this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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This is the German plan:
The plan for transportation emissions, 2/3 of the target to be cut, is WFH. Yikes!
@[email protected] You are misinformed there. The energy sector reaches its goal and offshore wind farms and solar panels are actually over-performing, meaning more are built than was planned for this year. The sectors largely missing their goals are the transport and the building sector.
If all the subsidiaries that went into nuclear power the last few decades went to renewables instead Germany would have no issues at all, but hey... giving tax payer money to some very few giant energy companies is more important than creating a Europe leading renewables energy sector that does not rely on russian fossils or nuclear material.
You should know that nuclear power is very expensive while renewables are absurd crazy cheap. I've been to a German Endlager and it takes years and BILLIONS of Euros just to seal this thing off. Guess who is paying? Mostly tax payers.
There's be no company in Germany which would be willing to run a nuclear power plant if they were responsible for the permanent disposal of their waste on their own instead of letting the tax payer pay (most of) for it.
That's all well and good in the energy sector. What about transportation? If I understand correctly, transportation makes up the majority of the emissions Germany aims to cut
Sadly, we have a long history of incompetent transport ministers. That didn't change with the last elections.
More like lig-nite deez nuts.
ligma
Funny, because the energy sector was the only on track to fulfill the targets. Last year it even overshot its targets and is expected to again save more CO2 as planned in 2023.
Maybe, just maybe, its more relevant that other sectors are managed by the FDP (market liberals) and SPD (social democrats), while energy is managed by die Grünen (greens).
Do you know about the transportation sector? It is where 2/3 of Germanys planned reduction is.
If only there was some means of replacing all that coal with a non-carbon intensive source of energy that isn't dependant on the weather...
Has anyone heard of such a technology?
Sarcasm aside, that Germany shut down their last two nuclear reactors so recently and carried through is astounding. The excuses are mind-boggling. They're old? Refurbishing is cheaper and faster than new built. They need re-certification? Then do it.
It's more efficient to use the money required for
And spend it on renewables than to do the above.
Also a big factor noone seems to care about: staff. The people who worked there have other jobs now. You can't just plop a reactor plant somewhere and expect it to make electricity you need highly specialised staff for that. We also did not invest into training new staff because why would we, with the stop for nuclear power being decided 10 years ago.
I watched this animated documentary from the states called The Simpsons that seems to state otherwise.
The renewables generate electricity mostly when there is sun/wind, so there is an oversupply at those times and a need to burn natural gas at other times.
The nuclear plants would generate electricity 24/7 with little waste.
Either way, now they are investing the money in digging up lignite, so it's worse than either renewables or nuclear.
Where do you get that from?
Yes congrats, we will need to build energy storages. Thats nothing new. Also calling the waste of nuclear plant little might be factually true if you only go by volume. If you go by "amount of pain in the ass to deal with" calling it little would be a very big understatement.
Duitsland zet vol in op kolen, maar vooral transport blijkt knelpunt - https://nos.nl/l/2438762
Germany to reactivate coal power plants as Russia curbs gas flow - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/germany-reactivate-coal-power-plants-russia-curbs-gas-flow
The eviction of Lützerath: the village being destroyed for a coalmine – a photo essay - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/24/eviction-lutzerath-village-destroyed-coalmine-a-photo-essay
Ok, so where are the energy storages currently being built? This is not exactly a problem that's cheap or trivial to solve.
Can't comment on the first one.
The guardian article says that Germany reactivated coal plants to act as an emergency if the gas would not be enough. It's important to known that gas is not primarly used to make electricity, gas plants are only used when there are peaks in consumption that can not be fulfilled by any other means. Reactivating plants as an emergency backup is not the same as investing in coal power. I am not clear on whether they were even necessary, afaik the gas reserves never went into a critically low level.
Lüzerath is a whole other story. That deal had been made long ago, RWE agreed to stop mining coal earlier if they were allowed to mine the area with that village on top of it. It became a symbol, and people claimed the coal was necessary to maintain stability in the electricity network. Which was proven wrong it was mostly sold to other countries to be burned in their plants.
For all our faults Germany is steadily leaving both fossile and nuclear power behind.
You mean just like nuclear plants are very expensive and non-trivial to build?
Well you don't deal with the waste from burning coal at all, so why not do the same for nuclear?
How about you guys stop this bullshit about the nuclear plants stuff? They were scheduled to be shut down for a VERY long time, the biggest mistake was selling out nearly all the renewable energy manufacturing to China. Nuclear power is only making a profit, if it's subsidized like crazy.
Not only that - A LOT of Germans are actively against putting up more wind power, let alone photovoltaics. Which is what over 50% voted "against" as well. Those that didn't go voting, have lost all say in it, so yeah. That's not a political issue, we Germans are the issue.
So why not modernize or replace the nuclear plants? Battery storage isn't anywhere close to being able to store baseline energy for a full renewable grid.
I agree it's a perception issue, but that doesn't mean nothing can be done about it.
Most plants are to old to modernize and building new ones is expensive, takes decates and dosn't solve the dependency on uran and the nuclear waste problem. Renewables were always the longtearm goal and gas for shortages. Nuclear cant be easy switched on or off, so they aren't a good solution to help with energy lows.
Exactly, just look at Olkiluoto in Finnland. 11 Billion Euros. For comparison, right now, 1 MW in an offshore wind park is about 4 Million Euros. Meaning, for 1600 MW, that's 6400 Million, or 6,4 Billion. That's nearly HALF of Olkiluoto's cost.
Who cares about renewables v nuclear? Either one will get us there.
If I understand correctly Germany does not have a plan to address transportation emissions.
Who has in the EU? Switching to BEVs will do shit overall.