BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.
So 25 years ago Germany decided to “phase out Nuclear,” why didn’t they decide to “phase out coal” instead?
Also if you are doing 50% renewables and 50% lignite, you aren’t really helping since total consumption will be growing, thus consumption of coal will be growing more and more every year.
Because the actual plan was to build-up solar and wind, then phase out nuclear and coal.
But the conservatives intentionally sabotaged solar power and wind (see here and here) and also blocked grid imporvements and extensions to keep their beloved coal alive. After more than a decade we should long be past the point to not need coal anymore (Just look at the graphs and extrapolate the amount of solar and wind without their de facto destruction of the solar (2012) and wind (2016) industry via overregulation), it’s still a big chunk of the produced energy.
Nuclear was simply phase out because the existing capacities were rediculous low (~5% of the production top), the shutdown was already decided and planned for years and keeping them few reactors alive would have costed rediculous amounts compared to their value. And completely restarting nuclear basically from scratch makes zero sense today, when you won’t need it in 15 years anymore.
This is pure and simple the result of corrupt conservatives pushing coal and their propaganda (killing 100k jobs in solar production to protect 10k coal miners for example). And instead everyone now eats up their propaganda again and blames the current government, not only for the problems but also for a nuclear pahse out that was actually decided and prepared since a decade ago.
why didn’t they decide to “phase out coal” instead?
23 years ago, under Schröder they wanted to phase out both and massively subsidize renewables.
Later those plans were largely axed under Merkel.
The reason why coal has a strong standing in Germany is that it is one of the few natural resources the country has.
It has long been a staple in certain political circles to justify coal subsidies by pointing to the many jobs tied to coal mining.
Nevermind that they had no problem throwing jobs in the solar industry under the bus when they cut subsidies for that.
It’s good and I hope more and more country ramp up they renewables production but without following Germany’s example.
I feel like Germany forgot that the goal is not to install renewables energies, the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions. Renewables energies are just a mean to this goal.
Rather than seeing that
renewables would have to account for 80% by 2030.
I would prefer to see something like
“CO2 emissions for electrical production should be down by 80% by 2030 compared to 19xx levels.”
In this case I think the renewables target is better. CO2 reduction is the goal, but having it as a single target can lead to lock-ins. Especially when the target is only low CO2 and not zero.
E.g. you could reach an 80% goal, while still expanding the use of fossil gas to replace coal and lignite. But we need a system that goes to 100% renewables by 2035. And first ramping up gas to then switch to renewables after is what got Germany in this mess.
But here is the fun fact: Basically all countries going for nuclear instead (with the exception of France, and even they need to scrap the bullshit about 6 new reactors and admit that the full set of 6 plus the 8 optional ones is their required minimum) are doing exactly that: having no actual plan for zero co2 emissions but just building some for symbolic reductions. If they actually had any workable plan they would need to plan and build much more (often by a factor of 10 even) just to cover the minimum base load for their projected demand in 2050+.
And no, what Germany got into this mess is intentional sabotage by conservatives to keep coal alive. Please look at these graphs and extrapolate the amount of renewables we would have if first the solar, then the wind power industry wasn’t destroyed intentionally via overregulation. Gas as a transition energy and switching the existing plans over to hydrogen used for storage is a perfectly well plan. Even with today’s gas prize as they -unlike other countries- don’t use gas for regular production anyway. It’s only used for short-term peak production to adapt to fluctuations. The actual problem is the screwed up European energy market that makes you pay the gas price for all energy, no matter how few (or much) you actually use.
Contrary to popular narrrative a potential gas shortage was never a problem for Germany’s electricity production. The problem was heating. And the bottle neck there is not electricity but the ability so get and install the amount of heat pumps needed alternatively (I have personally seen waiting times of nearly a year 5 years ago already…). We like do forget that Germany alone makes up nearly 20% of the EU in households.
I feel like Germany forgot that the goal is not to install renewables energies, the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions
And how do you come to this statement? Do you define what Germanys Goal is? Reducing CO2 Emissions certainly is the main target but it is surely not the only one. Renewable energies solve a lot more problems than just CO2 emissions.
Germany of course is the country that recently shut down a bunch of nuclear plants + temporarily (we hope) replaced them with coal.
Ah yes. The coal replacement which gave us the lowest coal levels ever. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&year=-1&month=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute×lider%3D1&legendItems=000001010000000000000×lider=1
Nuclear output 12.2021: 5599.8 GWh
Brown coal output 8.2023: 5422.0 GWh
Black coal output 8.2023: 2049.2 GWh
So if you, y’know, hadn’t shut down those nuclear plants, you’d be burning 1/4 as much coal as you actually are.
Brown coal output 12.2021: 10100 GWh Black coal output 12.2021: 5391 GWh
Of course comparing August 2021 - August 2023 there’s less of a difference, but still a noticeable drop.
That’s not how reality works. The remaining reactors produced less than 5%. But the money needed to keep them running for a few more years -especially as the shut down was planned for years, checkups and revisions were skipped, no more fuel was ordered- would have come from the same budget that is now paying for grid upgrades and renewable build-up. So keeping them running would have had a minimal impact of a bit less co2 now but a massive damage to the transition to clean energy for the next 10+ years. But that’s of course a fact we don’t want to talk about in media as that doesn’t fit the narrative of stupid Greens having killed nuclear for ideological reasons.
For reference: The shutdown of all but 3 reactors was decided a decade ago, planned for years and came into effect 2 weeks before that new government came into office… the ones they were left with produced -up to their shutdown- ~1,5% of all electricity in 2023. But sure… keeping them alive for the sake of having nuclear reactors (they basically did not have any value other than as a talking point) would have totally made sense… in some alternative reality.
Because when you close down Nuclear plants and open up Coal plants the end result is that you now have fewer Nuclear plants and more Coal plants, thus a replacement has occurred.
catalyzing renewable transition is one of russia’s shenanigans silver lining
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.
With demand for electricity on the rise, renewables would have to account for 80% of power generation by 2030, Habeck told a conference organised by the Heinrich Boell foundation in Berlin.
“We won’t get there at the current pace,” he said.
The economy minister, whose portfolio also includes energy and climate action, spoke of a boom in the solar power industry, with this year’s target of achieving 9-gigawatt capacity expected to be reached.
The expansion of onshore wind energy was also progressing well, he said, with 2022’s full-year volumes already reached by the end of July 2023.
Offshore wind energy expansion was being hampered by a lack of components needed to build the facilities, according to the minister.
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