@Baa

Still have 8 GW but they want to shut it down because, you know, green economy 🤦‍♂️

@xue

They won't stop working - this is precisely why Germany has been continuously increasing its fossil gas import capabilities.

German politicians *do* realize the country can't run on renewables alone, *and* because the vocal minority wants nuclear shut down, the country *must* run on fossil fuels. This is literally what Merkel said in 2019 (see below).

@kravietz @xue mhh slightly have to disagree. germany did butcher their green energy the last years. the wind energy is on a low but not the problem to blame.

quitting nuclear power is in germany a majority

one of the german statistics is from (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/196207/umfrage/meinung-zum-gebrauch-von-atomenergie-in-deutschland/)

it shows 5% are absolutly pro nuclear power, 16% more in favour, 36% more against and 40% strictly against. 3% have no opinion

stopping nuclear is politcally the popular move

it is problematic though to botcher nuclear power, wind energy and solar energy. the county can be run very well on renewable energy. solar energy

as a matter of fact solar energy is the cheapest energy to produce. though corrupt politicians did botcher it.

the colorful statistic shows cost to produce 1 kwh in cents

yellow is solar, dark blue is water, wind is light blue gray, green biogas, orange is nucular, brown coal brown, coal black and the last weird red/wine/whatever color is gas. solar is in 3 categoroes. small roofs, big roofs and not on the roof. so even putting solar energy on big roofs is cheaper than gas. but many politicians got bought by big coal and gas companies. well thats why they probably will not get reelected now

@khaosgrille @xue

Germany already has 60% wind and solar installed power.

Installed - is the key word here. It means that under ideal ideal circumstances, 60% of the electricity in Germany would come from wind and solar. The reality is however, that for wind these circumstances happen around 13% of the time on average, for wind - ~30%.

So on a day such as 13 September, you could have 2x or 5x more wind *installed* but you won't get more electricity. Which is why Germany ran on coal that day.

@khaosgrille @xue

So the argument "all would be fine if THEY just allowed us to install more wind and solar" is a fallacy. You simply have days and weeks, when there is very little wind and solar, and regardless of how much PV panels and wind turbines you install, they simply won't produce any energy.

Also "THEY" are German citizens who simply don't want vast areas of land turned into industrial landscape of massive PV and wind farms. These are *residential* protests that slowed down new RE.

@kravietz @xue but they are a small minority in germany. those parties who protected those have big problems in the current election. anyway the statistic u showed is not the day it is by hour. so yeah we need more ways to storage energy over the day

@khaosgrille @xue

There are no such technologies that would allow to store even a 1 TWh of electric energy.

You believed Greenpeace when they said "energy storage is just behind the corner, let's shut down all nuclear" in 2010, and that's precisely why Germany ends up with new coal & fossil gas plants while having 60% renewables in the energy mix and CO2 emissions 2x higher than Ukraine with 20% renewables.

Incidentally, Greenpeace Energy also sells fossil gas 🤔

@khaosgrille @xue

> but they are a small minority in germany

There's opposition to new wind and PV farms everywhere - in Germany, France, UK, Norway, Sweden. There's nothing wrong with opposing replacing a forest with an industrial landscape, which only works 10-30% of time and then is damaged by the first strong wind.

@kravietz @xue also greenpeace sells natural gas yes. it makes 15% of their power mix. 85% is wind and solar energy. they plan to completly phase out of natural gas til 2027. dont see whats wrong with that

@khaosgrille @xue

The fact that Greenpeace Energy is selling fossil gas *and* at the same is lobbying to make it the largest source of energy in Germany is hypocrisy and obvious conflict of interest.

Did you know they - so a company selling fossil gas - sued European Commission over Hinkley Point C in the UK, over alleged competition as they perceived the price of energy from nuclear to be too cheap?

A fossil gas company, suing a low-carbon nuclear, and calling themselves "green" 🤦‍♂️

@kravietz @xue i really dont see the problem.

a 85% green energy +15% fossil gas is fine especially if the fossil gas usage is constantly shrinking

@khaosgrille

@xue

The problem, as seen on electricitymap.org

There are at least three new fossil gas plants in progress in Germany.

One new coal plant.

Coal and gas to stay until 2038 (that's what they say now).

Nuclear shut down by 2022.

@khaosgrille @xue

You don't see what is wrong with that? Ask IPCC:

Fossil gas - 490 gCO2eq/kWh

Nuclear power - 12 gCO2eq/kWh

@khaosgrille @xue

So what you say about "butchering green energy" is simply untrue. Nobody "butchered" it in terms of reducing capacity, they simply stopped building new ones simply because there's no more space left in places where people don't care about them.

One thing that nobody will tells you about renewables is that it actually does use one non-renewable resource: the land surface. And it uses ~100x more of land surface than any other source of energy.

@kravietz @xue roofs and offshore wind energy should be be booming by that logic. there is still a lot of potential space left.

@khaosgrille @xue

Both residential PV (roofs) and off-shore wind are among the most expensive sources of energy. Rooftop PV is also one of the least efficient.

Greens are presenting this as some kind of conspiracy ("we could just build more PV but they won't let us") but in reality there are solid engineering and economic reasons why Germany switched to coal and gas while having 60% renewables *and* shutting down nuclear.

@kravietz @xue especially gas is popular because germany is currently building a huge power to gas infrastructure. to storage TWhs of power and distribute it over the country


btw i dont know of any forest in germany getting removed because of wind or solar energy. the price for rooftop energy in the statistic includes the price for installation and efficiency

@khaosgrille @xue

You posted the graph showing increase of battery capacity in Germany.

It shows 371 MW capacity as of 2018. Let's say it's 1000 MW now.

Do you even realize how much that is and how much is needed to compensate for intermittency of renewable supplies?

@khaosgrille @xue

> gas is popular

I know it's popular in Germany! The whole point is that this dependency on fossil gas goes completely against the objectives of decarbonisation - here's once again the reminder:

Fossil gas - 490 gCO2eq/kWh

Nuclear power - 12 gCO2eq/kWh

The result of "gas is popular":

@kravietz @xue gas is not equal fossil gas. im talking about power to gas

@khaosgrille

There is no power to gas in Germany apart from a few prototype installations with nameplate power being a tiny fraction of country's capacity.

@xue

@xue

It is cynical and inconsistent to increase fossil dependency *and* claim you're "climate mitigation leader" but that's how politicians deal with contradictory demands from their citizens - they do what is necessary while telling what people want to hear 🤷