Germany’s new Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday called for the rapid construction of new gas-fired power plants in the country to support the country’s energy supply when renewable sources are unavailable
She said it was important to “quickly move to tender at least 20 gigawatts of gas-fired power plants to maintain energy security.”
Reiche ruled out a return to nuclear energy
"This means we need to conclude the relevant free trade agreements with Chile, Mercosur, India, Australia and Mexico. And I explicitly say, we also need the United States of America," Reiche said.
20 GW? This is crazy.
No, that’s a rather conservative estimate. My federal state alone has more than 20GW in total capacities. And the backup for the rare days when neither solar nor wind produce relevant amounts needs to be able to cover the demand.
The actual point is having those power plants yet in the end never using them aside from those few days a year. And then producing the gas for them climate-neutrally with reneawable overproduction from the remaining 98% of the year.
PS: That the positive thing about solar and wind prices nowadays. They are actually so low that other production methods simply can’t compete and won’t be used more than actually needed.
PPS: That also the actual economic reason why nuclear is a bad idea. You also need enough production capacities for a cold winter night without solar and wind… but then producing less the remaining time of the year doesn’t actually save you money because fuel is a miniscule part of nuclear costs. Have you never wondered why the two countries in the EU pushing for a properly scaled green hydrogen market are Germany and France? Because both models only work economically with peak-burners based on greenly produced gas.
But there are a lot of gas power plants in Germany already. If you want them just as back up, it would be easier to just convert coal power plants to biomass. For 2% it should be fine.
That’s the point. The backup needs to produce (close to) 100% of the demand 2% of the time.
And coal plants are incredibly bad at quickly reacting. It takes a day just from ignition to working temperature, several days to establish the transport chain constantly providing the huge amounts of fuel needed (bonus points for a lot of them being ship-based and possibly suffering from low water levels).
Also there is a lot of industry that will already need climate-neutral gas produced by green energy as their only valid way for electrification. And in the end it’s also a cost issue. If the industry already needs huge amounts of gas and the transport network anyway (of which a lot already exists - refitting natural gas networks for hydrogen has already started) the state doesn’t need to pay much than just the power plants. And they are comparably cheap (the exact opposite of nuclear where constrution is expensive but fuel and operation are cheap).
Let’s not only go back to increasing reliance on fossil fuels but also increasing reliance on some unstable geopolitical actors. A double whammy.
I want Nuclear.
Edit- thanks to the people who educated me in a mature manner, I’ve changed my opinions.
Modern Nuclear isn’t a big scary dangerous prospect. I am German and I’d have no problem with it close by. So many Germans are afraid of Nuclear like it’s so scary boogeyman
Nuclear is a fairy tale told by lobbyists. Those working in nuclear and those trying to keep fossil fuels active as long as possible by inducing constant idiotic discussions.
Worldwide solar/wind/hydro made up ~86% all newly constructed energy production (and rising… those where numbers of 2023, I expect >90% for 2024 but haven’t seen newer data). Renewable deployment as well as battery storage is growing exponentially because no other method of production can actually compete with those low costs anymore.
Nuclear is an option for all the countries that already have massive capacities build (so basically France, that’s it). Or for those with a demand increasing so rapidly that they use all available options in parallel anayway (see: China, but even there nuclear is in regards to capacity a tiny fraction compared to renewables).
For every other country it’s basically a choice between starting to lower your emissions now and steadily over the next 1-2 decades via renewables or doing nothing for at least the same time period while nuclear power (that also needs all the costs upfronted now btw) is build. (PS: Nuclear also doesn’t work without long-term storage via produced gas btw… That’s the reason France is the other country in the EU beside Germany pushing for a scaled up green hydrogen market. In fact hydrogen production via electrolisation is the only reason their nuclear plans work economically, because that production gets better economically with a more constant power supply compared to a pure renewable setup - see RTE’s study about power production in 2050).
Fuck the US. We should buy from anyone but them. Canada would be the next best option from that direction.
Canada has no capacity to liquify natural gas. There’s a shared Canada-US natural gas pipeline system, so some molecules one gets may be coming from Canadian extraction, but it’ll pass through a US-based liquification plant, so from Germany’s standpoint, that’d be where an export would come from, as that’s where it’d be loaded onto a ship.
EDIT: Warren Buffett spent years trying to build one Canada-based LNG plant and fighting environmentalists opposed to it in Canada. He eventually threw in the towel.
