Meanwhile in Germany:
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Meanwhile Germany could cut more than 13% of its fossil electricity sources if it didn’t have to export electricity to “97% fossel-free” France. Overall, Germany exports 26.3% of its electricity.
So it could go straight to 84% renewables if other countries weren’t dependent on its electricity.
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Exporting? Electricity doesn’t know about economics, it has its own laws.
We have a deep-seated problem with corruption. Most politicians are just cockpuppets of the economy, and fossil fuel corporations have plenty of politicians stuck on their cocks. We were the forerunners of green energy, now we’re just cum-soaked whores.
Least horny upset german.
France also had to close a nuclear plant because of germany, it was close to the frontier so created political tensions with germany.
But France also have a strong anti nuclear lobby, so it’s hard to build more nuclear sadly.France usually exports electricity, this year is an abnormality.
And last year was an anomaly as well? Next year, the French nuclear plants will be repaired and their rivers will carry sufficient amounts of water again?
Yes, exactly. It’s in the management PowerPoint for next year, so don’t worry about it
I mean, isn’t that the core of the intermitancy argument for fossil fuels? Consumers wouldn’t be willing to accept a 100% renewable grid which only met demand 95% of the time.
Perfect is the enemy of good. I’d rather have a 95% renewable grid than not even try. We can at the very least minimize fossil fuel use. It’s kinda silly to be doubling down on it in this day and age.
100% renewable requires opportunistic consumption, which is hard to do without eating people.
Most of internet infrastructure is base load. It has to work 100% of time.
if you give up on solving that issue with anything other than fossil fuels, yes
Germany typically imports power from France.
2017 called, it wants to ask when anomalies become the normal.
if it didn’t have to export electricity to “97% fossel-free” France.
I mean, it doesn’t HAVE to, does it? Presumably it’s a voluntary trade?
Edit: Lol. Just like Reddit, get downvoted for asking a neutral question.
Electricity don’t know about capitalism, it has its own laws.
My electricity provider shuts off my power if I don’t pay, obviously physical laws of electricity allow at least that much.
Presumably it’s a voluntary trade?
Well, I’d think so, too, but I’m not sure France voluntarily shuts off their nuclear reactors during the summer.
They shutdown half of their reactors temporarily for maintenance in 2022. It was a one time thing. Your statement makes it seem like they do it every year.
Sssshhhh, don’t interrupt the nuclear circlejerk.
Don’t tell them that nuclear is by far the most expensive source of electricity in europe, no matter which costs you include
while still producing an order of magnitude more CO2 than renewables
or their heads will explode. And don’t ever ask them why no energy company in the world build a new nuclear reactor without subsidies, because the answer is: nuclear power is so ridiculously expensive that it isn’t financially profitable.
Well, that is unless you let the taxpayers cover all the costs, then it’s perfect to reap the highest profits.
Its interesting they use “most recent generation of turbines” but don’t do that on nuclear. Also WISE is not a credible source. It’s an anti-nuclear organisation with guys like Mycle Schneider on board.
Which source says 117g/kWh for nuclear? IPCC 2014 says 12g, UNECE 2020 about 5.1g (for EU28 nuclear).
Its interesting they use “most recent generation of turbines” but don’t do that on nuclear.
Feel free to tell us how much cheaper current nuclear power plants are than the ones that were built in the 70s and 80s.
I’m sure there’s some great data from Flamanville, Olkiluoto or Hinkley Point, showing us all how cheap and affordable nuclear has become.
If you thought just a little bit about what I wrote, you would know I was discussing the second graph.
Answer my points, not reinterpret them to fit your agenda.
“Consequential cost to health and environnement” of nuclear if higher that coal ? Wtf, in what world ?
Coal is more radioactive than nuclear plant, and that’s the lesser issue, between air polution, plant burning, and the effect of that much co2 being released, that can’t be true.
Either it’s bullshit or I missunderstood the graph.
The united EU energy market means that essentially, yes they have to.
Maybe voluntary is the wrong word, but do they not get paid for the exports?
Wtf is going on in Italy?
We’re lazy fucks.
It’s very a good sign, but I do have doubts about those figures. It’s all too easy to look at total demand and total renewable generation, while ignoring the fact that the country is a net exporter and thus produces more than 100% of its demand - with the remaining uncounted percentage not being green.
“Fossil free” isn’t exactly a recognised term, either, in which case fossil free =/= net zero =/= completely green.
This data is plain wrong, at least for some countries.
96% for Portugal would be amazing, but that seemed excessive so I looked it up, renewables accounted for 73% only.
I mean, it not bad, but we could be 99% there by now if the governments weren’t pandering to utilities and fossil companies so much.
Edit: sorry forgot to link the source for power data
The mix will fluctuate on a day-by-day basis. You could be 100% renewable on one day, wind solar, and hydroelectric (although that’s problematic in and of itself) with the inevitable nuclear for base load.
The next day you could be still and overcast and you’ve already used all of your water from the dam so you have to run more natural gas in the mix.
To pick any random day and to say that that date is representative of the year as a whole is silly, you need averages over the course of a year.
Yeah I agree. Scotland has a tiny population and isn’t actually a country. It’s a part of the larger UK that definitely has more fossil fuels.
Here is the UK grid: https://grid.iamkate.com/
Scotland is a country, but so is the UK, and the UK governs over Scotland.
It’s a similar mess with the transmission network. You have NGET owning the transmission lines in England and Wales, but SPT and SHET for Scotland, however all of these are overseen by NGESO, the system operator, who balance the generation and load. Just to make it even more confusing, the Wales and South West distributor WPD has been brought back into British ownership as part of the National Grid group, so you have NGED providing some distribution as well.
Scotland is a “country”, but “country” is a vague term. Scotland is not a sovereign state, which is what most people think of when they think of countries. In fact, other than the weirdness that is the UK, I can’t think of any place that has “countries” that are not also sovereign states.
There are some places like Catalonia, or the Basque area that want to be / claim to be countries, but that’s more about sovereign status. They wouldn’t be satisfied being recognized as “countries” while still under the rule of Spain / France.
The only time this weirdness really shows up is at the World Cup, where the 3 separate countries within the UK each try to send a team. Meanwhile at the olympics they compete as one under the Team GB banner (which is its own weirdness because normally Great Britain excludes Northern Ireland, which is only included when you talk about the United Kingdom. But, Team GB includes Northern Ireland. In yet another exception, sometimes athletes from Northern Ireland compete as part of Ireland in some sports, not as part of the UK / Team GB.
IIRC, France exports its excess nuclear power in the summer (little need for AC until recently), but imports during the winter (electric heat for the most part). Mostly to and from Germany, which uses some terribly dirty sources. Don’t know if that’s changed in the last few years, though.
They did import a lot that one year in summer when all their nuclear plants broke due to low river levels and some sort of maintenance issue.
Does this include vehicles? 😅
It could, if cheap, light, efficient EVs become legal and popular in Europe.
I personally want something that would never be legal; A 4-wheeled, beefed up, 100+ km/h electric velomobile with something like CanAm Spyder tires (and track width) and a proper comfortable seat. A bit like the LCC rocket, but fully enclosed and possibly lighter.
I could get something more dangerous, like a motorcycle. While this would be in an illegal limbo between car and motorcycle.
The Renault Twizy is a too tall, simply ugly, and thoroughly nerfed version of a simile of what I wish for, and Europe will continue just vaguely trying (and complacently falling) to make speed-limited microcars for cities of type L6e and L7e the “green option” looking for adoption, but that will never reach any kind of tipping point and we all know it. Not quite designed to fail, but definitely not designed for mass adoption.
The legal limbo of what I think would be more appealing is due to both the public and the governing bodies being entirely unwilling to tolerate what safety-wise amounts to a motorcycle with a car’s stability, without reducing speed. They’d never expect to successfully lock motorcycles down to “max 45 km/h”, but the category of “motorcycle” is uniquely privileged as a traditionally recognized transport device permitted to trade away safety for other benefits. Presumably because the trade is explicit enough, as there’s no mistaking it for a car.
Anyways…
The conclusion is that no, “it” doesn’t include vehicles, and won’t any time soon. The only desirable electric cars will remain massive and heavy and expensive (but thoroughly armored), so adoption will continue to be fairly slow, and they’ll be a big drain on the grid.
I’ll end on the note that motorcycles not being popular is a huge part of why western bureaucrats (barely) tolerate them. If this was to become popular among young guys who want a cheap fast car, it’d be extremely problematic for them, and not at all worth the accelerated energy transition.
Last note, Sierra Echo is also one I’ve been keeping my eye on, but since it’s fast and light, it’s also open-air like all these things apparently have to be. Oh, and it’s also not cheap.
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Why would electrical grid power production include vehicles?
Why wouldn’t it?
Because this is about grid power production…vehicles generally have nothing to do with the production of electricity for the grid.
True that the specific metric by definition excludes any use of fossil fuels that doesn’t have an electricity step (ICE cars, gas for heating/cooking/water heating).
However it is a relevant question to consider, to the extent those non-electricity applications remain an obstacle for reducing greenhouse emissions. An ICE car being replaced by an EV means more grid load, a Gas furnace being replaced with a heat pump means more grid load.
As an example, in my region they are talking about increased load incurred in part from EVSE and heat pump conversions. To meet that demand, a part of the plan is actually building out even more natural gas electricity generation (alongside energy storage, solar, and wind).
While it’s encouraging to see grids fairly claim reduction in carbon emissions (others have raised questions about whether this is a totally fair claim, but I have no idea), the total consumption picture is important to keep in mind.
Checked for my countrt, Slovenia: ~25 percent of electricity generated is fossil fuel based, around 15% is imported.
The reason Czechs use „mld.“ instead of „Mrd.“ like Germans for billions (miliardy/Milliarden) is because mrd means “fuck” (noun) in Czech.
Those poor Czechs just cannot afford vowels.
We totally can! Look, my address is
Petr Zhltal
Strmý vrch 14 (čtrnáct)
Čtvrť zmrdů
Krnov 5 (pět) – Srch
ČR
You are comparing apples to oranges, Germany also has times where we use 100% renewables.
You cant just compare momentary data to averages
“has times where we use 100% renewables. You cant just compare momentary data to averages”
Then feel free to cite averages instead ¯\(ツ)/¯
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20220126-1
It’s just a quick web search, but there are the EU countries listed with their avg. renewable electricity 2021.
As mentioned, the momentary data isn’t worth much. There are bad days with only 20% renewable electricity and there are good days with 120% renewable-only generation compared to the load. For years, European electricity prices turn negative on those days, as renewables alone in Germany generate 10TW more than the load.
That’s why annual average is important and not to single out good or bad days pretending this is the norm.
Renewables are a means to an end, not the main objective. That’s CO2 reduction. To that end, the relevant data is average carbon intensity. So I’d say this is a more relevant graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?time=latest®ion=Europe
Renewables are a means to an end, not the main objective. That’s CO2 reduction. To that end, the relevant data is average carbon intensity. So I’d say this is a more relevant graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?time=latest®ion=Europe
ITS SO BROKEN LOL
What’s going on?
the character series AMPERSAND, R, E, G gets rewritten as the “registered trademark” symbol
®
Meanwhile in my country, renewable energy sources are frowned upon and the government just announced plans to build 3 new coal powerplants.
That’s because Europe is buying up all the cheaper natural gas.
We’re just pushing the pollution down the chain.
The cheapest gas right now is Russian gas, and Europe is buying very little of that.
Not exactly. For Sechin to make up for those profits he would have stolen if those profits existed he hiked up gas price domestically. New yacht won’t buy itself.
Also fucking lukoil that still is not sanctioned keeps selling oil, petrol and gas in Europe.
Are you in Europe? Wtf Isn’t it a EU wide goal to phase coal out by 2030 or something?
Is it? Coal is rampant in Eastern Europe.
I think Romania is the only outlier, and that’s only because their former dictator forced them to build hydro and nuclear (ironically).
In Portugal the last coal plant closed maybe a year or so ago. Apparently some countries will take longer but, here’s a link https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/
But yeah, Poland, turkey and some balkans don’t have much planned…
RIP air quality
Meanwhile in Germany: +13 GW new renewables so far this year…
Thanks to Russia
ehhh Germany is buying less gas from Russia since they invaded Ukraine, which means that gas is more expensive and renewable energy is likely a more viable option. In no way would I thank Russia for that.
They’re Germans. Reluctant to change, stingy and stubborn. I love you Germany but everything isn’t about saving a buck by any means necessary.
Without Germans the world would still think solar energy was just for satellites.
The world have used solar energy for all kinds of shit since the 1800s.
I’m Portuguese and as much as I’d love to run on 96% green energy I can’t believe it… Last time I checked (it was quite a while ago I’ll give them that) we imported a lot of nuclear energy from France. So unless France is 100% green and still has a green energy surplus (which it isn’t/doesn’t) we’re just transfering our carbon footprint…
We do have a lot of wind turbines so maybe we don’t import as much anymore but still…
The biggest chunk of our yearly consumption is still gas. And France’s carbon intensity is much lower than ours still (one of the lowest in Europe), so any energy we’re importing from them is actually lowering our CO2 average.
Nuclear is green though, so France is a good place to be importing from. It also has the lowest mortality rate per kWh of all power sources, Chernobyl included.
Not saying nuclear isn’t green btw.
I, personally, am all for nuclear. However given the choice I’d rather my country invests in wind geothermal, solar and others. Nuclear can be a liability as we’ve seen in Ukraine.
I don’t know about the others but I don’t think I can really consider solar green, it needs a lot of silicon not only to make enough panels to have an impact but also needs the extraction of stuff for batteries too, still better than coal ig.
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Oh no. It needs lots of sand.
What’s the problem with silicon?
I still think in the long run it’s worth it. Maybe not as good as wind I guess, but 100% better than gas/oil/coal etc…
Novaya Kahovka power plant is very not nuclear tho
Spoiler alert
It is hydro power plant.
I think there’s a nuclear power plant in Ukraine a lot of people know about in Chernobyl or something maybe? I’m guessing that’s what they’re hinting at.
Well that was just an example anyways. I thought it was nuclear but I might be wrong, never really looked too much into it.
Any nuclear power plant can become a liability during war times though. Hopefully it never comes to that, but you never know…
Is Portugal a good place for wind energy? It seems like it should be with a long coastline that faces west from Europe.
I can’t wait for the day when places that have renewable energy advantages become net exporters, supplying renewable power to the rest of the world.
Yep! Maybe not the best overall in Europe, but we do have some strong winds and also very sunny days so solar energy is also easy to come by.
In one of our archipelagos (Azores) we also have geothermal power plants since we have active vulcanos there.
Aditionally I think there were some major developments in harnessing the ocean’s waves so on that front, I think we would absolutely crush it.
That’s awesome. I wonder if the mountains would also make pumped hydroelectric possible too, so Portugal could use a clean method of storing power for when the wind was calm and the sun wasn’t shining.
Hopefully one day :)
When it comes to saving the environment, and considering you’re in the EU, the liability of nuclear as seen in Ukraine is minimal
There’s definitely some figure manipulation going on here. Portugal might claim it’s importing green energy from France, meanwhile France might stack up its renewable generation against its overall demand to make its claims, meaning both are ignoring much of the fossil fuel generation from France.
It’s still good progress, but the devil really is in the details. There’s a reason this post doesn’t call it “net-zero” or any other industry recognised term.
Lets not celebrate nuclear energy. The french plants are in a bad state and nuclear energy is not clean. Why does everyone forget the nuclear waste it produces?
Nobody forgets it, but neither short-, nor long-term storage is nearly an unsolvable problem (as climate change is), and with rising supply and demand “waste” will soon become an economically viable raw resource for refining new fuel.
Solar and wind produce waste as well…
Nuclear produces a fairly small amount of waste, and it’s almost all caputered, which is great (the waste that isn’t captured is mining waste).
Let’s not be pedants about the problems of nuclear power at a time when the world’s climate is getting fucked ever faster due to CO2 emissions.
But that doesn’t matter. The real issue is that people heat their homes with oil or gas. Luckily our great leaders are fighting the actual problems! /s
It “doesn’t matter” ?! I mean electricity is still a pretty massive chunk of the energy used in day to day life. I would certainly not say it doesn’t matter.
Also, a lot of people heat their homes with electricity, and sometimes even with heat pumps.
And I say that as someone still convinced we will not win against climate change.
You missed their /s. I assume their entire comment is sarcastic.
I would not discount the utility of creating a culture of sustainability. If your entire populace engages in more environmentally friendly behavior, they are going to demand the same of their government and regulations on businesses. The Nordic countries didn’t accidentally become relatively environmentally friendly. There is pressure on all sides there.
People mocked Obama for saying to fill our car tires, but that’s what he was driving at. If we are more cognizant of our waste and inefficiencies, it creates a culture that is more environmentally friendly.
Also landfills ain’t gonna stop filling themselves!
I agree that creating a culture of sustainability is a good thing, but the example I gave does the exact opposite. It alienates people, especially the ones who now live in fear of going bankrupt when their heating breaks and they aren’t allowed to repair it anymore.
Jesus fucking Christ, why can’t people listen or read anymore? You’re allowed to repair your stone age heating devices. They give you 13 fucking years until that’s not possible anymore. The government throws money at you to transition to technologies that will benefit you from day one. Germans are just fucking bad at using the internet and believe all the far right bullshit that is spread by CxU and AfD.
Edit: people will go broke once the CO2 tax kicks in in the coming few years. Im not shedding a single tear for all those idiots.
Yes, God forbid that we as a society could move onward towards more recent technologies. Nah, let’s just keep using dead dinosaur soup to heat our homes.
In Denmark we heat our homes with cooling water from power plants…
Over here we got government help to replace our gas heater for a heat pump.
Note: here is not in Germany.
But still.
The government paid 45% of my new heat pump, here in germany
I got 45% of the costs back from our German government for throwing out my 30 year old oil heating unit and hooking up to the local “Fernwärme” that runs entirely on renewables. Feels good man. People just like to bitch and whine about change.
Rational governments get that fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere, coal and oil will stay just where they like they have for longer than humans have been a thing.
Capitalist societies tho… private companies own those fossil fuels rights and they want to sell as much as they can for as long as they can.
We should be planning centuries in advance, not a financial quarter at a time.
That will require the end of capitalism first. We’re kind of having an issue with abolishing that fast enough to save the planet.
Ha! “Planning”
You are aware that this is over 5 years old data (2017!) for the German electricity mix, right?
Please don’t get me wrong, the scale up of renewable energy sources is certainly not going fast enough in Germany (thanks to our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years until 2021!), but please argue this position using the real data for 2023 (57.7% renewables in the German electricity mix)!
And please don’t forget that Germany exports 26.3% of its electricity, while France imports 16.4% of it.
So, Germany could cut 26.3% of its fossil fuel generation and go up to 84% renewables if countries like France wouldn’t depend on it that much.
This year is an anomaly because nuclear production was low because some power plants had to shut down for maintenance. Germany typically imports power from France.
Germany typically imports power from France.
2017 called, it wants to ask when anomalies become the normal.
I have found this nice article (in French) :
https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/exportations-délectricité-françaises-en-allemagne-finir-steven-lorantIt’s … more complex than one picture.
The average idea is that :
- if you consider physical exchange directly between France and Germany, on the average, France massively exports to Germany.
- but most of the electricity shared between Germany and France goes through Swiss. Swiss has dams to store energy. Germany has many surplus of production with renewables. Swiss is used for transit. As a result, Germany is a net exportator of electricity to France.
Why do you use this tone?
I love how we literally can’t do shit for ourselves here in Italy
You keep repeating this point but renewable energy HAS to be exported when production is over the grid absorption rate. And coal plants have to be on continuously to guarantee baseload due to you moronic energy policies. You can’t bring up a (cherripicked for a single extraordinary year) graph you don’t understand and think it’s a gotcha. Not even mentioning the fact that France exports its energy too.
you moronic energy policies
baseload
Just found one of the morons responsible for that policy.
You’re right, I’m sorry. I chose the picture because it was the first okay one I found in English. I’ll change it right away.
Good for providing up to date data.
But damn, Germany could have been 65% fossil free if they hadn’t closed the nuclear plants prematurely.
Such a waste of carbon budget.
Anyway, you’re probably going to have a conservative government again after this one. Hope you don’t become the big laggards.
If the approval process continues as it currently does and solar installations do not slow down massivly, by the end of the term the approved renewbales projects should bring Gemany above 80% renewables. Practically speaking that would be the coal exit done. Maybe not fully, but they would not matter much.
As for the rest, the current plan for hydrogen power plants is currently being negotiated with the EU. The good news it looks like a deal has been reached and if the plans shown by the current government are implemented, that would basicly mean a full coal exit and the starategic storage question being answered.
Basicly the current German government has passed laws for an estimated 64% redcution of emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. The current target is 65%. So with a bit of luck it will work out.
Not true. One big problem in Germany is that the grid can’t handle all the electricity generated by renewables so they often shut them down. Something you can’t do with nuclear l. Since nuclear got of the grid it got more capacity for renewables hence the share jumped this year.
That’s not how that works, mate. Nuclear is the highest priority of energy generation because it’s ultra cheap to produce and completely stable (once you have the reactors built, that is). If Germany still had those power plants, they could’ve dumped fossil and kept renewables, all while investing in energy storage.
Except that if you calculate the complete cost including building the plants it’s stupendously expensive compared to renewables even including energy storage.
Which is irrelevant, unless you’re representing a profit-seeking corporation (if that were the case, fuck off, then).
Why is that irrelevant? These plants don’t run forever and are very expensive. You wouldn’t buy a car either that costs 15 million Euro, but in return just uses 1liter of diesel per 100km.
These plants don’t run forever
Compared to solar and wind, they may as well last forever. We’re talking the difference between a century or more (nuclear) to complete exhaustion in just a couple decades (solar).
You wouldn’t buy a car either that costs[…]
I wouldn’t buy a car, period.
Nuclear costs double per kilowatt than solar tho??
And Nuclear Plants are always built by for profit companies?Could you cite your source?
I do like nuclear, but of course the costs matter regardless of profit seeking. If you have two options that are same benefit but one costs more, to go with that one is just wasteful.
They’re not the same benefit. The cost of extracting the materials for building renewable infrastructure is also immense, and that infrastructure must be completely swapped out every couple decades.
Nuclear is the highest priority of energy generation because it’s ultra cheap to produce and completely stable
Not how the laws work in Germany: Renewables always have priority, they get to sell their production first, everyone else has to make do with the rest of the demand.
Renewables always have priority, they get to sell their production first
Well, duh - intermittent generation means it makes the most sense to use while you can and wait on scalable power for when your load demands more power than is available. What I meant by that is that, of all scalable sources, you always go for Nuclear first.
You can shut down or scale back energy/electricity produced from nuclear power plants as well by controlling the reaction rate. What would have been ideal was if nuclear had remained and the renewables took the production capacity share from fossil fuels
The German nuclear plants needed maintenance and refurbishment. Makes sense to invest an other billion to run it for 2 more years.
The renewable energy share skyrocketed since the nuclear shutdown
Noooooooo… The decision to get out of nuclear was made over ten years ago. It is done. The last three nuclear plants that shut down this and last year were not serviced, not licensed, had no fuel and no newly trained operators. Stop reviving this debate. What is the real crime here is that the conservative government did next to nothing to push renewables as an alternative. They were bought/lulled by cheap russian gas. Even now, conservative governments in the south and the east of the country refuse to build up renewable energy production for purely ideological reasons. Even if those decisions hurt their own economy.
Sorry I still don’t get it: why not reviving this debate? It’s never too late to kick-off construction of new nuclear plants.
do you know how long it takes until a nuclear powerplant is planned and built?
Until then renewables are 20x cheaper then nuclear power.
the debate has gone one or the other way for years. the people don’t want nuclear power, only our conservative, corrupt parties want it and try to push it every few years; thankfully without any luck.
I know perfectly well that we’re talking about decades of planning, yeah. I still believe every country will need a mix of different energy sources on top of renewables. I think Germany is very short-sighted there.
Well then your thinking is very bad.
Constructing new ones take waaaaaaaaaaay too long and is much more expensive than building equally power capable regenerative energy plants in a fraction of that time.
Germans and their anti-nuclear cult have convinced themselves of a lot of falsehoods. It’s impossible to argue.
Germany is a small country (compared to the USA or China), which means they can easily trade with their neighbors. So, they will just overbuild renewables and trade for nuclear electricity with their neighbors, including us (Netherlands), but mostly Poland and France, which will build the most nuclear plants in the EU.
That’s the plan we compromised in the EU.
They pretend to be nuclear free and we go along with their delusion.
Even France is getting rid of nuclear, they are by far not building enough replacements and their share of nuclear went down too, quite drastically and actually more than Germany ^^
And the nuclear plants on a relevant level are a very big question in Poland too.
We’re not getting rid of nuclear, our objectif is to build a balanced mix of energy sources. Nuclear energy will remain the primary source of energy for decades, no reason to change. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t increase the share of renewables in parallel.
You mean supplement the lack of power when the French nuclear plants are having and causing river trouble again, right?
And here’s a good explanation of something many people seem to find confusing: https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/20180302.html
The decision to get out of nuclear was made over ten years ago.
Nope, at least over 20, in 2000. Quick overview:
- Starting approximately with the 68 movement anti-nuclear sentiment began to become common, also tied up with opposition to stationing of nuclear warheads, the general peace movement, etc. Every single new nuclear plant was protested heavily, as such
- By the 90s, it was clear that no new plants would be built: It was political suicide.
- That then was made law in 2000, alongside with giving all existing reactors expiry dates, based on age and security record
- Then a Merkel came along and gave extensions to the remaining reactors. She didn’t touch the ban on new construction.
- Then Fukushima happened and she took back that extension.
- Then Ukraine happened and the three last remaining reactors got a 4 1/2 month extension to help tiding over the whole no gas from Russia situation: Originally (as planned in 2000) they should have shut down on the 31st of December last year, they actually shut down 15th of April this year. Some politicians wanted more but the operators themselves were opposed as they were already winding down the plants, would have to do another round of maintenance and inspections, procure more fuel etc. It was an “either at least five more years or forget it” type of attitude.
Yes, I see the advantage of CO2 neutrality, but:
The amount of active Nuclear repository sites for spent nuclear fuel and high level waste is… underwhelming.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository
60 years time to find a suitable hole to drop the waste into and very limited success so far. Nobody wants it in the own backyard (even if it would be suited.).
The other end of the chain (mining and enrichment) doesn’t look like an environmental success story either, or does it? Poisoned groundwater looks like an issue to me… also if it happens in Canada or Kazakhstan.
The dots in between… One meltdown around every 20 years (worldwide) ? - the area here is just too densely populated to risk one here. They started to dismantle the first plant in Germany in 89 - still not done.
Edit: in my eyes the cons (I just named a few of them) outweigh the advantages. I mean the co2- neutrality is a big plus, but is it enough to justify the risks and damages? Aren’t there better alternatives? Am I wrong? Please bring facts.
Edit again: thinking further, for me the question to answer is not, either add more CO2 to the atmosphere or have (more) nuclear fission plants. It is the question, how to remove fossils from the energy mix without having to use nuclear fission. With the one extreme to only use what you have and its many backdraws.
Germany could be 84% fossil free if they didn’t have to
run their neighbors electricity gridssubsidize their neighbors.
our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years
and the next 16 years, if everything works well Ü
!please kill me!<
The past 16 years have been conservative. The next 16 are for the far-right populists. There’s a difference.
Hence the formulation “if everything works well”
I’m going to assume that those numbers only represent electric power generation. I wonder how much international import/export of power might change them.
Also would like to see heat generation (I.e. gas boilers) included
Do the Swedish still use peat as fuel for fossil-free energy? They did a few years ago, but I can’t find recent data on this.
Peat is referred to as a fossil fuel in most circumstances [1] and it’s usage for energy is declining rapidly. [2]
You’re right, it turns out that since 2018 peat is not reffered as fossil free in the EU anymore.
https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/bioenergy/biomass_en
