What a fucking joke. It’s amazing how all these countries set weak goals for themselves and then fail anyway.
We’re all going to die lol
The goal is complete decarbonization until 2045 and a lot of sectors in Germany are already on track with that goal, energy being one of them. That with a minister of finance, that does not want to spend money and a minister of transportation, that is more a puppet of the automobile industry and does not care about decarbonization. Imagine the US without the huge subsidies into clean energy. That’s what Germany is trying to do under their current minister of finance.
Yes, but the goals in germany are written into a law, and the highest council actually blaming the government for failed goals.
Still not gonna change a damn thing. The (federal) government(s) don’t care, they are busy framing harmless protesters as potential terrorists and jailing them accordingly. Or they simply change the law again so that they do not have to be held accountable for their missed goals (see the ministry for transport).
The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.
That’s basically what Germany did. They recently shut down their nuclear plants and restarted their coal plants.
That is just blatant misinformation. Name one single coal plant that has been restarted since nuclear power was phased out.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-reactivates-coal-fired-power-plant-to-save-gas/a-62893497
The Mehrum plant in Hohenhameln and the Heyden plant in Petershagen (whose operation has been extended).
Unless your nitpick is that these were started before the final nuclear shutdown, but I never said otherwise, only that both things happened recently.
I understood it as coal was phased in as nuclear was phased out. The thing that astounds me still though is how recent the last 3 were shut down.
I think they were planning on natural gas, but that went down the tubes because they were planning on buying from Russia. Coal plants were restarted to fill the gap.
What the plan is now, I don’t know.
The end goal was always renewables with smart net, storage and hydrogen plants to offset spikes. Gas prices are dropping again, so it will be used as a bridging solution. Energy production in Germany is actually on track of its climate goals compared to transportation.
They were extended specifically because of natural gas supply issues, caused by the war in Ukraine. Not because of nuclear shutdowns.
The actual problem was stopping to fund solar, smashing a hundred thousand jobs in renewables under the pretense of “saving workers”. ~20k jobs in coal heroically saved.
And yet coal power production is practically at the lowest level ever (except for corona months 03/20 and 04/20)
Germany is now using coal as base load. The main reason coal has not increased considerably is because all this new generation and loss of nuclear baseload along with limited ng generation has resulted in average energy prices doubling from 2017 to 2021 prices. Simply put the cost of energy is now so high that people and industry is using less. Done large industries shut down with loss of jobs. Solar and wind had been very expensive even with government subsidies. Subsidies that take money out of government coffers resulting in less services. This ignoring the increase in energy importation of which some may be from coal generation.
Shutting down nuclear simply denied millions of people a clean energy source unless they were willing to pay nearly double that of past years.
You know that with merit order pricing the cost of electricity only depended on the cost of the most expensive producer? So nuclear plants have close to 0 Influence on the price.
We’ll be fine. We’re gonna throw some reflective particulate into the atmosphere or some shit.
We’ll drop a giant ice cube into the ocean, solving the problem once and for all!
You kid, but we’re not gonna get greenhouse gases under control. We’re gonna find a way to stabilize temps and kick the can down the road to the next issue co2 causes.
Didn’t you hear him? ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!
Por que no los dos?
because of this
German here.
Even back under Merkel, elected parties had a habit of defining good goals and then rendering them impossible to hit through policy. This meant that no one could fault them for trying, and no one could fault them for not being able to hit them.
Nowadays my countrymen aren’t as stupid anymore. That doesn’t mean we can do anything about it, but especially since Merkel we don’t believe any of these leaks anymore.
Good ol CDU turning almost everything they touched into steaming horseshit
No matter the platform worldnews comments contain mainly ignorant, overconfident bullshit. Glad to know that there are some things in life one can depend upon.
I wonder if they would ever reconsider what they did for the deactivation of nuclear power plants.
I wonder if any of the nuclear bros on here ever consider, that jerking a fuel rod isn’t always the best approach?
Seriously, every fucking time this comes up and every fucking time you guys show nothing but arrogance and ignorance, both usually weapons grade.
Not german but I’m in the same continent and in a country that nobody really cares about and we are nearing the threshold where renewables produce more than we require to run the country.
Funny thing is, private citizens are doing more for that effort alone than government in real terms because saving money is high on the priorities list here and free, renewable energy is a good thing, even more if you can produce it yourself.
Meanwhile, we’ve been fighting the government to cancel the authorization to log nearly 2000 old growth cork oaks for installing a solar panel farm when we have a lot of room to plant off shore wind farms.
Nobody really understands what is going on.
cork oaks
Portugal! What a wonderful country full of wonderful people. We do care about you and your delicious but slightly greasy food.
You’ve been eating at the wrong places… that’s a spanish thing: too much olive oil on every dish and too much fat on every cured meat
I just remember a sandwich covered in melted cheese with an egg on top and some kind of sauce. And a lot of delicious fried food. Both usually with fries as a side dish. Never any salad unless I specifically ordered it. I’m sure I could have gone to lots of restaurants where they would have had lighter meals, but I was on holiday so greasy was perfect.
Which country?
Portugal
Oh nice. Yeah, Portugal runs under the radar here. I found rhis https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/portugal
Seems like you got rid of coal already. Oil/gas seem to hover however. Do you have plans about getting rid of fuel cars? And what do you use gas for? In Germany it’s mostly heating, I would have guessed you don’t need so much heating in Portugal and can use the AC in winter.
And good look with these oaks, I hate forest being cut down.
This is the German plan:
- Shutdown the nuclear plants
- Burn more lignite
- WFH
The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic. “Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme,” Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday
The plan for transportation emissions, 2/3 of the target to be cut, is WFH. Yikes!
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.
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.
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
- The inspection
- The renovations
- Acquiring new fuel
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Where do you get that from?
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
Yes congrats, we will need to build energy storages. Thats nothing new.
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.
Ok, so where are the energy storages currently being built? This is not exactly a problem that’s cheap or trivial to solve.
You mean just like nuclear plants are very expensive and non-trivial to build?
@Grimpen@lemmy.ca 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.
Shit I had hoped we could leave the nuclear stans over at reddit.
Nein!
Doch!