111–120 of 126 posts
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>is happily importing russian gas in the meantime… No, its not.
It’s down a lot, but oil + gas imports are still to the tune of 6 billion euros a month https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/13/germany-r...
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Currently mostly coal (mostly lignite) with a little imported LNG for base load and peaks. Wind and solar if available. Rest is imported nuclear, coal and other power from neighboring countries. Longer term, a switch to 100% renewables is planned, which is supposed to take 20 years. However, plans are coming along too slowly, especially regarding storage and transmission lines. But also necessary ramp-up of wind and…
Yeah, 100% renewable energy for such a large and developed country. How are they gonna do it, by exterminating 50% of the population?
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This was not decided by the greens only. From the article: > Yet the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 caused German sentiments to shift strongly against atomic energy once more, and Ms. Merkel abruptly reversed course. Her government passed a law to phase out Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors by the end of 2022. Similarly in the neighbouring Austria, nuclear power is prohibited in the constitution, not by a po…
> in the neighbouring Austria, nuclear power is prohibited Which is funny, because we actually built a pretty much complete nuclear power plant, Zwentendorf. It‘s now a unique museum. A vote of just 50.47 % ruined our radiant future... Also we do have one research reactor left right in the city. I was blessed enough to visit it once.
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> in the neighbouring Austria, nuclear power is prohibited Which is funny, because we actually built a pretty much complete nuclear power plant, Zwentendorf. It‘s now a unique museum. A vote of just 50.47 % ruined our radiant future... Also we do have one research reactor left right in the city. I was blessed enough to visit it once.
> A vote of just 50.47 % ruined our radiant future... There really should be a rule that important decisions can't pass with a tiny majority
There are at least two major problems with such a rule:
(1) On an important question, “yes” and “no” are both important decisions.
(2) Who decides what is “important”?
You can make a rule that is closer to “you can’t make specific kinds of deviations from the status quo without a supermajority vote”, but that’s…very different from “important decisions”.
This is one of the stupidest things any country has voluntarily done.
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> Fast forward ten years and the use of coal is at a record low, the use of gas has not really changed in a meaningful way and overall the situation has improved significantly on its own Now imagine how much lower it would be had they kept the nuclear plants.
Then why hasn't the percentage of fossil fuels in the US gone down so much lower since it didn't shutdown its nuclear plants?
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Fair. The whole point was that gas was supposed to be the "Plan B" bridge to ensure flex and resiliency during the cutover to renewables. Then they did away with a big component of "Plan A" in nuclear after Fukushima, which promoted Russian gas to an essential component of their transition energy mix. At the end of the day, if Germany hadn't stopped building nuclear or decommissioned reactors, Ukraine probably wouldn…
> Ukraine probably wouldn't have been invaded. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to, and Germany had nothing to do with that.
The belief that Germany would rather sacrifice Ukraine than lose Russian gas would have been less plausible if 30% nuclear energy had been retained.
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Fair. The whole point was that gas was supposed to be the "Plan B" bridge to ensure flex and resiliency during the cutover to renewables. Then they did away with a big component of "Plan A" in nuclear after Fukushima, which promoted Russian gas to an essential component of their transition energy mix. At the end of the day, if Germany hadn't stopped building nuclear or decommissioned reactors, Ukraine probably wouldn…
I think it's not that far fetched to assume Russia had big influence in shaping the anti nuclear narrative and "building relationships" with key politicians.
Russia surely nudged, but if Germany hadn't already been trending in that direction then it wouldn't have stuck.
Germany will shut down its three remaining nuclear reactors by April 16, ending nuclear power generation in Europe's largest economy. Germany's move, which marks the end of a decades-long fight by environmentalists, makes it an outlier in much of the industrialised world, including Britain, France, Finland, and Poland, which are expanding their nuclear energy programs as part of their plans to reach ambitious climate targets. The decision comes at a time when Europe is grappling with the question of how to secure enough energy to drive its economies and keep homes warm while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some scientists and Nobel Prize laureates from across the globe have urged Germany to reconsider its decision to phase out nuclear power, citing it as a valuable alternative to power plants spewing greenhouse gases. However, Robert Habeck, the economy minister, insists that Germany can manage the nuclear exit, stating that the country's energy system will be structured differently, relying on 80% renewable energies by 2030.