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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

#341

Post by fxtentacle »

ulfw wrote: post #312
fxtentacle wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to add Singapore because they buy their excellent MRT trains from Germany.

Not one single kind of rolling stock in Singapore's MRT is made in Germany. Why do you just claim random things like that as if it were true? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Singapore_MRT_and_LRT_...

Literally the 2nd item on your list is C651 made by Siemens which has design and headquarters in Munich, Germany.

Also a quick Kagi search could have pointed you at "Siemens Mobility awarded contract to deliver CBTC on Singapore’s 8th & longest fully-underground MRT Cross Island Line" ;)

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

#342

Post by fsflover »

locallost wrote: post #340
fsflover wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do praise Poland for building nuclear plants. This is the only existing solution to the climate catastrophe. Also, it's one of the the most safe energy sources. This is not "simply false". This is effectively true, even though it might not be the intention. There are many similar discussions about it on HN. See for example this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35819870 .

So Germany uses less coal continuously and plans to stop using it 2030. You say: terrible and too slow. Poland uses a lot more coal, has no real plan to reduce it, and wants to continue at the same level for the next 15 years or so. You say: awesome job. You can't be serious.

I said I praised Poland for building nuclear plants. I didn't say they did everything perfectly.

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

#343

Post by JanSt »

_ph_ wrote: post #298
JanSt wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would have been NO road blocks for extending the lifetime. Westinghouse offered fuel rods which would have been delivered in time. They had all the normal maintenance (every 2 years) and were in pristine condition, much better than most other nuclear reactors on this planet. Only the 10 year interval was pushed out, but it's just an additional check to further increase safety over the long term. No downtime wou…

No, that is not true. Maintenance was done with the respect to the planned life time. They couldn't just have kept running. That the previous government didn't knew about the Russian war onto Ukraine makes no difference. Gas prices have recovered to pre-war levels, so there is no extra need for the nuclear plants compared to before the war.

This is simple not true.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/politik...

You still pay teice the price for gas as before because we had 30yr low costs (below spot) contracts with Gazprom.

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

#344

Post by ZeroGravitas »

looping__lui wrote: post #315
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, don’t be fooled by “you can just replace gas by biogas”: https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...

Well a) you can indeed literally replace gas by biogas, b) your article suggests that we can't quickly replace Russian gas with biogas, which is true. But there's nothing that can quickly replace Russian gas, we can do a whole bunch of things (imported gas, imported electricity, imported chemicals, renewables, efficiency, heat pumps) but even that isn't a perfect short term fix.

But it's already at 5% of the electricity grid, and that's about what would be needed in a mostly renewable grid. That's the only use of gas we want long term, the rest should be phased out anyway. It's a big, epensive engineering project, but not as big and expensive as building lots of nuclear.

As your article says, think of it as a way to get rid of methane emissions from farming, with storable energy as a bonus.

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

#345

Post by adrianN »

martinald wrote: post #322
adrianN wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has enough storage capacity for natural gas to last a couple of months. The same can be build for Hydrogen. Some of the existing infrastructure can even be reused.

Yes but you need 10s or 100s of GW of hydrogen electrolyzers, which are expensive, and they will only be running a small % of the the time (when there is excess renewables). I'm not sure how much existing natural gas infrastructure can be reused given how much lighter hydrogen is and I assume it needs much tighter tolerances on all the equipment compared to natgas.

Yeah, true. But it turned from a "we don't have enough of element XY on Earth to build that" to a "it sounds kind of expensive" problem. As it turns out people did the math already and building the hydrogen infrastructure is probably not prohibitively expensive, in fact it might turn out to be reasonably cheap. There is a tradeoff between overbuilding renewables, improving the grid, making the demand side more dynamic, and storage.

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

#346

Post by gpjanik »

tnbp wrote: post #332
ambyra wrote: post #124

Germany is “green” same as California: high air pollution with most energy imports of any state in the nation. Blood diamond economics applied to energy. I predict that France will become an international leader in nuclear energy, while Germany will kill the most birds.

Germany is a net exporter of electricity, and has been for over 20 years. Last year, France actually had to import electricity because their NPPs kept failing (too much heat, too little rain, no water to act as coolant).

Germany is exporter of electricity and importer of the fossils it burns to make it... Brilliant...

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

#347

Post by adrianN »

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…

We don't have time to do things one after another, we have to switch heating, transport and most everything else to electric while simultaneously improving electricity generation.

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

#348

Post by skrause »

llampx wrote: post #310
skrause wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this map Germany always looks bad until you zoom out enough to see the USA.

At least the US has cheap energy. Germany has high taxes, high energy prices and still manages to be dirty while being morally arrogant.

I don't see Germany to be morally arrogant here, they're fully aware that there are problems with the transition to renewables.

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

#349

Post by adrianN »

harrid wrote: post #216
JanSt wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the AfD, which is a far-right party most would never consider to vote for. The AFD is currently the second most popular political party in Germany and the strongest in many parts. It's also better described as center-left.

Left-right is an inadequate system for classifying politics, but the AfD is certainly not center, and it's ridiculous to classify them as "left", either economically (where there are mostly neoliberal) or socially (where they are as conservative as you can get).

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

#350

Post by adrianN »

looping__lui wrote: post #314
iSnow wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere on p 25 can I find this. Maybe you mean p 27, and I don't get what argument you are trying to make. Yes, there would be more gas capacity, but for green gas.

“Green gas”. You mean Biogas? That isn’t really an option: https://www.capital.de/amp/wirtschaft-politik/kann-biogas-ru...

They likely mean hydrogen.
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