Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#81

Post by shawabawa3 » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

PurpleRamen wrote: post #38

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Not really. Coal was just a temporary replacement, and mostly not for nuclear plants.

Temporary or not, coal is being burned to produce electricity in Germany

> and mostly not for nuclear plants.

electricity is fungible.

It doesn't matter what electricity the coal is intending to replace, as long as _any_ coal is being turned into electricity, that's coal that could not have been burned if a nuclear plant was generating that electricity instead

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#82

Post by martinald » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

Taig wrote: post #55

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time b…

It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest).

There is absolutely no reason the (ex-west) German nuclear power plants could not have been life extended. They were extremely reliable and about 10GWe of modern PWRs were finished in the late 80s. They could have easily be extended to at least 2030 had there been the political will at not a huge amount of cost. The RoI with current/previous high energy prices would have probably been 100 fold.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#83

Post by Aachen » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #33

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany is second only to Russia in Europe for coal powered electricity. Followed by Poland. No wonder this map usually has the worst air over those countries: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

I see more yellow streaks in France and BE/NL than in Germany. Not sure what you mean about there being bad air in Germany

An averaging feature would be nice instead of having to compare hundreds of potential outliers manually, though

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#84

Post by cubefox » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

lars_francke wrote: post #68

Glawen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does OP need to provide a source? Why you don't look for the info yourself? It is common knowledge in Europe that Germany shut down its nuclear plant (15/04/23 the last one), and they compensated with a lot of coal this winter.

"This winter" the nuclear plants were still running. So...

Most were already shut down.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#85

Post by Kuinox » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

thiago_fm wrote: post #67

mutlimind wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not viable, because renewables do not provide basic load for the grid. It is "stochastical" energy. There are no economical viable ways to store that "random" energy. There are several times in the year, where there is not enough wind and sun to feed the grid.

There are solutions being developed to store energy which will address the grid issue.

Existing solution is hydro storage. It's massive infrastructure and there is a long way to go.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#86

Post by KptMarchewa » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #33

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany is second only to Russia in Europe for coal powered electricity. Followed by Poland. No wonder this map usually has the worst air over those countries: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

We have much bigger coal share in Poland... and guess what we're doing to phase it out? We're building nuclear reactors.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#87

Post by ffgjgf1 » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

Taig wrote: post #55

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time b…

> for good reasons

Like what? Surely nuclear is much cheaper than coal if we take at least some of the externalities into account?

Carbon emissions are arguably not even the worst aspect of burning coal…

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#88

Post by melling » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:52 AM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #33

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany is second only to Russia in Europe for coal powered electricity. Followed by Poland. No wonder this map usually has the worst air over those countries: https://aqicn.org/map/europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

But… but…but the statistics… say 57%

1.5C is guaranteed within a decade.

People need to quit telling themselves silly narratives.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#89

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:53 AM UTC

thiago_fm wrote: post #67

mutlimind wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not viable, because renewables do not provide basic load for the grid. It is "stochastical" energy. There are no economical viable ways to store that "random" energy. There are several times in the year, where there is not enough wind and sun to feed the grid.

There are solutions being developed to store energy which will address the grid issue.

Failing to provide details smells a lot like „wonder weapons will turn the war around“. There is currently no battery tech that is remotely economical, and other more obscure solutions haven’t made a lot of impact either, presumably for economic reasons too.

Re: Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

#90

Post by Findeton » Wed, Jul 05, 2023, 11:53 AM UTC

Taig wrote: post #55

Garvi wrote: post #4

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it's nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants. Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Germany actually replaced the nuclear energy with wind & solar. The argument that remains is that instead of phasing out nuclear, reducing coal would have been preferred. The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution. The price Germany pays for this is higher carbon emissions for the time b…

Renewable energy is unpredictable, thus you need a backup source of energy for when there's no wind, sunlight or rain. It's yet unfeasible to store large amounts of energy unfortunately so that means using either natural gas or coal, because you need to be able to rapidly increase/reduce/regulate the energy output. It's coal at the moment for Germany and that means more pollution and dirty politicians that don't care about the environment, just about votes. Actually nuclear power plants can nowadays also regulate their output fast enough, but they got rid of those.