> "If you take coal and gas together and look at overall fossil based generation, it declined and continues to decline."
In absolute terms the combined capacity of coal and gas is the same now as it was in 2010. It has fallen as a share of the total because output has increased.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/p...
> "The unspoken implication of nuclear proponents is that Germany started putting out more CO2 because they shut down nuclear. The reality is that there was a continuous decline in fossil fuel related emissions related to electricity production."
I am not a partisan in this argument. But clearly that's a strawman. The argument is that if Germany hadn't taken its nuclear capacity offline then it would have been in a better position to more rapidly decarbonise its energy mix. In one simple sense that's true: nuclear energy is clean, and so by getting rid of it you need to add more clean energy that you would have otherwise to decarbonise. That is, Germany would not have had to increase gas imports at the rate it did, and would not have had to drag out its coal phase-out.
Showing that fossil fuels have decreased in relative terms as a share of the energy mix does not show that it would not have fallen faster with nuclear online.
> "There are no international deadlines other than what was agreed at Cop 26, which thanks to China and India avoids any big explicit commitments."
I was writing in a hurry. I meant that the most respected models of the pathways to net zero tell us that coal needs to be eradicated across advanced economies by 2030. The IEA's Net Zero scenario, which is widely taken as a benchmark by policymakers around the world, says just that. Everyone in Germany knew their original 2038 phase-out date flouted their responsibilities.
