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Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

reuters.com

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Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#101

Post by ars »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #94
cygx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's inexhaustible within the next few millennia In case of uranium, you're off by an order of magnitude...

No, I'm not. The low number that gets thrown about is for commercially available deposits at the present market price. The price of the raw uranium is a very small portion of the price of running a nuclear plant -- it could increase by two orders of magnitude and not have a material impact on the plant bottom line. At that point, it would be economically feasible to extract it from seawater, where there is enough of…

I think he meant in the other direction. There is enough uranium for 20,000 years of consumption if we stop throwing away most of and actually burn it fully.

Current designs only burn a few percent of it, then store the rest as waste.

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#102

Post by beefman »

dredmorbius wrote: post #64
zerostar07 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is nuclear renewable?

It's not renewable, but it is essentially zero-impact as far as atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are concerned. I'm hedging only because someone will come along and cite fossil-fuel based ancillary activities related to nuclear fuel mining, processing, transport, and disposal if I say "zero". But for all intents, zero. There are breeder reactor designs which convert far more abundant non-fissile isotopes to fuel-…

Define "technically renewable" and "theoretically sustainable".

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#103

Post by beefman »

zerostar07 wrote: post #45
ZoFreX wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of energy production is hydro or nuclear in Switzerland, which depending on your views on nuclear either makes them very progressive or terrible.

How is nuclear renewable?

How is hydro renewable?

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#104

Post by ars »

jbellis wrote: post #75

In related news, German electricity is 30% more expensive than French, and 300% more expensive than American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_elec...

New plan:

Make renewable energy by burning regular energy. Mark it up a bit and sell it for 300% of what you paid for the regular energy.

That's basically how biomass energy works anyway. Wind and photovoltaic energy also have a huge amount of regular energy usage hidden in them.

If the electricity really costs so much I'm not really impressed. However any chance that number is taxes?

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#105

Post by dredmorbius »

beefman wrote: post #102
dredmorbius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not renewable, but it is essentially zero-impact as far as atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are concerned. I'm hedging only because someone will come along and cite fossil-fuel based ancillary activities related to nuclear fuel mining, processing, transport, and disposal if I say "zero". But for all intents, zero. There are breeder reactor designs which convert far more abundant non-fissile isotopes to fuel-…

Define "technically renewable" and "theoretically sustainable".

A technically renewable resource would be one that renews itself naturally, at a rate exceeding that of consumption.

Solar, wind, and hydro are renewable in the sense that we consume them as they are produced.

Agriculturally-based power sources (wood, ethanol, biomass, algae oil generation) are renewable in the sense that the biological source grows back after it's harvested (assuming sustainable harvesting).

A sustainable consumptive resource is one which, at projected rates of consumption, would be sufficient for forseable demand until the end of time on Earth. In 4-5 billion years, the sun will expand to the point that it encompasses Earth's orbit. Somewhat sooner than that, increased solar radiation will boil off the oceans and atmosphere. We'll have bigger things to worry about than sources of electricity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#106

Post by adestefan »

lispm wrote: post #82
jbellis wrote: post #75

In related news, German electricity is 30% more expensive than French, and 300% more expensive than American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_elec...

In other news German electricity is heavy taxed and Germans consume half the electricity than an American.

I'm curious to see how much of that difference is actually caused by environmental factors.

Most of the continental US gets down right hot for 2-5 months out of the year. So hot that air conditioning accounts for the largest share of commercial and residential electricity usage. This is probably becoming an even bigger factor when you consider there has been a mass migration from more temperate climates of the upper Midwest to areas such as Texas, Florida and the Southwest. This migration began in the mid 20th century with the advent of reliable central air conditioning.

My question is are Americans consuming more electricity than the average German because of environmental factors or because we're really guzzling power like gasoline in the 1960s and 70s?

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#107

Post by brlewis »

anewguy wrote: post #80
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In related news: American electricity is artificially cheap.

The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and the will to drill it. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has allowed the US to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions[1]. Yes, that's right, the US has reduced its emissions more than any other country in the last five years, thanks to technical innovations that have lowered the price of natural gas. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/…

Do you have a better link? The Economist talks about reduced emissions in the past 5 years saying "much of the credit" should go to natural gas. Then it cites numbers going back 15 years that would give half the credit to natural gas and half the credit to renewables. I'm curious how those numbers change if you look back only 5 years.

(There was twice as much increase in natural gas as there was increase in renewables, but renewables produce approximately 0 carbon while natural gas produces 56.25% of the carbon coal produces: http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp )

Re: Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production

#109

Post by Someone »

cygx wrote: post #81
Someone wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, they are huge oil and coal importers ( http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=DE )

That's a pretty useless metric, though: every industrialized nation 'burns stuff', and if it happens that you can't produce at home, you need to import. While not a poster child, Germany is far from the worst offender as far as CO2 emission per capita goes.

I answered the grandfather's question "Does Germany import a lot of power?"

Also, I think that is highly relevant. If you do not include imports, countries with few natural sources automatically will appear to be green. For example, I bet many small island groups will have close to 100% renewable energy production, including those with huge navy bases such as Truk and Diego Garcia.

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