Meanwhile in Germany:
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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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)!
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.
and the next 16 years, if everything works well Ü
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 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.
I have found this nice article (in French) :
https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/exportations-délectricité-françaises-en-allemagne-finir-steven-lorant
It's ... more complex than one picture.
The average idea is that :
Why do you use this tone?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Except that if you calculate the complete cost including building the plants it's stupendously expensive compared to renewables even including energy storage.
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.
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.
That is factually incorrect. The oldest reactors still in service are around 60years old and have to be maintained and repaired at high costs as safety relevant parts are heavily deteriorated.
With rising safety measures new plants get more expensive from year to year all the while renewables get cheaper and cheaper in production.
Nuclear costs double per kilowatt than solar tho??
And Nuclear Plants are always built by for profit companies?
I can. But I'm not gonna. I'm lazy.
Here's one of many(pdf inside)