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

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

#101

Post by PurpleRamen »

__tmk__ wrote: post #78
PurpleRamen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Coal is 30% currently: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06... and I don't see this going away soon. The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal. In 1990, nuclear power plants were producing 153TWh in Germany. Today, coal+nuclear together is producing about as much.

> Coal is 30% currently: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06... and I don't see this going away soon.

5 years ago it was significant higher. And in 5 years it will significant lower again. Germany is in a process of change.

> The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal.

Which is wrong. Nuclear can't replace gas, which coal is replacing. And Nuclear plants have no fuel anymore and lacking up-to-date certification. There was zero chance to continue running since 2019, even if we ignore all the other problems.

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

#102

Post by DrBazza »

Aachen wrote: post #83
DrBazza wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Generally when there's a high pressure system over Europe, the bad air stays trapped over Germany and Poland.

Even right now you can see that Germany is about 10pts higher than the rest of Europe, and Poland another 10pts on top of that. It's a shame that map doesn't have historic data as it would be easier to see.

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

#103

Post by PurpleRamen »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #81
PurpleRamen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> electricity is fungible.

Which is irrelevant. Electricity is not the main purpose of coal.

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

#104

Post by cubefox »

locallost wrote: post #91
cubefox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely were counterfactually. If nuclear power hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.

They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Nuclear and coal are getting continuously replaced by renewables. Coal end date is set to either 2030 or 2038 (I forget). The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.

> They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before.

They were counterfactually. This means that if nuclear hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.

> The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.

No, people should complain about Germany. Nuclear power can replace coal. Which is why France produces much less CO2 than Germany:

https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg

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

#105

Post by ffgjgf1 »

locallost wrote: post #91
cubefox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely were counterfactually. If nuclear power hadn't been shut down, much less coal energy would have been needed.

They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before. Nuclear and coal are getting continuously replaced by renewables. Coal end date is set to either 2030 or 2038 (I forget). The country people should be complaining about is Poland. It's the worst emitter of co2 in Europe and it will not do anything about it for 10-20 years because it wants to build nuclear plants.

You can build both nuclear and solar and wind at the same time.

Poland will stick to coal because of local economic interests, it has nothing to do with nuclear.

> They were not, there is even less coal used since nuclear plants were shut down than before.

Well.. there is no reason why there shouldn’t be zero coal use before anyone starts shutting sown nuclear power plants. For one thing the issues with nuclear waste storage are a joke compared to the radiation and other pollution continuously emitted by burning coal…

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

#106

Post by neuronic »

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.

This is a misinterpretation of what happened and this comment is just weird.

Coal has been added after nuclear was stopped but what you said is not happening at all. Look at the actual data instead of random Internet comments and populist articles by biased journalists:

https://imgur.com/9GLhuSs

Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

While lignite was in fact re-added, Germany only slowed the reduction of overall coal power and did not stop or reverse it as constantly proclaimed by commenters who care more about politics than engineering.

So Germany displaced nuclear mostly by renewable energy - WHILE ONLY SLOWING THE REDUCTION OF COAL when they added lignite. So still less coal than before, just not as fast as before.

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

#107

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

TomK32 wrote: post #93
Aachen wrote: post #8

Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish. This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be started in 2024 was dropped again, and they're also still debating about starting to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030? I also still see stick…

Heating is one thing we have tackle, but also transportation which uses up 27.1% of energy in German. Individual transportation should be a main target, we would all shift from cars to public transport or bicycles. About 40% of distances driven with cars are shorter than 5 kilometers, a distance that's perfect for a bicycle. On top of that, car owners tend to underestimate the cost of their cars[1] [0] https://www.um…

> Heating is one thing we have tackle

we have _to_ tackle or we have tackle_d_?

duh ...

--

i am german and i find sloppy use of language annoying especially if it invites orthogonal interpretation. people should reread what they write publicly and then fix it if necessary.

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

#108

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

>Keeping them active or even building new reactors of that kind is not an economically viable solution.

Only reason nuclear energy is not viable is the people pushing against it, which means less nuclear plants are being built and prices skyrocketing.

If people would have pushed for nuclear energy like they push for wind and solar, then we would have no coal or gas burning plants by now.

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

#109

Post by neuronic »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #80
Taig wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you could leave nuclear, and "replace" lignite with wind and solar instead, you actually replaced nuclear with lignite. >The decision to phase out nuclear has long been made (for good reasons). No, it was made for bad 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 being until re…

Your comment is wrong and malicious and looking at the data proves you wrong.

Using lignite only slowed the reduction of coal, nuclear was almost completely replaced by renewables.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...

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

#110

Post by ffgjgf1 »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #60
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.

Just that those things have no relation to each other. Coal is used to replace gas, not nuclear plants. And AFAIK in mid of April there is no winter any more anyway. The question is valid, as there is a huge amount of misinformation going around those topics.

> have no relation to each other.

How? Surely you wouldn’t need to burn as much coal if nuclear plants were still running?

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