Meanwhile in Germany:
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Good cherry picking about “current mix” and not something along the lines of “current cleanest mixes”
Even worse, as he is comparing a cherry picked current mix with the german total over 6 months (Jan to June), Germany’s current mix is very similar to the current mixes he has shown.
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
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.
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.
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).
Checked for my countrt, Slovenia: ~25 percent of electricity generated is fossil fuel based, around 15% is imported.
Meanwhile in Germany: +13 GW new renewables so far this year…
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.
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.
Cleverly not counting nuclear as fossil is a joke.
Ah, yes, “cleverly”. Almost as clever as not counting mud as food.
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 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)!
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”
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.
Germany could be 84% fossil free if they didn’t have to
run their neighbors electricity gridssubsidize their neighbors.
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.
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.
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).
Nuclear costs double per kilowatt than solar tho??
And Nuclear Plants are always built by for profit companies?Could you cite your source?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I love how we literally can’t do shit for ourselves here in Italy
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.
Why do you use this tone?
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.
At the time of posting the UK energy mix is a disappointing 50% FF. Not a lot of wind in the North Sea I guess. At peak it could be 25% FF or even lower with clear skies. At least there’s usually more wind at the same time lower temperatures increase demand.
You’re looking at the overall generation portfolio though, I’m pretty sure the OP’s figures are just taking total renewable generation against total demand - meaning it doesn’t account for the exported generation, eg how Scotland exports to the UK and Europe.
Very disappointing. I think a large part of that is because up until earlier this year it was basically impossible to get permission for new wind turbines in England. That has now technically changed, but only insofar as it’s now just next to impossible as opposed to actually impossible.
Well that doesn’t help, but installed capacity is over 20GW (well, it was before Dogger bank, it’s probably more now). It was very satisfying last Christmas when high winds, along with mild temperatures, and a lot of shops and offices being closed meant wind was able to cover a substantial amount of the reduced demand. FF generators were under 2GW at one point, pretty much idle standby.
But I know I know, it’s not viable because night time exists (Even though so does artificial sunlight and batteries)
Wait are you proposing to run solar via artificially created sunlight in the night?
Wouldn’t it just be simpler to siphon off some energy from your perpetual motion machine?
You’re still using perpetual motion machines? Bro do you even siphon energy directly from The Ether with your mind?
Also fans exist so you can just blow those at the wind turbine.
Right?
Meanwhile in my country, renewable energy sources are frowned upon and the government just announced plans to build 3 new coal powerplants.
RIP air quality
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…
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.
Since it says “right now”, I doubt this listing is qualified for discussing the general state of the energy transition in these countries.
Edit: I checked it. Spain’s gas share (as a random example) was significantly higher than 17% all over 2023 when summed up monthwise with wind contributing up to 30%.
Edit2: correct data for Germany for the same time mark: 52% fossil free (38% wind)
Does this include vehicles? 😅
Why would electrical grid power production include vehicles?
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.
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.
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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Here in Hungary, 90% of electricty mix is putin 🤣( 36% putin’s nuclear fuel, 44% putin’s natural gas) as his slave orban prohibited building of wind turbines, makes solar investments unpredictable, insecure, and we dont have any fast rivers for hydro
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
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.
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.
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.
In Denmark we heat our homes with cooling water from power plants…
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.
