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Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

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Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#21

Post by runarberg »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #8
toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas. Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, bat…

They could have done all this without dismantling nuclear power and emitting more carbon than they otherwise would have.

I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.

I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#22

Post by Helmut10001 »

novaRom wrote: post #18
marcosdumay wrote: post #11

What is not on the title: For an entire year, that year being 2025. Also, yes, absolute generation from fossil fuels is declining quickly. The total generation is changing way more slowly than that share.

But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?

You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#23

Post by suddenlybananas »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
lnz_me wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.

Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158035 - August 2026 (0 comments) What's happening in Hungary's power grid? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154001 - August 2026 (0 comments) Hungary to shut down sole nuclear plant as Danube falls to record low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145531 - August 2026 [dupe] EU conside…

>commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands

Well it's good that Germans chose coal over nuclear!

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#24

Post by throw0101d »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
lnz_me wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.

Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158035 - August 2026 (0 comments) What's happening in Hungary's power grid? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154001 - August 2026 (0 comments) Hungary to shut down sole nuclear plant as Danube falls to record low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145531 - August 2026 [dupe] EU conside…

> France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)

There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:

> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.

> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.

> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#25

Post by purerandomness »

throw0101d wrote: post #13
suddenlybananas wrote: post #5

Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/live/fifteen_min... Anyone is free to compare France and Germany here.

> Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear! Germany has 15.4 GW of hard coal generation, and 14.7 GW of lignite, for a total of 30.1 GW: * https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear. So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc ) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear…

The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.

The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.

No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.

Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#26

Post by marcosdumay »

novaRom wrote: post #18
marcosdumay wrote: post #11

What is not on the title: For an entire year, that year being 2025. Also, yes, absolute generation from fossil fuels is declining quickly. The total generation is changing way more slowly than that share.

But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?

Looks stable:

https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/industrial-production-m...

Of course, stable is probably bad here. But it's not declining.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#27

Post by ben_w »

ragebol wrote: post #6
citrin_ru wrote: post #3

It's a good news and a milestone to celebrate but if we count all energy and not only electricity and not only developed world then the progress is not as fast unfortunately [1]. Not a long time ago I've seen a post arguing based on the data [1] that renewables are irrelevant and should not be taken seriously and fossils will the main source for the lifetime. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-subst…

When looking at hat kind of graphs, it's good to keep in mind that burning hydrocarbons is relatively inefficient: only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it. Still a long ways to go regardless, but much less bleak. And also, exponentially growing deployments of wind and solar are harder to spot on this 2-year old graph wh…

Indeed. That exponential has renewables being ~100% of electricity in the early to mid 2030s, and approximately ~100% of all power in the late 2030s to early 2040s even without the efficiency improvement from direct electricity use.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#28

Post by patall »

throw0101d wrote: post #13
suddenlybananas wrote: post #5

Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear! https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/live/fifteen_min... Anyone is free to compare France and Germany here.

> Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear! Germany has 15.4 GW of hard coal generation, and 14.7 GW of lignite, for a total of 30.1 GW: * https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear. So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc ) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear…

And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.

The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#29

Post by atoav »

NishanStepak wrote: post #4

Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy s…

I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe.

The amount of energy needed to test things is just intuitively huge. Boiling one liter of water takes the equivalent amount of energy as lifting 34 metric tons up a meter. Or to translate it to human scale: the same as walking a vertical climb of 1000m with a weight of 34kg.

Re: Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

#30

Post by atoav »

raphinou wrote: post #17
NishanStepak wrote: post #4

Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy s…

I think I have read that heat is hard to convert to useful energy. Can someone confirm? But the, if that's true, why use heat as energy storage?

Use it directly, see my silbling comment.
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