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Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

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Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#161

Post by gregbot »

uecker wrote: post #133
Zufriedenheit wrote: post #57

The german energy policy has really been an economic failure on an epic scale. They destroyed 30+ fully functional nuclear power plants because of fear of radiation. In the last 20 year spend >500billion € to remodel the energy grid. Now subsidizing electricity with ~30billion € per year. And the result: Carbon intensity of energy production on the same level as US and 3x the electricity price!

This is lot of nonsense. The cost is mostly due to the funding of renewables at a time when they were still very expensive. This was highly successful in bringing down cost. Despite fakenews in this direction, fossil fuel consumption did not increase in Germany and is on the decline with a corresponding reductions in CO2 emissions. According to the following link Germany 338g / kWh Co emissions, US 384g /kWh. https:/…

No, what you are saying is a bunch of nonsense. If germany had simply kept its nuclear plants running and replaced its remaining coal with new nuclear back in 2000 instead of going with wind and solar it would have as low emissions as france by now. The decisions to go with wind and solar instead if nuclear meant keeping fossil fuels on the grid

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#162

Post by quotemstr »

uecker wrote: post #154
quotemstr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your energy prices are so high that century-old factories are shutting down and your export sector is collapsing. Yet you guys keep a (presumably) straight face while insisting that the truth is the opposite of what anyone with eyeballs can see. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-ol…

LOL. The wonderful thing about reality is that it's deaf to this kind of motivated reasoning. Enjoy your lignite and industrial collapse. When you're shivering at night, your children can't get jobs, and your country has no voice in global affairs, you can console yourself with the idea you at least tried reduced global carbon emissions by 0.1%.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#163

Post by UltraSane »

ca1f wrote: post #129
UltraSane wrote: post #91

Highly relevant to this is the fact that German electricity is some of the most expensive in the world.

It really is not. This is misinformation spread mostly by the right winged party in germany and conservatives to some extent to. Electricity in Germany can look expensive at first sight if you're quoting legacy household tariffs that many existing customers are still on, because they never switch provider / tariff. But that's not representative of what people pay if they sign a new contract today: the market for new…

Assuming that 23.4 cents is Euros then that is about 27 cents USD which is VERY expensive by US standards. Only 4 states are more expensive that that.

Hawaii 41.55 $200/mo

California 30.70 $155/mo

Connecticut 30.63 $192/mo

Rhode Island 28.12 $163/mo

Cheapest residential states for electricity

State Average Electricity Cost (¢) Average Monthly Bill

Idaho 11.71 $110/mo

North Dakota 11.79 $114/mo

Nebraska 12.09 $119/mo

Louisiana 12.29 $150/mo

Utah 12.59 $96/mo

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#164

Post by UltraSane »

uecker wrote: post #154
quotemstr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your energy prices are so high that century-old factories are shutting down and your export sector is collapsing. Yet you guys keep a (presumably) straight face while insisting that the truth is the opposite of what anyone with eyeballs can see. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-ol…

It is a real problem and is being addressed

Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr...

Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price

https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el...

Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry?

https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge...

Deindustrialization in Germany: Energy Costs Driving Industries Abroad

https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#165

Post by uecker »

quotemstr wrote: post #151
uecker wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no spectacular success of nuclear power. It provides an irrelevant fraction of overall power in the world and time and money needed to scale it up would be immense. The France's nuclear industry is an economic disaster and the EDF has been fully re-nationalized (and during the time it was semi-private there was plan to close 17 plants by 2025). The rollout of renewables works very nicely in Europe, there is…

Looks pretty successful to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media... If over half a country's electricity production is "irrelevant", I'm not sure what would be relevant. Call it a disaster if you'd like. Lights turn on. Meltdowns aren't happening. The French pay 50% less than Germans per kWh. You do you, but don't sit there and claim you're looking at the data. You can either interface with…

The electricity price in France is artificially kept low, it does not say much about the cost of nuclear. Globally renewables have overtaken coal in electricity production in the first half of 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po Nuclear is not close to this.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#166

Post by uecker »

gregbot wrote: post #161
uecker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is lot of nonsense. The cost is mostly due to the funding of renewables at a time when they were still very expensive. This was highly successful in bringing down cost. Despite fakenews in this direction, fossil fuel consumption did not increase in Germany and is on the decline with a corresponding reductions in CO2 emissions. According to the following link Germany 338g / kWh Co emissions, US 384g /kWh. https:/…

No, what you are saying is a bunch of nonsense. If germany had simply kept its nuclear plants running and replaced its remaining coal with new nuclear back in 2000 instead of going with wind and solar it would have as low emissions as france by now. The decisions to go with wind and solar instead if nuclear meant keeping fossil fuels on the grid

"remaining coal",This sounds as if nuclear did produce the majority. But it never produced more than 30% of the electricity in Germany. In 2000 it was 60% fossil fuels and 30% nuclear. Renewables today produce 60% and fossil fuels are below 40% (coal only 20%). Of course, Germany could have decided to build more nuclear. It could have also decided to build renewables faster. Investing into renewables brought prices down by creating an economy in scale, which for nuclear never has worked. The result is that there are now immense investments into renewables worldwide.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#167

Post by uecker »

UltraSane wrote: post #164
uecker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-ol…

It is a real problem and is being addressed Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr... Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el... Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry? https:/…

Whether there is a real problem with high electricity was not the question, but whether it is caused by renewables vs. nuclear.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#168

Post by quotemstr »

UltraSane wrote: post #164
uecker wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-ol…

It is a real problem and is being addressed Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr... Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el... Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry? https:/…

The subsidy strategy is strategically reckless and economically doomed. What is it supposed to accomplish? The factories aren't profitable at today's energy prices. Since it's these factories that create Germany's wealth, their being unprofitable makes the country unprofitable, driving down standards of living.

If you subsidize electricity by capping consumer prices, then you have to either cap producer prices (creating shortages) or have the state pick up the difference. The latter option might make individual factories profitable, but it makes Germany even less profitable: now the country as a whole is paying not only to import electricity, but also for administrative overhead of the subsidy and the deadweight loss produced by non-market allocations of a scarce factor of production, electricity.

All these subsidies do is transfer wealth to the industrial and energy sectors from literally everyone else and impoverish the country as a whole.

A subsidy might be justifiable if it covered a temporary market hiccup. These high prices aren't shocks. They're structural. They're foreseeable consequences of state policies that decrease the supply of electricity and thereby make it more expensive than in competing polities.

Imagine the US trying to address oil shocks in the 70s by subsidizing gasoline. Wouldn't have worked. Subsidies cannot create more of a resource.

Also, given the 2028-2030 pension budget crisis you're facing, I'm not sure you guys can afford to impoverish yourselves with subsidies even in the short term.

If you guys want to remain competitive, you need to find ways to generate power under an affordable cost structure and stop lying to yourselves about how, any day now, the Energiewende will produce a cornucopia of electrons. It's just not happening.

Something has to break here. Maybe you accept declining living standards. Maybe you just burn an enormous ocean-boiling amount of barely-not-peat lignite from your western states. Maybe you become a Russian client state and return to suckling the Siberian gas teat.

Or maybe, just maybe, you see that nuclear power works for others and can work for you too if you get over your atomic phobia.

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#169

Post by gregbot »

uecker wrote: post #166
gregbot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what you are saying is a bunch of nonsense. If germany had simply kept its nuclear plants running and replaced its remaining coal with new nuclear back in 2000 instead of going with wind and solar it would have as low emissions as france by now. The decisions to go with wind and solar instead if nuclear meant keeping fossil fuels on the grid

"remaining coal",This sounds as if nuclear did produce the majority. But it never produced more than 30% of the electricity in Germany. In 2000 it was 60% fossil fuels and 30% nuclear. Renewables today produce 60% and fossil fuels are below 40% (coal only 20%). Of course, Germany could have decided to build more nuclear. It could have also decided to build renewables faster. Investing into renewables brought prices d…

> Investing into renewables brought prices down by creating an economy in scale, which for nuclear never has worked

Never worked? How do you explain all the countries in the world with large low carbon nuclear fleets and reasonable electricity prices? Like France, Japan, Korea, Russia, China, the US, Canada, UK, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine etc? Everywhere large nuclear fleets have been built with a dozen or more reactors the per unit costs have been affordable.

None of that really matters though because when you look at the full system cost of intermittent renewables, they are an order of magnitude more expensive than the marginal cost.

https://discussion.fool.com/t/levelized-full-system-costs-of...

Re: Germany's Merz admits nuclear exit was strategic mistake

#170

Post by UltraSane »

uecker wrote: post #167
UltraSane wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a real problem and is being addressed Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr... Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el... Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry? https:/…

Whether there is a real problem with high electricity was not the question, but whether it is caused by renewables vs. nuclear.

It is caused by a overall incredibly stupid energy policy.
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