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http://www.bdew.de/internet.nsf/id/20120726-pi-erneuerbare-e... [pdf, german]
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js... [english translation]
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Nuclear power is not counted as "renewable" in Germany. So this number will only go up.
However, greenhouse gases and other nasty emissions will go up if you start burning coal instead of splitting atoms. I will not open the can of worms about nuclear waste vs. greenhouse gases.
By the way, I wonder why biomass is green while coal is not? I mean, in the end you burn organic materials? Of course, existing coal plants are dirty, but for that kind of money you could make like really nice coal plants.
And psshht, coal plants release much more nuclear material than nuclear plants ..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because biomass will naturally released CO2 when decomposing. Burning it won't add to the footprint. On the other hand, when you are burning coal, you released CO2 that was previously sequestered.
Because biomass will naturally released CO2 when decomposing Add that biomass usually releases CH4 (methane) which is a considered a much more potent greenhouse gas. Even simply burning the methane to CO2 -- ignoring energy recapture -- is an environmentally beneficial action, which is why landfills sometimes have flares.
I heard at a power conference last week that Germany halted installation of new solar panels on homes recently due to the problems integrating solar onto the grid. As the lecturer put it: We've spent the last hundred years building systems to safely and reliably send power on a one-way trip from the utilities to businesses and homes. Modifying the electrical distribution system to be multi-directional is not an easy…
I was surprised the energy they get from wind is more than twice what they get from solar. Isn't Germany like a good country for solar? Also, this is the first time I see that they want to get only 35% of the energy from renewables by 2035. So they want to improve it only by 10% in the next 23 years? That's sounds like a very small improvement in a lot of time. I thought their original goal was 40% as renewable energ…
Here's a map of solar energy potential in Europe: http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/cmaps/eu_opt/pvgis_Europe-s...
If Europe had a more integrated economy and power grid, the more efficient thing to do would be to take those same PV panels and put them somewhere further south. But that would take significant changes, so for now, the resources get put into the geography that happens to be at hand.
I heard at a power conference last week that Germany halted installation of new solar panels on homes recently due to the problems integrating solar onto the grid. As the lecturer put it: We've spent the last hundred years building systems to safely and reliably send power on a one-way trip from the utilities to businesses and homes. Modifying the electrical distribution system to be multi-directional is not an easy…
That would be new to me - people here have been able to feed in excess energy to the grid for more than two decades. The real problem however is that the traditional power suppliers are forced to pay users that _feed in_ a very lucrative amount per kWh they produce in excess and recently started to rebel against that policy. So I wouldn't be surprised if the "technical problems" are somewhat politically/economically…
