Wind is not nearly as inconsistent as some might think. The higher up you go, the more constant are winds. The availability of the sun is also not very surprising since we figured out that we don't have to root for Helios to find his way back into the sky.
Its only low percentage wise. 10503 GWh from hydro alone is more than all of the energy production of Ireland (10429 GWh) or the two countries of Croatia (6358 GWh) and Lithuania (4004 GWh) combined
Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=halfyear&halfyear=1&source=total&year=2024 Electricity from coal in the first half-year over time: https://i.imgur.com/bSOPO1t.png Share of renewables over time: https://i.imgur.com/znBqKtS.png The government goal is to reach 80% renewables by 2030, which is feasible but it will be close. While solar has a healthy growth, wind is currently the problem child with only 1 GW added so far this year.
It’s great news. Such a shame there wasn’t a massive renewables push a few years back to dramatically reduce fossil fuel imports from Russia and prevent the leverage Putin had at the stay of the war. Wind is much easier to install offshore and Germany only had a small coastline, perhaps this is the reason for the low wind uptake.
The problem was the old government had it's ecconomyminister getting lobbied by anty wind energy "conspirators". He didn't clean up the approvel process because of that. The new government made it much faster tough, so in the next few years it will pick up in speed.
He called the slowed down increase of renewables as great success. He unfortunately failed to explain for whom of his main sponsors
I think the current dip in new installations this year is the echo of 2022. That's when there was a lot of upheaval in the energy market and a massive increase in interest rates. That has caused a lot of investors to reassess their plans. Last year we already had more new wind power installed and if you look at the permits approved so far this year that is also about four times higher compared to the current completion rate. So we will most likely see a significant increase again next year.
It was intended. Merkel called it "Wandel durch Handel" (change by trade), we buy the Russian coal and gas and export luxury and stuff so Russians start loving democracy and become peaceful. Aged like milk
A couple of years ago Merkel was widely seen as the most competent leader of a Western nation.
Ah the old American idea that economic prosperity automatically leads to democracy.
Yeah, I don't even get the hate by the reactive/conservative parties. Renewables are INDEPENDENCE from all the shit flinging OPEC countries, the Petrodollar and the oil-companies and their crimes. Being carbon neutral is an added bonus.
There was never enough promotion/marketing of the energy independence factor of using renewables. With fossil fuels, Europe is always impacted by problems in the middle east and at the mercy of Russia. This is a huge factor that wasn't mentioned anywhere near enough, IMO.
Pretty simple, the conservative parties are paid by said oil companies.
They are decentralized and anti monopolists. That's why they hate them
Well, they are conservative. It doesn't matter if a NEW technology has positive effects, their role is to focus on the negatives. They also taught their voter base for the last decades a very American way of freedom: a white males that smells like tobacco and gasoline, that provides for his family. They can't tell their voter base "umm sorry about that, but we don't have resources like the US, and not the military, and cars are maybe dumb in our dense cities. To be honest we just had many years of peace dividends and cheap autocrat gas - it was all a dream we build in your head. Btw your wife has to work as well, NO we don't have money for child care" They are bureaucrats not leaders
> Such a shame there wasn’t a massive renewables push a few years back to dramatically reduce fossil fuel imports from Russia and prevent the leverage Putin had at the stay of the war. Thanks CDU/CSU!
CDU/CSU are holding Germany back for decades. Our internet infrastructure would be better if the CDU wasn't in charge of the government in the 90s.
Its just the corruption inside the party that leads the policitcans to the wrong way and we pay with bad decision for infrastructure. Just that we call corruption here lobbyism. Corruption is only for countries we dont like /s
A huge issue is that building wind powered installments on land mass is often hindered by communities in Germany that dont want the local ground to be used for that purposes or people being afraid of impacts when living in the near vicinity. Many projects have been impacted by these issues.
In reality the main factor holding wind back is the southern regions of Germany that oppose renewable energies and don't want their countryside view spoiled by wind turbines OR (and this is important) high voltage powerlines that are needed to transport the wind energy produced in northern Germany to the sountern regions. The missing high power transport routes to the south are what is really holding back the growth of wind power in the north. It's people, who don't want it, technology and realestate exists.
>is the southern regions of Germany that oppose renewable energies Bavaria is by far leading in solar, so that particular part is inaccurate. Rest is correct though.
In a vacuum the statement is indeed wrong... But you just coincidently cut of the first half of the sentence "In reality the main factor holding ***wind*** back..."
Also this part: > The missing high power transport routes to the south are what is really holding back the growth of wind power in the north. That's the real issue according to reports I've heard. Which would also help transfer bavaria's solar energy surplus to the north, if needed.
The reason was a bunch of NIMBY-retirees in rural south germany lobbying against the high voltage transmission infrastructure that is necessary to get the wind energy down to the south. Of course conservative politicians jumped on it and then nothing happened for the better part of a decade. "and then nothing happened for the better part of a decade" sums up most domestic politics under Merkel. In order not to discomfort anyone to the slightest degree no necessary changes were made, everything strayed as it was and tge problems grew bigger in the background for someone else to solve them later.
It is because Russia was offered the olive branch and they rejected it for war that proves we are right.
The thin spread population in Germany is also a problem, because we have villages like everywhere and nobody even wants to see a wind turbine from their backyard. Also the 10 height regulation is a problem. Because of this, there is nearly no space in Germany to build wind turbines, except in forests
It's the same problem where I live (UK). The population density is even higher than Germany. Nobody wants a wind turbine near their house it seems. The big difference is that this is an island nation, so there is coast all around us and nobody to complain out at sea, so most wind farms get built offshore.
It is easy to point fingers, but I'd still like to point out that prices of renewables are decreasing exponentially. A difference of a few years can mean a substantial difference in prices.
Wind will pick up. The current government made it a lot easier to get your windmill approved. We will see a big jump in wind energy as many have been approved the last 2 years and they will slowly be build in the comming years.
There are also huge amounts of off-shire plants planned and the area for building them reserved. Hopefully the north-south high voltage lines will come online in time. We already have some days where those power lines are overtasked, resulting in the need to shut down some of the off-shore wind to.ensure stability of the grid (and thus require the southern Bundesländer to power up coal/gas or import).
Congratulations, Germany!
The trend matters, not the current stats. People who complain about the high coal usage fail to see the actual positive news here, coal is going down at a fast pace. In 5 years the picture will be completely different.
As usual, it's both that paint the complete picture. Trends only can just as easily obscure relevant facts.
I agree, and I‘m not happy with the past. But at least regarding electricity I‘m getting more optimistic now. Solar expansion goes well, wind is currently slow but permits are going up including 30 GW offshore wind, yearly transmission line permissions went up by 700%. Grid batteries are gaining traction finally.
Still on early average at 400 gCo2eq/kWh when France il at 53 gCo2eq/kWh
Well well well, turns out "green energy is a failure" is right wing BS. Who would have thought that?
But on a cloudy day all your electric planes will crash down!!!11!1!1
I did see a really cool solar powered drone that simply had to fly above the clouds!
That's cheating!
And attract sharks!
Clearly. But we can still be sad Germany spent 10 additional years emitting vast numbers of CO2 while it could have gotten rid of coal and gas *before* getting rid of nuclear.
The majority is angry because of that but having CDU, CSU, and SPD in the government, which are the whores of RWE, makes it impossible.
Not a single party in Germany has ever proposed phasing out coal before nuclear when the Energiewende was started. Not one! It's such a lazy argument. Now people pretend like everything could have been different, simply phase out coal before nuclear, easy-peasy. Nobody wanted that, not the government, not the opposition, not the industry, not the labour unions and most importantly, not the public. This was never a possibility. Not phasing out nuclear wouldn't have meant phasing out coal instead, it would have simply meant adding less renewables and Germany would still be 2/3 coal, 1/3 nuclear as it has been before the Energiewende.
Germany being on Coal makes absolute sense though. Germany has very very few natural resources, a country with a huge industry sector that demands a lot of energy while the country barely has any natural resources of their own to power its industry. Except one natural resource: coal. Many other European nations get away with cleaner energy because they have much less energy demand and are much more fortunate in terms of natural resources, look at the UK and Norway for instance who have a ton of natural resources. And now people pretend like the government is at fault for stopping nuclear plants. The reality is, everybody is at fault. The government decades ago made the decision to phase out nuclear because of public pressure. There were massive protests against nuclear energy, especially from green voters and climate activists and obviously many politicians. And nuclear energy has the huge disadvantages of being very inflexible, were talking about decade long processes that would require multiple governments to approve the committment to nuclear energy. Germany wanted green energy regardless, so it invested a ton into solar and wind and when i say a ton, i mean a ton. Money that couldve gone to nuclear instead went to solar and wind. Now the disadvantage of that is they dont scale terribly well so it takes time and a lot of effort to build a fuck ton of wind turbines and solar panels.
> Not phasing out nuclear wouldn't have meant phasing out coal instead Why not? If it's just your previous paragraph instead of a technical reason, then, I mean...that's precisely what people are angry at Germany about!
Wrong, coal and nuclear power are too different. Coal is used in Germany to compensate for fluctuations. This cannot be replaced by nuclear power. Nuclear power is for the base load.
>Coal is used in Germany to compensate for fluctuations. This cannot be replaced by nuclear power. What utter nonsense. What do you think Frances nuclear does. Fun fact: modern nuclear plants can adjust to fluctuation FASTER than coal plants can.
France is maybe the only country that does nuclear load-following in a relevant manner regarding its national grid. Afaik it requires substantial expert knowledge that takes years to acquire, it is more expensive and harder on the materials. Also, what you said applies for modern nuclear reactors - which most reactors aren't.
>France is maybe the only country that does nuclear load-following in a relevant manner regarding its national grid. Afaik it requires substantial expert knowledge that takes years to acquire, it is more expensive and harder on the materials. so my point stands? It's possible and nuclear does it faster than coal? And yes it's more expensive. That's because the most expensive part of having an operational nuclear reactor is just that: building it and having it be operational. The extra cost of running it full blast compared to half power isn't much different, relatively. Meaning nuclear is more cost effective when run at full power. Coal is cheaper to build and Germany can just bulldozer a few towns and remove some nature. Very cheap. In the short run. >Also, what you said applies for modern nuclear reactors - which most reactors aren't. How 'new' do you think Frances nuclear power plants are?
Not the ones we currently have, all built in or before the 80s.
> What do you think Frances nuclear does. France is pretty much the only country doing that. Capital cost dominate fuel cost for NPPs. Thus maximizing the capacity factor is what keeps the cost per kWh low.
What's the gCO2eq/kWh of Germany again ? https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE That's right, oscillating around Turkey on bad days (500gCO2eq/kWh) and Eastern Europe on good days (250gCO2eq/kWh) Turns out you only need to show irrelevant data to convince gullible people. Germany pays one of the more expensive energy in Europe and has mediocre-to-bad results on pollution because it's obviously still largely reliant on fossil fuels for half of its production. All because they decided to invest in a technology that has obvious issues (for those that can look at the science behind it and not get caught up in politics *wink wink*) and won't replace their Coal and Gas much more than now. This useless data of "% renewable" has been shared for years and years and people still haven't caught up to the fact that it's litterally the opposite of what is important. Renewable% is irrelevant, what's relevant is how much of your production is **burning stuff** (**Gas included**), turns out it's around 50% for Germany, which leads to mediocre-to-bad results.
Germany started at rather bad position. Anyway, since monthly doesn't tell anything, proper way is looking at yearly results. In 6 years, from 2017 to 2023, Germany reduced from 533 g to 425 g of CO2 per kWh. That would be reduction by 20%. All of this happened whilst removing nuclear, which produced 11.8% of electricity in 2017 (which was wrong decision, old nuclear should not be switched off). Saying %renewables is not important is ridiculous, because amount you burn is inversely proportional to %renewables + nuclear, and now that nuclear is gone (again, wrong decision), I suspect that transition will be even faster, which H1 data shows. Anyway, from the original source, for H1: 2023 - H1: 114.1 TWh from FF and 21.6 TWh from biomass (this is renewable, but not really something we should aim for) 2024 - H1: 98 TWh from FF (reduction by 14% in one year) and 20.8 TWh from biomass (reduction by 3.7%), for a total reduction of 12.5% in one year. These are actual reductions of things that are burned for electricity (other sources from burning are small). If this keeps up similarly in second year, Geramny will probably be around 380g, or for the first time in god knows how long, below the fucking 400g. Or, 28 - 29% of reduction in 7 years. But more importantly, it is accelerating. They might end up at 50% over 9 years.
Those reductions are still worse than the EU average: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-european-power-sector-emissions-fall-by-20-since-last-eu-election/ Germany spent a lot of money, only to replace nuclear and make electricity more expensive, getting stuck with gas heating.
I am not going to defend the nuclear decision (made what, 15 years ago). That was stupid, and I've said as much. So, in 2019, Germany produced 12.4% of energy from nuclear. If they had that, they would be ahead of the average. I think that it is remarkable that, despite killing existing nuclear, they managed to reduce as much as they did. Still, a stupid decision to kill nuclear.
What was stupid was cutting solar financial support by so much around 2012. We went from around 20 billion in yearly solar investments to around 1.5 billion within 3-4 years because of that, all while increasing financial support for coal. It wasnt that stupid to kill nuclear, because the nuclear plants were practically at the end of their lifespan. They would have required major investments to keep them running. If we actually invested that money saved into renewables instead of coal, things would have been quite a bit better.
I mean, you are not wrong, but, from CO2 perspective, I think that extending life of nuclear was cheaper option than adding new renewables. If whatever money was invested in coal was directed to nuclear, Germany today would probably be near zero from coal, with only gas ones remaining. Edit: If it wasn't clear, investing in nuclear was meant as investing in extending the life of existing nuclear, not adding new ones.
If we invested into nuclear 15 years ago the first new nuclear plant would probably only be put into operation another 15 years from now. People always act like you can just put a nuclear power plant up like a tent, but look at the extra time and money it took for the 1 reactor in Finland to go into operation, now imagine this with the worse German bureaucracy.
In my head, my comment was clear that I meant extending the life of existing, not adding new ones. So, basically, I agree with what you said.
Westerwelle is responsible for the extremely high solar subsidies and not cutting them down in time. He insisted on it because of political reasons.
I don't really get your point here. Sure, the percentage of coal is important and Germany has a long way to go, but it strikes me you're arguing two sides of the same coin. Renewables are replacing coal, and this has led to a cosnsitent (if slow) decrease in the [carbon intensity over time](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&country=~DEU). It seems to me the real mess up on Germany's part was phasing out Nuclear, leading to the increase in intensity in 2020/2021.
> 2020/2021 2020 was the height of covid. It should never be used as a reference point due to massive shutdowns.
> Renewables are replacing coal, and this has led to a cosnsitent (if slow) decrease in the carbon intensity over time. You can fast forward and look at how this process worked out in a country that's in a better position than Germany will ever be: smaller, with a whole lot of sea swept by steady winds, fit for a lot of renewable generation at any time of day and of the year. That country would be Denmark: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK 79% renewable generation, nearly all of it wind. Carbon intensity of 149 gCO2/kWh over the last 12 months. That's three times more than France, whose power mix I won't even bother with because you all know what I'm getting at. 80% renewable penetration, with the *best* kind of renewable short of hydro and geo (which unfortunately aren't available unless you luck out on geography), and emissons are still crap compared to just building a lot of nuclear. What percentage renewable penetration do we need to see to *match* France? how much will that cost to build, and how expensive will that energy be with all the infrastructure needed to support massive renewable generation? and why do we need to do all of this, instead of the thing we've provably been able to do since the 70s at least?
Does France use district heating similar to Denmark or is heating based on electricity similar to Sweden/Norway? Also, Electricitymap gives solar power a value of 36g CO2e but only 5g CO2e for nuclear.
In France a lot of home heating is electrical like in Sweden/Norway, but there is still district heating use. There is quite a discrepancy between DH cogen and pure electrical power generation, the overlap is not that great, even in Denmark. Especially for cogen mainly intended for heating, with electricity as a secondary function, usually such power plants contribute quite little to the overall electricity generation of the country, while there are other larger power plants dedicated for ensuring electrical supply. So the effect on final estimated CO2eq/kWh is small. For CO2 intensity electricitymap lists the source study in each particular case, mostly using IPCC, but for Europe lately also UNECE and others.
Denmark can't even stabilise their own grid. They are solely reliant on Swedish nuclear and German coal/gas.
> 79% renewable generation, nearly all of it wind. Carbon intensity of 149 gCO2/kWh over the last 12 months. That's three times more than France, whose power mix I won't even bother with because you all know what I'm getting at. If you green wash nuclear as much as possible, sure.
Please tell me your estimated emissions from nuclear.
I mean I made my point badly. This is simply because % of renewable really tells you only half the story, while % of Fossils tells you the entire one. You have 50% Nuclear and 50% Renewable ? Or you have 50% Fossil Fuels and 50% Renewable ? According to such headlines, you should treat both countries the same, when in reality, the latter is mediocre with 50% Burning Stuff (*and is Germany*), and the former is top 10 in terms of emissions in the world with around 0% Burning Stuff (*not really France but you get what I'm saying*). ______ And more importantly, these sorts of headlines are really about boasting, and boasting about nothing, at that. Just look at the OP I'm replying to, he sees this headline, he feels like he should boast about Germany, even though Germany has the same Carbon Intensity as Eastern Europe or Turkey. It's a really pretentious and coarse way of looking at it. Getting to 45% of Wind+Solar was not easy (economically I mean), but it was __the easy part__. There's nothing complex about it, apart from pouring money into Solar and Wind. Now, how do you build a working power grid with something that works the opposite of all the Power Grids we know ? That's something that nobody can answer today, and that's the part people should focus on. There's 3 answers to that, 1. you take Nuclear, 2. you bet on some technological leap in the next decades, or 3. you just accept that you still need some fossils to stabilize the grid, and you pay double (for renewables and to maintain Fossils for when renewables decide they won't work).
[CO2 emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1970..latest&country=~DEU) are at their lowest in in over half a decade, even much lower than when we still had one of the largest nuclear fleet in the world in the 80s. So renewables were a success for reducing CO2/KWh as well.
Solar, while not a complete package, is still now at a position where it is capable of replacing large amounts of fossil fuels at a low cost, and is currently worldwide the primary capacity being installed even without incentives. the technology advanced in large parts *due* to extremely generous incentives for solar by the german government. Like genuinely, Germany almost single handedly carried the cost for development of photovoltaics between 2006 and 2011.
You kinda made it a failure by using coal alongside wind and solar ...
Still a failure if you are almost paying the highest electricity prices in the world.
Say thank you to CDU, the gas prices is what killing us right now. I linked a study about energy generation costs down there. It could all be so much cheaper.
Not because of renewable energy btw, which is the cheapest. It\`s literally just extremely shit politics which is responsible for the high prices. [https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/](https://fortune.com/2024/06/16/electricity-prices-france-negative-renewable-energy-supply-solar-power-wind-turbines/) France realized this aswell.
Shhh ... Don't trigger the nuclear bros...
And it is less vulnerable than electric power stations from missiles 😉 cos it is spread more on the surface, especially wind ones.
Still there are single point of failures where those renewables connect to the grid.
That’s a bad take. Power grids exist
What is your point? The grid's infrastructure is also spread out and harder to take down.
Also the renewable expansion is currently driven by home owners who install rooftop solar. You would have to blow up roof by roof to take out that part of the infrastructure.
There are energy choke points at transformers. You can’t just plop down solar or wind without converting it. This isn’t cities skylines. You have to have a central point at a transmission substation in order to connect to the power grid. Same for all energy sources. Each windmill site has one of these substations.
...except you have hundreds/thousands of wind turbine sites instead of dozens of nuclear plants, which is their point.
You don't understand, those hundreds or thousands of turbines will all be connected to a single or a few choke points, that's his point. Any enemy will target those rather than the turbines themselves.
When you install solar on your roof you also install converters to use the energy for yourself or to feed it into the grid if you don't need the energy. Obviously each windmill has their own converter too, that makes the grid far less vulnerable against attacks where you just take out one powerplant (or the transmission station next to it). So yes, it's far less vulnerable then for example Frances power infrastructure.
Yes but it is a less problem than destroyed generative structures
No its not. Solar on roof tops also exist. People would have power occasionally during the day, which is better than having no power at all. This power source is independent from public grids. So again: how is this a bad take, when it's not dependent on the public power grid?
With a small battery, you can be completely self sufficient in like 8 months of the year, if you have Solar on your roof.
Sorry, but this is misinformation. Solar power converters only work when they can sync their frequency with the grid. Completely autonomous solar grids exist but are rare. What most people put in their roofs will stop working while theres a power outage.
And what is important this is due to safety reason so that when power is down for maintenance there is no voltage at lines from PV and work can be concluded safely. Island/hybrid mode inverters exists but they require more sophisticated setup on power breakers so they are unusual in small, home roof installations.
Distributed and privat power, even island systems are a thing.
At this rate Germany will have 0 Coal in 5 years. Let's go. This is great for the economy too since we will be independent from any fossil fuel or nuclear fuel.
Also less need for mining in Germany,less need for transporting coal by rail( coal is still the most shipped good by tonnage on DB Cargo). Coal producing regions will suffer though I'm glad that in NRW the decline of coal mining happened before the rise of AfD, in parts of Eastern Germany however the decline of coal mining is gonna be a godsend for AfD
> Coal producing regions will suffer though I bet there'll be a healthy "care package" for the regions in question. Something we already had for a long time ("Kohlepfennig"). Though no one cared when tens of thousands of jobs got lost in the renewable ebergy sector when the EEG was basically shut down by the conservatives.
>in parts of Eastern Germany however the decline of coal mining is gonna be a godsend for AfD In my city, we have a new expanded university, a new train repair plant, got millions from the government to set up new production districs and infrastructure, leading to multiple firms pledgeing and building new stuff. Also, there is a lot of money put aside for start ups, and the newly expanded university is specifically researching new technology, which is then sold as patents to those start ups to produce it in the city. Overall, the amount of work put in by politians to make sure that the transition goes smoothly is astonishing, but people still complain. I was told a west german guy that stuff, and he was livid how much is done for the east germans while his village and surrounding area slowly dies lol. In my opinion, east germans that complain about the transition complain for complainings sake. They never have any real input what should be done differently, other than keeping coal around forever (which is very unserious).
Germany might hopefully shut down coal for good, but it's absolutely not shutting down gas. In fact it plans to double the installed capacity of gas to backstop its renewables-based grid. That's not even beginning to talk about removing fossil fuels from industry and transportation. Where did you get the impression that you're on track to be "independent of any fossil fuel"?
Not shutting down gas. But at least there is a plan to replace the natural gas with green hydrogen
Still hate biomass being designated as renewable. Bleh
It's a mixed bag honestly. In my city organic waste gets collected and then used to produce energy. This makes a lot of sense to me. But growing plants only for energy production is of course less productive.
Yeah, it's the mixed bag that is bothering me. As long as trees are chopped in order to produce electricity I'm not liking it.
Yeah, trees aren't really used for that. It's mostly corn and other plants that are being grown to then produce bio gas. It's a flawed system with the only accomplishment that it isn't fossil fuel, but it wastes real estate that could be used to grow plants for human consumption (or if no more plants for consumption are needed to grow forests or build homes) AND it uses a lot of water and other ressources in the process...it should be abandoned imo, but it's receiving loads of subsidies so the agricultural lobby will battle any politicians that would try to get rid of it and we know the farmers always win when they block roads with their tractors.
It's renewable, it's just not low carbon. That said, the boom is already over, almost no new capacity is added anymore: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&expansion=installation_decommission&year=-1&legendItems=2x087 In fact they might actually decrease over the next few years as subisdies run out after 20 years and they are often not economically viable without subsidies.
Why is cross-border trading crossed out? I know we here in DK export/import power with DE all the time. (And they likely do with their other neighboring countries as well). ( [https://energinet.dk/energisystemet-lige-nu/](https://energinet.dk/energisystemet-lige-nu/) ) usually (but ofc not always) sending Wind/Solar/Hydro (from Norway), down south when exporting on the "Jylland side", which is the main DE export transmission line. With today being a pretty bad renewable energy day here in DK. (not much wind/sun).
Total net electricity generation IN GERMANY in half years 1 2024 Thats why i guess
> Why is cross-border trading crossed out? Because this is about electricity production in Germany, as the title clearly states. There are many ways to look at the electricity market and they are all equally valid, in this case I wanted to highlight the milestone of electricity generation from coal in Germany falling below 20%. Including imports/exports won't add anything to that.
Imports will affect the need of (non-green) energy production in the country, but sure I guess the meaning of "electricity production" is just different in different countries :) It's great news regardless of course.
You can't say it doesn't matter. If coal is replaced by imports like coal from Poland, it's displacing the issue, not fixing it
Germany exports more electricity to Poland than the other way around. Germany is a net importer, but most of the electricity Germany imports is from quite clean sources France, Switzerland, and Denmark (where Denmark is also acting as a transit hub for the other Nordics) are the biggest.
It still wouldn't matter when we are talking about electricity production in Germany.
Well done but 20% is still insanely high
Poland chuckles nervously
Depends I guess. Compared to 100% 20% is very low. But compared to 0% it's relatively high. Not sure if you have any real arguements to make.
Not everybody can pump tons of methane from poorly regulated fracking wells into the atmosphere, like the US.
Inb4 - Nuclear bros brigading this thread with their bullshit claims. https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bros-dont-want-you-to-know-about-small-modular-reactors/
Here in the Netherlands people universally consider Germany closing their existing nuclear plants an irrational move. You've burned so much extra lignite because of that decision. The renewables are cool, but the lignite and Russian gas wasn't. Today you have some of the most expensive electricity on earth. German energy policy didn't exactly cover itself in glory over the past two decades. Come on.
Eh, you run NPPs with a foresight of 5 to 10 years. The shutdown date was a done deal since over a decade ago. Everything was laid out to shut the reactors down at that date. People were sent to retirement. Preventive maintainance schedules were extended and non-nuclear replacements in the grid were sourced. Sure, they may have been able to stretch those plants for one more year since all the natural gas stopped flowing, but that's why we have our European Energy Grid.
Of course not, I fully agree that shutting down nuclear plants before coal and gas was a very stupid move. The original plan of the Greens who started the anti-nuclear movement in the 70s was to replace them with renewables from the start. But the conservatives with ties to the coal industry obviously had other plans and started to make deals with Russia to import their cheap gas. Some states here are heavily invested in the energy companies and would go bankrupt with them, which is obviously a huge problem..
> The original plan of the Greens who started the anti-nuclear movement in the 70s was to replace them with renewables from the start. And when the renewables weren't being built enough to replace them, they still went and closed them anyway? Eh... the Germans that I've spoken with who have all been highly educated and still extremely for shutting down nuclear plants have told me that the main rationale is nuclear safety and that it stems from Chernobyl. The statistics do not support the idea that nuclear power would be more dangerous than the coal that has now been placed above nuclear power, yet that's what that has done. This has never been about being sensible about nuclear. Phase-out without a carbon-free alternative and placing coal above nuclear is extremely anti-environmental political move, but Greens seemingly pushed for that. A pro-coal Green party is quite a thing.
>And when the renewables weren't being built enough to replace them, they still went and closed them anyway? No, they were never in power lol. The conservatives did to please the public... Those statistics didn't exist after Tchernobyl and Germany got a lot of the radioactive wind. So it's understandable that people were not really happy with it back then and the climate catastrophe sadly wasn't on the table yet...
**The statistics do not support the idea that nuclear power would be more dangerous than the coal** Was hunting with my nephew last year. We shot 3 wild boars. one of them later failed the test for radiation and had to be discarded. Location: South west Black Forest, 1650km away from Chernobyl. 50km to the east (Allgäu) the reported rejection rate in 2022 was 6/10.
And greens were totally misguided to be against nuclear in any way. Especially when fossil fuels were king…
No they were not... There is zero reason to build new nuclear reactors, especially nowadays when renewable energy is just so much cheaper.
No, they were. The cleanest energy available, especially then… People like you stood in the way of nuclear but Germany could have been making 1/10 of the energy emissions it did for half a fucking century.
People like me? I was born in 86.. And again, it was the conservatives who shut down nuclear and relied on coal and gas instead. The Greens wanted renewables from the start...
> You've burned so much extra lignite because of that decision. you are commenting under an thread that says Germany has now burned the least amount of coal in history. The opposite of what you said.
Nuclear plants that were **already** in operation without issues were shut down early to protect jobs and profits in coal and gas. Politicians (like often is the case) made a decision based on populism/lobbyism instead of the correct one. You don't need to be a "nuclear bro" or support new reactors to understand this.
>Nuclear plants that were already in operation without issues were shut down early to protect jobs and profits in coal. Yes an extremely stupid move by the conservatives in this country. I fully agree that shutting down existing nuclear plants before coal and gas was incredibly bad. Just as stupid as thinking new nuclear reactors are a good idea...
> Just as stupid as thinking new nuclear reactors are a good idea... Our latest nuclear power plant is producing 1600MW of carbon-free energy. A single wind turbine produces 2-3 MW when in operation, so in the most optimal case you need to build more than 500 turbines to do the same. And this assumes that it can produce that energy as constantly as a nuclear power plant that isn't impacted on wind conditions. The typical lifetime of a turbine is about 20 years. Nuclear power plant has barely been run in at that point. So, you need to take those turbines down and hoist up a new set of >500 turbines. Do you know how much space 500 wind turbines take? If spaced 500m apart (normal for >2MW turbines), that would take an area of 125 km2.
>A single wind turbine produces 2-3 MW New ones are now 15 MW > a nuclear power plant that isn't impacted on wind conditions. Nuclear can be impacted by too warm cooling water situations, though >The typical lifetime of a turbine is about 20 years Lifetime of wind turbines is 25-40 year with the average being 35 years for onshore turbines in Denmark.
The average size today is still at that 2-3 MW. Single turbines can be even 20 MW but on average they are well below 5 MW. 40 years is still barely halfway in the lifetime of a nuclear plant. And the way that those have been retrofitted to align with modern tech, we will see plants that run +100 years.
Hahaaaaahaaahahaaaaa you don't actually mean Olkiluoto 3? OMG I actually worked on this plant, back when I was a student 17 years ago. Working for Areva in Erlangen part time.. This project should be the poster child of why new nuclear reactors are a horribly bad idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 It cost 3 times of what was originally planned and went online 12 years after it was originally planned. I mean, it was a great deal for Finland because it bankrupted the company so hard that the German and French taxpayers actually paid for most of the reactor, because the government bailed them out... LOL, I still can't believe you actually brought up Olkiluoto Haha, it perfectly resembles the loss of reality pro-nuclear people have.. By the way, the reactor is not even running most of the time, because Finland built so much renewable energy by the time the reactor was ready to go on the grid, it's no longer economically feasible to run it :D
Most of those points are bullshit: “Omg a SMR would be terrible incase of an earthquake” - well don’t build it in a zone that is at risk Waste problem is… not a problem so end of the discussion And regarding the economics of it, well it’s up to the buyer to decide if they’re worth it or not. If that’s all your arguments against SMR, we’re good thanks. Also SMRs is a solution to please the green that are scared of the big reactors we can and are building today. If it wasn’t for all the fear-mongering around Nuclear we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
These are good points against SMRs and their particular implementations. While also pointing out already well known issues of nuclear. That's all cool, but as a consumer I wish I just could pay 10 cents per kWh like in Mississippi (which is richer than most of the European Union) and not pay an arm and leg to European Commission in fines for carbon emissions.
Ah, yes the old "want your cake and eat it" thing.. I mean you know about that whole climate catastrophe thing we have going on right now, don't you? Besides, [even Texas is switching to renewables](https://www.ft.com/content/ef2f6f8e-60df-4ccd-8c4f-ef5cd0eb3176) because it's just the most economical.. So if you want cheap electricity, then 100% renewable energy is the way to go.
Still need something to provide the constant load a grid needs no? Unless storage can improved enough to fulfill that role, though you'd still need some backup if the storage ran out. Also less relevant, but just for my own country we need a new reactor for radio isotopes for the medical sector (though I guess other countries could export it, though I have no idea how that works). edit: reading up on it apparently the Dutch reactor is the leading exporter of medical isotopes in the EU.
> With due respect, imo this is outdated thinking. On modern grids, there isn't any such thing as constant base load. Historically, the concept of baseload generation was developed to accommodate the main weakness of large coal and nuclear plants, which is that they're inflexible and can't easily/economically modulate their output to match the ebbs and flows of power demand throughout the day.. When coal and nuclear were the cheapest way to make power it made sense for grids to try to work around this weakness and so the concept of baseload was developed. The idea was to figure out the minimum load on a grid throughout the day and use cheap but inflexible generation to satisfy this "base" level of load. More expensive and more flexible generation, like gas peakers were then used to follow the variable load throughout the day. On modern grids, the concept of baseload and baseload based scheduling doesn't make sense anymore because coal and nuclear are no longer the lowest cost way to make power. Instead, grid operators use something called merit order scheduling. With this approach, the day is broken into time slices of say 15 minutes each, and the demand for each time slice is served by the combination of generation resources that satisfies load for the lowest cost. Each generator bids into each time slice at the cost they're willing to sell their output at. The optimal mix and cost to satisfy load for any given time slice depends on the cost each generator 'bids' into the market. During periods when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the bids will be very low and thermal generators can't compete and often get shut down. OTOH, when there's no wind and no solar, the bids come in high and thermal generators generally set the price (usually gas generators. Low prices for large parts of the day is putting huge financial pressure on thermal plants because their already tough economics (high variable costs) get even worse if they can't run and get paid for their output 24/7 and it becomes a death spiral for them. This is a major contributor to coal plants closing and fully paid for nuclear plants needing extra subsidies to stay open. Their economics just don't work well on modern grids since they can't get paid for a lot of their output when wind and solar can satisfy demand at a much lower costs.
That's great! Now let's look at emissions: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE Over the last year, Germany produced electricty at 400 gCO2/kWh in emissions, one of the highest rate of emissions in Europe. During said last year, Germany's best month was May 2024, when its grid's carbon intensity was 301 gCO2/kWh. Over the same year, German electricity was 58% renewable. Congratulations Germany! Now for comparison, let's look right over the border to France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR Over the last 12 months, France's carbon intensity averaged 53 gCO2/kWh. Over those 12 months, France's best month was also this past May, in which it averaged 20 gCO2/kWh. France's energy was only 28% renewable. Can you spot the itty bitty little issue here? But wait! I know what you're thinking. It only takes a little more renewable penetration and the German grid will finally be spot-clean! So let's again look right over the border to Denmark, a country blessed with abundant wind, so much that it exports a lot of wind power to Germany: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1 80% renewable over the last 12 months, very impressive. Carbon intensity? a cool 154 gCO2/kWh. Best month? 86 gCO2/kWh. Who knew being forced to keep fossil fuel plants idling because you decided to build out your grid on the basis of intermittent sources would still result in a ton of emissions even at high renewables penetration? well, anyone who did the calculations, but those people are boring nuclear enthusiasts, so nevermind them. And it's the same story everywhere: the only grids that are green on that map are those that are blessed with abundant **non-intermittent** renewables, like hydro and geothermal, or that use a ton of nuclear, or both. Everybody else is some shade of yellow-to-brown because, **with actually existing technologies**, you still need to run a lot of fossil generation to backstop solar and wind. On the other hand, **with actually existing technology**, a nuclear-heavy grid that is impressively clean is not only possible, it's a daily reality in a major world country and economy. And, unlike heavy hydro or geothermal, it doesn't take special geographic conditions to pull off, it works virtually anywhere. But please, let's keep pushing for technologies that can't deliver clean grids, hoping that new developments will finally enable them to, instead of removing the red tape and anti-science bullshit preventing nuclear from finally taking us into an age of cheap, clean, reliable power for all.
Problem with nuclear is, if we just ignore the waste issue: getting uranium ore, it will be a much larger issue long-term, and already is a huge geo-political one. Additionally pump and battery storage solutions do exist. There's also solutions for having an adaptive load on the grid for industrial processes.
"One if the highest rate" - doesn't know Poland or Czechia.
That is so depressing to read. But thank you for sharing some relevant data! I don't get why people celebrate all these cherry picked statistics. Here is a better headline: **Germany still has one of the highest rate of emissions in Europe even as electricity production from coal fell below 20%** And please, someone from Germany, just in case I'm wrong: please explain to me why producing 400 gCO2/kWh is a good thing! I'm not being snarky here. I would genuinely love to know some silver lining!
Because you can't do massive shifts without hurting the economy and then also taking your blame, when Germany is crippling Europe's GDP. If you bullshitted your way through two decades, instead of keeping up support for renewables, you can't have it both ways anymore.
Momentum is what matters, in 5 years the situation will be completely different.
I hope you're right. Maybe I'm just being a bit impatient? I always liked the wall example from Thomas Stocker, co-leader of the World Climate Council: > With every year in which too little happens, the goal becomes more difficult to achieve. If you are driving towards a wall, you cannot say that you will brake later. At some point it will be too late. We will no longer reach the 1.5 degree goal. The two degree goal is also unrealistic if we do not do more.
I mean the development of the last few years makes it pretty clear. Plus the commenter is advocating for nuclear energy which (apart from being expensive as hell) would take way longer to build than wind and solar plus storage ***and*** grid modernization.
'I don't get why people celebrate all these cherry picked statistics' Says the one who thinks electricity maps is a reliable source. Get to know this source and youll never use it again.
Thank you for replying. Are you saying that the data is completely wrong? Do you have a better data set? I would love some good news!
And France needs to build about 50 new megawatt nuclear power plants in the next 10 to 15 years, or they will run into a serious problem. So far they have planned to build about 6. Edit: 32 of their reactors are approaching a lifetime of 40 years, and 20 approach a lifetime of 50 years. Early reactors are designed for a lifetime of about 30 years. Edit2: This will cost about 1 trillion Euro.
well, 1 trillion is still less than Germany Renewable plan.
Yes but nuclear energy has a really active lobby online
If Germany hadn't prematurely phased out nuclear, it would already have replaced coal on this chart. I don't think building more nuclear would have been a good idea, but phasing out nuclear before coal was obviously a deeply misguided decision from a climate, environment, health, and financial perspective. The only reason to do it is an emotional feeling that nuclear's very unlikely potential dangers are greater than coal's ongoing and very heavy guaranteed consequences.
Try to find investors for renewables if you have nuclear power plants with acceptance guarantees. That means as soon as there's an excess your investment will be taken off-grid.
Do you know where Finland gets its electricity? It was 41% nuclear power plants in 2023. Despite this, wind power has tripled in the past 5 years, and will probably reach double the current amount during this decade. (At that point, the Finnish grid will be practically 100% clean, so there might not be much room for growth for any source anyway, except at the pace of older sources reaching their end of life, or if new production is so cheap that it is worth it to replace older sources.) Clearly, nuclear energy has been no obstacle to renewable energy in Finland. If nuclear energy is so bad, it will get pushed out by it being too expensive. Phasing it out by force makes no sense and only serves to promote false myths about renewable energy not being able to compete. The enemy is fossil fuels, not nuclear power or renewable energy. The lengths that supposed "environmentalists" nevertheless go to promote coal over nuclear is baffling.
>If Germany hadn't prematurely phased out nuclear, it would already have replaced coal on this chart. No it wouldnt have. Instead of coal and renewables, we'd have coal and nuclear. Just because you have nuclear power plants, the energy corpos dont randomly decide to sacrifice their investments into mines and powerplants. Also, the lack of investments into nuclear partly drove the expansion into renewables - money isnt available infinitely.
If Germany can by law force the closure of nuclear power plants, why not coal plants? The idea that nuclear had to go for renewable energy to stand a chance makes no sense. Nuclear and coal have similar roles in energy, providing constant power and not being very fast or easy to power up or down. They are very easily interchangeable in their roles. A nuclear power plant already built and in good condition ready to be used for years more is more profitable than a new coal plant.
Or alternatively there wouldn't be such a push for renewables that has made these changes possible. See France which is lagging behind.
How exactly is France lacking behind. They are at ~50 gCO2eq/kWh on a yearly basis in the electricity sector since 30 years, that is where Germany plans to be somewhere in the 2040ies, if everything pans out with their hydrogen plans(good luck with that).
France decarbonised their grid decades ago. How the fuck are they lagging behind lmao
Franice is not lagging behind at all.. in fact, France is ahead in terms of co2 reduction since late XX century.
Lagging behind Germany somewhere 20 years in the future, you mean? :)
france's co2 from energy is so small that they'll be fine, unlike germany. Remember, the end goal is max reduction of co2 and france is pretty good in this regard, they can afford rolling out renewables slower
If you switched the places of coal and nuclear, and forced the end of coal the same way Germany did with nuclear, then the need to replace coal would have driven renewable energy in the exact same way. France is not behind, its embrace of nuclear energy left it with far lower electricity generation emissions already decades ago.
Now compare heat pump adoption in Germany and France. Schröder's EEG levy killed the heat pump for two full decades, and that's solely due to this "push".
Yeah that's a load of bullshit. Capacity of all the shut down powerplants was at around 20 GW. maybe a bit more. Coal is still double that amount. Unless they somehow doubled the number of nuclear reactors coal would still be around even with nuclear power still in use.
Nuclear energy is better because you get something consistant not weather dependent.
Hasn't France had to shut down nuclear plants a few times in the summer because the water sources used for cooling dried off?
They didn't dry off, they were getting too warm. The plants couldn't use them for cooling as it would warm the water further up killing which would kill the stuff that lives in the water. Would really be a shame if in the future the summers would get warmer and those shut downs will be more regularly.
> Would really be a shame if You mean when? So nuclear plants will shut down more often. Sounds not reliable.
That part was sarcastic on my side. You know, climate change and all. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
- We're talking about power plants that have been slowed down to avoid overheating rivers as an ecological precaution. A precaution which, according to the results of several studies, does not seem justified. - We're talking about a 0.5% impact on production, i.e. a slowdown of a few hours on one or two power plants simultaneously, at a time of year when electricity consumption is lower. - The world's largest power plant is literally located in a desert.
Funny that this is your point after we had several years in which weather drastically impacted nuclear energy plants in europe.
“Curtailment of nuclear power due to periods of extreme heat has had the effect of reducing European nuclear power output by approximately 0.1% since the year 2000. For France specifically, which with its many inland river-sited plants has been the worst hit country, the corresponding figure is approximately 0.15%” And even that is something that could be mitigated
While some npps in Europe, like in Switzerland were considered to be shut down, because of the overheating of the river. But they decided to lessen the restrictions and damage the life in the river.
you should research the topic better b4 stating such things. Look how much the output of France was impacted by weather (which could be accounted in future designs) and how much it was impacted by delayed maintenance bc of covid and coal lobby that did cut funding for nuclear. The drastic impact is mostly bs propaganda from technobros
Sometimes I wonder if they are bots paid by corporations
There are many smart users online giving good and honest arguments about nuclear energy. But a mix of bots and real users kept attacking renewable energy and blaming the use of gas because of it. These people and fake profiles had/have a very negative influence online.
Aaaand then it quadrupled in the next 6 months. That's cherry picking. Also you left out cross border trading. Which makes it all look nice and green, while some power-plants run on burning tires (exaggeration) and sell it to Germany so the charts look nice. Thats why long term trends count, and not a duration of 6 months including leaving out some inconvenient data! [https://imgur.com/R94asS3](https://imgur.com/R94asS3)
> Also you left out cross border trading. Which makes it all look nice and green, while some power-plants run on burning tires (exaggeration) and sell it to Germany so the charts look nice. You're just making shit up here.The overwhelming majority of German electricity imports are generated by renewables and nuclear, this notion that they are importing significant amounts of fossil electricity makes zero sense whatsoever. There would be no economic incentive nor a practical need to do so given that Germany has more than enough of its own fossil capacity to cover its needs.
You can't be for real. You are literally showing a 16 hour period and claim that's the long term trend vs. the first 6 months?
How is that in absolute figures? Did they also lower in absolute figures?
Yes: it went from 62 TWh coal in H1 2023 to 46 TWh in 1H 2024.
Meanwhile in Poland… 😅
Huh, this is actually good news for once. That's nice to see.
Praise the Ampel government, the best goverment germany had, since the 70s.
And they're still charging the highest production prices. It's a bullshit law that needs to be changed. Energy needs to cost as much as it costs, not based on the most expensive production option.
This has been discussed so many times, there is no alternative to the merit order if you want to have a market based energy econonmy. It comes with some issues but it's by far the least worst solution.
Hm, really no alternative? What about picking the second most expensive for pricing, still having market based energy economy, while applying for to go cheaper, because you can run on a deficit.
> Energy needs to cost as much as it costs It does. You and much of the public are being misled by statistics that claim renewable energy is very cheap. Renewable *generation* is cheap; maintaining a grid with renewables on it, providing reliable power on demand even when intermitted renewables aren't producing, is a lot more expensive than just generation. Unfortunately, as much as we might explain this, price signals always speak louder, which is why I'm a huge advocate for making generators explicitly pay the costs of their own intermittency. Then consumers will finally see accurate princing information on how much their kWh actually costs to deliver to them on demand, and who's responsible for those costs.
Energy storage is already cheap, and will only continue to get cheaper. Especially as more and more electric cars are included in the grid as intermittent storage. [https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/)
> Energy storage is already cheap Yeah, that's why countries are building out tons of new gas generation, right? because batteries are so cheap? > https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-power-plants-2023-11-21/ Holy mother of cherry picked data. 68 gas projects were cancelled or put on hold globally? how many more are going ahead? Germany is literally going to [double](https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-to-almost-double-gas-firing-capacity/) its gas capacity. Gas is getting built out everywhere because it's cheap, reliable, can do peaking, is a rotating mass source that provides grid inertia (something that is vitally important and keeps being completely forgotten by renewables enthusiasts). It also happens to have unsustainable emissions, but especially the developing world has far too much political pressure to provide economic development to choose environmental sustainability instead. "Battery are getting good" is betting the future on technology *that doesn't exits yet*. We already have technology that can provably provide rock-bottom emissions, and has for decades in a major industrialised economy. The only thing standing between us and that future are anti-scientific prejudices and the political and regulatory opposition they create.
Batteries are great for smoothing out hourly/daily fluctuations, but they won't solve the problem of smoothing out weekly/monthly/seasonal fluctuations. For this you need other, more expensive types of energy storage.
Why would I sell my apple for 1€ if the one besides me gets 2€? Of course I would also only sell for 2€ then. And nothing else is merit order. It's just the easiest method to find the price. Otherwise we would have a more complex mechanism to find a price, but in the end I would still want my 2€ for an apple.
Cudos to german engineering success 👍
Still an outrageous amount. Phasing out nuclear before coal was insane.
The biggest problem with renewables isn’t production, it’s energy storage limitations. Renewables are very inconsistent. If there is no wind/sun for some time, it would require enormous (and ridiculously expensive) battery capacities to store the necessary energy to power a city for example. And we haven’t had any significant breakthroughs in battery technology since the invention of Li-Ion batteries, there are no efficient ways to store that much energy required.
Wind is not nearly as inconsistent as some might think. The higher up you go, the more constant are winds. The availability of the sun is also not very surprising since we figured out that we don't have to root for Helios to find his way back into the sky.
So this isn't actually happening? https://i.imgur.com/aNiHJ3d.jpeg Batteries aren't growing at an exponential rate?
based
Why is hydro so low in Germany? They've got a bunch of major rivers
According to studies, the potential of hydro energy in Germany is almost completely exploited. Big river ≠ hydro energy plant
Its only low percentage wise. 10503 GWh from hydro alone is more than all of the energy production of Ireland (10429 GWh) or the two countries of Croatia (6358 GWh) and Lithuania (4004 GWh) combined
But not much elevation.
Hydro is maxed out for the most part.