#Energiewende be like:
— Mom, why is school and trains not working?
— It's the weather to blame!
> In the first half of 2021, coal shot up as the biggest contributor to Germany's electric grid, while wind power dropped to its lowest level since 2018. Officials say the weather is partly to blame.
https://m.dw.com/en/germany-coal-tops-wind-as-primary-electricity-source/a-59168105
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).
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
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.
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.
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
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?
> 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":
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.
