#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

@kravietz its all fun and giggles as long as factories are working

@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

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.