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

ise.fraunhofer.de

351–360 of 430 posts

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

#351

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.

In the past 2 decades Germany has blown hundreds of billions of dollars into renewable energy. Now we have the highest electricity price in the world. It is all socialism. Zero market :-(

Come back with "market" once the CO2 price hits the real costs. Estimates I've seen range from 200€-700€/tCO2e. Until then we're borrowing billions of Euros from the future every year to burn more fossil fuels.

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

#352
The price of electricity has been falling in Germany since the beginning of the year, the share of renewable energies in the electricity supply has risen to 65%. The level of gas storage is 20% higher than in recent years, even though there is no more gas flowing from Russia. Nevertheless, the price of gas and heating oil is falling in Germany. It seems to me that the catastrophic news regarding energy blackout etc. in Germany of the last year were slightly exaggerated.

https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga...

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There isn't a lot of storage because there isn't a lot of surplus energy to store right now. It's more economical to build more generation capacity. But storage is really not hard: just store hydrogen. No magic technology is needed. You can buy Megawatt range electrolyzers today.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

Like an unproven technology at industry scale to power 50% of Germans electricity need reliably - all within the next 7 years? We don’t even have fast internet. Yeah.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no difference between building plants and producing the vast majority of your electricity from coal for the next 15 years. The latter is the consequence of the former.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok energy-charts.info is providing all info regarding installed power and electricity generation for Germany. For heavy industries leaving Germany: * https://cen.acs.org/business/finance/BASF-cutting-back-main-... * https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/24/basf-cut-jo... * https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2022-10-20/germanys-glas... * https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-industry-europe-ener... Here you…

BASF is a drop in the bucket and it left not because of high electricity prices like you claimed, but high natural gas prices which they directly use for production. e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/basf-could-cut-outpu... > BASF is already reducing production of ammonia, which relies heavily on natural gas, and sourcing some it its ammonia needs from outside Europe, where gas prices are lower. Heavy indu…

Basic fact you don’t seem to grasp is that electricity price in Europe are directly dependent on gas price as the price is governed by the price of the last capacity called which in Europe are gas driven… Chemical plants but not only as the articles mentioned but glass ceramic etc are using large amount of electricity. The current decrease in electricity usage(that’s not only happening in Germany but throughout all Western Europe) is caused by industrial process moving out of Europe.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electric…

You need to support 50% of the grid with new gas plants.

You *CANNOT* phase out gas plants , coal plants and nuclear and solely rely on renewables as of today (and the next 30, 50???) years in an industrialized nation like Germany.

And maybe don’t paraphrase the article like “hey its a challenge but possible”. We don’t have enough agricultural space to cover our demand. The number of (ethical,infrastructure,price) problems is so long that the idea defies reality. But you are talking about IDEOLOGY and in Germany, if you have the right IDEOLOGY, reality doesn’t matter any longer. That’s other people’s problem.

Jan Seven rechnet damit nicht. „Aus volkswirtschaftlichen Gründen ist es nicht darstellbar und auch nicht zu rechtfertigen, Biogas in dem Maße weiter zu fördern oder bestimmten Umbauszenarien zu folgen.“ Biogas sei verglichen mit den anderen erneuerbaren Energien die mit Abstand teuerste Energieform. Auch, weil Lebensmittel, die in Biogasanlagen zum großen Teil genutzt würden, teurer geworden seien. „Deswegen sehen wir beim Biogas eigentlich überhaupt keine Kostenreduktion, die wir bei Solarstrom und Wind massiv gesehen haben im letzten Jahr.“ … “ Diese Energiepflanzen belegen 15 Prozent der deutschen Ackerflächen. Insgesamt 1,5 Millionen Hektar, die eigentlich dringend benötigt werden, um dort Lebensmittel und Futter anzubauen, sagt Jan Seven. „Auf diesen Flächen wachsen keine Lebensmittel, es wachsen keine Futtermittel für die Tiere, die wir in großer Stückzahl halten. Die Futtermittel importieren wir aus Brasilien. Wir haben eine direkte Konkurrenz zwischen Teller und Fermenter.“ In einem Fermenter werden in einer Biogasanlage die Rohstoffe erwärmt und zersetzt, sodass Biogas entstehen kann.”

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

#358
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables. German invesments in the early 2000s were one of the steps towards renewables being viable. If germany kept nuclear as-is the counterfactual might look worse due to the expansion of renewable…

> The renewable push in germany came because the greens (and other parties) wanted to shut down nuclear and replace it. If the exit from nuclear was never started, germany would have been much less willing to invest in renewables. Investment in renewable energy is not a value in itself. France has much lower CO2 emissions because they invested in nuclear energy which can replace both coal and renewable energy. > If g…

As Germany went into renewables, France doubled down on nuclear, creating the EPR program and starting to build Flamanville 3 as a prototype that would lead to development of replacements for their current plants.

20 years later Flamanville 3 is still not finished and the EPR has been a disaster overall. Their current plants are starting to fail, they are producing less and less every year and had to rely on neighbors to supply electricity for them last year.

So there is quite a real and possible alternate timeline where Germany invests in nuclear instead of renewables and now it's still producing more than half of its electricity from coal because the nuclear plants are not finished and at huge cost.

I'm taking the current reality in a heartbeat.

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

#359
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments issue money, so yes they kind of do have magic money. Certainly a different access to money than private entities.

When they issue more money - money in my pocket lose value, still same thing.

This is not true. That only happens if the money supply exceeds the productive capacity of the economy.

If the government didn’t issue any money and economies continued growing (which wouldn’t happen because you need slack in the money supply to allow for growth) there would be deflation. So the government could issue money in a growing economy and still see deflation, until the ratio hits a tipping point.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I hear the ones that were shut down in Germany were some of the best maintained in the world and had very high "capacity factors" even when compared with other nuclear (fraction of time delivering power to the grid). It seems like the solution to poor maintenance is better maintenance? Some of the causes of recent poor French maintenance are analyzed here: https://player.fm/series/decouple/somethings-rott…

It's not that ironic. Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it. The ironic thing to me is that Germany is so anti-nuclear.

Being “anti nuclear” made a lot of sense until a madman decided to attack Ukraine.

And with the world economy stabilizing after that mad man’s actions it’s again making a lot of sense as nuclear continues to be far more expensive than other renewable alternatives.

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