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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

#191

Post by Moldoteck »

Findeton wrote: post #90
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…

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…

it's possible to store huge amounts of energy with hydro, but at that point nuclear is not that bad in terms of price and nr of people killed by nuclear vs hydro accidents, so again Germany fkd up

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

DeathArrow wrote: post #167
Taig wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons why people might be pushing against nuclear: - high electricity generation costs - "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant" - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can? - Unsolved long-term waste storage location - Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society - We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the…

Those are mainly fake.

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by jwr »

Taig wrote: post #170
jskrablin wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Germany gained is more pollution, higher CO2 emissions and a lot of hopium that current energy fubar will somehow be resolved sometimes in the unspecified future using semi specified technology (there is no large scale energy storage solution available for renewables and it will stay like this for some years to come). Shutting down nuclear was a political decision, fueled by pure ideology (and some Russian help…

The European electricity market is working quite well, imports and exports are expected to happen. Countries prefer to import electricity when it is cheaper than producing it themselves. Germany has more than enough capacity installed to handle its energy needs (even if a lot of this is still fossil). Germany does not have an "often unstable electricity grid", not at all. That information is simply wrong.

In other words, shutting down nuclear plants means a) replacing the energy generation with coal (mostly lignite), or b) importing energy from other countries, which generate it from coal (mostly lignite) like Poland.

Importing will likely be "cheap", because we all agree to collectively pretend that externalities like CO2 emissions or catastrophic pollution from coal plants are not a thing.

Can't see how any of these options are good.

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

#194

Post by smat »

cubefox wrote: post #70
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 why Germany produces almost 10 times as much CO2 per kWh as France. https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg It's mind boggling.

At the same time France had to buy loads of electricity from Germany in the last year because several nuclear plants had to shut down due to a) maintenance problems and b) low rivers that could not provide sufficient cooling.

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

#195

Post by PurpleRamen »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #110
PurpleRamen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nuclear plants in Germany only deliver electricity, and only where the grid is connected. But coal is used also used for heat and chemical processes, and outside the grid. No source of electricity can cover that yet in a short timeframe. And even if we are just talking about electricity in grid-connected locations, with the high cost of nuclear plants, it makes more sense to just buy it from others, and wait until new renewables sources were added to the grid, and long term build other replacements for heat and the chemical processes.

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

#196

Post by WA »

roenxi wrote: post #123

Germany's energy consumption per capita has dropped about 20% since its 1980s peak and has been trending down fairly sharply since 2007 [0]. AfD is polling extremely well on the back of a "stop this madness" environmental platform. German renewable energy policies have been a failure at securing human prosperity. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...

> German renewable energy policies have been a failure at securing human prosperity.

Bullshit. That chart looks the same for many developed nations. A strong downtrend. Just a few examples: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...

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

#197

Post by Taig »

DeathArrow wrote: post #167
Taig wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons why people might be pushing against nuclear: - high electricity generation costs - "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant" - If Japan can't handle it securely, why do we think we can? - Unsolved long-term waste storage location - Cost for long-term storage must additionally covered by the society - We are producing radioactive waste that must be securely stored for thousands of years to feed the…

Those are mainly fake.

Some of them are emotional, sure. But what is fake about them?

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

#198

Post by eldaisfish »

iSnow wrote: post #111
Aachen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is my tech bubble, but try to find a country with higher Linux/PGP/OpenStreetMap use. I am still trying to put my finger on what the culture difference is precisely, but also outside of tech there's more thinking about what the right/correct/fair thing to do is, even if that brings greater net harm in the end. Example: closing down nuclear because it's not a perfect solution and has risks and waste (ignori…

With all due respect, renewables are not decades away, they are at a major inflection point right now. While I deplore the shuttering of Germany's NPPs, nuclear would not have been a solution to the decarbonization challenge, as the times to build NPPs and the costs are prohibitive. Renewables are the cheapest source of energy right here and now, we should invest way more into researching grid-scale storage solutions…

Renewables are the cheapest source of energy PROVIDED the cost of providing energy when they are generating zero energy is paid for by someone else. This argument keeps coming up and is entirely wrong and very misleading.

Renewable energy due it its intermittent nature creates a problem and does nothing to solve that problem. The cost of that solution must be factored into the cost of energy from renewable generation.

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

#199

Post by locallost »

DeathArrow wrote: post #129
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.

What's wrong in building nuclear power plants? And before teaching lessons to Eastern European countries, remember that the West had 50 years after the WWII to build up the economy and infrastructure. It would be only fair to let Eastern European countries to develop for the same period, without demanding them pay the costs of higher energy prices.

What's wrong in terms of emissions is that they take forever to plan and build. During which time, Poland will continue to produce its electricity almost exclusively from coal. These are real emissions that can't be made up for once the nuclear plants are finished. The alternative is to replace a lot of the coal really fast with renewables. Further more, it's cheaper so you can replace a lot more than with nuclear.

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

#200

Post by kataklasm »

JanSt wrote: post #155
cubefox wrote: post #62

Grams of CO2 per kWh: France: 43 Germany: 398 https://abload.de/img/img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg The reason? Germans hate nuclear and prefer coal as a stable energy source.

Most of the population changed their mind and is pro-nuclear. But sadly the only party really supporting nuclear energy is the AfD, which is a far-right party most would never consider to vote for. Nuclear phase-out is part of the Green party identity; the CDU had Merkel going against nuclear after Fukushima and can't really go back, the FDP agreed, the SPD is also against it.

I'm afraid you're not realizing the impact of your echo chamber. The bulk of german voting power lies in the age group of 40 to 70, measured by voter turnout per age group. People aged 45 and up felt the imoact of the Chernobyl disaster, whole forests in Germany are still not allowed to be foraged for mushrooms because of ground contamination. Those people have their fear of nuclear power ingrained in them and as usual there's not a lot you can do to convince them. As such "Most of the population changed their mind and is pro nuclear." is definitely not true, at least not right now and I doubt it will ever change.

And as we've seen recently in the state of Thuringia, AFD has garnered the top with 35%, that's far from "most people would never consider to vote for".

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