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

ise.fraunhofer.de

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

#171

Post by rasz »

the-dude wrote: post #115
sparkling wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so obsessed with "solar roadways" or "solar train tracks"? This is a joke, a gimmick, it makes absolutely no sense. Well, except for the startups that are getting massive subsidies and grants for these clown projects. There are still millions of open-space square meters all over the country. Think of flat-roof warehouses, supermarkets, parking facilities and more. Those places are easy to access, easy…

Most of the roofs you mention are not built to support load.

Thats why they are dismantled every year just before winder and rebuild after last snow melts.

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

#172

Post by iSnow »

looping__lui wrote: post #42
newyankee wrote: post #3

I think renewable energy disruption is happening faster than many can fathom. A few breakthroughs in storage technology and things might actually turn into optimism from Climate fears in 1 or 2 decades. Hopefully entrenched interests do not let free market disrupt them this time.

Bit not in the way people would anticipate. According to the modeling of the Fraunhofer (base assumption), we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay), double renewables to eventually achieve twice the carbon footprint of France by 2030. The base load is so high in Germany and renewables are so unreliable, that we need >100% installed capacity from “conventional” sources. The storage and “smart grid” is not re…

>we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay)

Notably, green gas, not fossil gas. You can call that conventional, but it's not adding CO2 emissions. According to their study, the CO2 factor would fall from 460g/kWh in 2020 to 150 in 2030 and between 3 and 9 in 2050. You can't just go "meh, twice as much as France" and ignore that the scenario starts at 15x France.

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

#173

Post by ZeroGravitas »

looping__lui wrote: post #42
newyankee wrote: post #3

I think renewable energy disruption is happening faster than many can fathom. A few breakthroughs in storage technology and things might actually turn into optimism from Climate fears in 1 or 2 decades. Hopefully entrenched interests do not let free market disrupt them this time.

Bit not in the way people would anticipate. According to the modeling of the Fraunhofer (base assumption), we will need to double our capacity from gas (yay), double renewables to eventually achieve twice the carbon footprint of France by 2030. The base load is so high in Germany and renewables are so unreliable, that we need >100% installed capacity from “conventional” sources. The storage and “smart grid” is not re…

Gas generation capacity is different from GHG and other pollutants caused by actually burning fossil gas. Don't be fooled by people implying they are the same.

And Germany is actually a world leader in capturing biogas, which has negative GHG emissions even after being burnt.

Having said that, Germany still burns black and brown coal so a switch to more gas instead would be a positive for them. They'd have plenty of supply if they shift to heat pumps for heating and decarbonise industry currently using the rest.

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

#174

Post by sofixa »

mhandley wrote: post #94
sparkling wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because electricity is only one part of the overall energy usage. Heating is still ~75% fossil-based (oil, gas).

Yes, but there's little point in electrifying heating until you have a cleaner grid. Right now, the marginal source of power in Germany is coal and in the UK is mostly gas (occasionally coal). If you switch your heating to electric heating, that's how the electricity would be generated. With gas as the marginal source, if you switch from a modern condensing gas boiler to an air-source heat pump with a COP of 2.5, you…

> but there's little point in electrifying heating until you have a cleaner grid

That's not true. Both endeavours are long - if you wait to start electrifying heating until the grid is fully decarbonised, you'll be waiting for a decade before starting another decade-long thing. If both are done in parallel it sill, of course, be much faster.

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

#175

Post by Moldoteck »

jskrablin wrote: post #133
TomK32 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, targeting individual transport with inefficient public transport and bicycles while restarting abandoned coal power plants and abandoning running nuclear power plants is going to work wonderfully indeed.

public transport can be efficient if done correctly and funded accordingly (Japan, Switzerland)

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

#176

Post by JanSt »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #107
TomK32 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

eagerly waiting for you to respond in German

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

#177

Post by adev_ »

lopis wrote: post #138
cubefox wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's.. complicated. Nuclear is super clean at the consumption site, but not super clean at the mining site [0]. It's almost certainly not complicated. The CO2 produced by mining uranium is irrelevant compared to the CO2 produced by burning coal fuel. > And then there's the problem that France's access to cheap uranium is a relic of extractive colonialism, and these countries don't exactly see the fair profits from…

It's complicated in the political sense. They are spelunking former colonies to meet green energy targets, while those same countries struggle to progress.

> It's complicated in the political sense. They are spelunking former colonies to meet green energy targets, while those same countries struggle to progress.

It is wrong and a lie. Most uranium bought by (EDF) France lately come from Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and Ouzbekistan. Definitively not countries you can name as "Colonies".

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

#178

Post by Moldoteck »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #86
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...

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

wow, didn't know Poland is building nuclear

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

#179

Post by locallost »

cubefox wrote: post #104
locallost wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, p…

People should complain about emissions and the lack of emission reduction. If Germany is producing a lot more than France, and this concerns you, you should complain even more bitterly about Poland because their emissions are 1) 2x as bad as Germany 2) in contrast go Germany they are not going down since the country is dreaming of nuclear energy.

Renewables can and do replace coal, as they obviously did in Germany. It does not really matter if you are ideologically aligned with another energy source, for whatever reason.

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