I live in Germany and I wonder, what the consequences will be of shutting down both coal and nuclear in very short time. My guess is, we will pay for nuclear energy from France and coal energy from Poland when wind slows down.
The new government tries to accelerate the construction of renewable energy but I think their plans will fail because of worker shortage and supply chain problems.
I think a big part of the problem is that Germany has strong business ties with Russia (if you think I'm exaggerating, you might not realize that former chancellor Gerhard Schröder became the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and of Rosneft right after being chancellor — ties do not get any stronger than that).
It is in Russia's best interest to have EU countries dependent on their fossil fuels (natural gas and coal). This goal is being achieved admirably, with Poland burning coal like crazy (buying lots of Russian coal) and Germany burning Russian gas like crazy (through Nord Stream pipelines).
Shutting down the nuclear plants plays straight into that strategy.
Looks like pandering to Greens/anti-nuclear people, but honestly, I don't know. To me, it appears borderline insane, but there's probably something that I am missing.
By "primary" you mean they used 27% over a 6 month period, compared with 21% the 6 months a year earlier. Switching back into first after a good spell for wind had it briefly in the lead.
Why does that mean they can't switch it off?
The UK had 30% Coal in 2014 when they announced they would phase it out and did so slightly ahead of schedule.
27% is a misleading number because it is the average for the whole period. On some days, wind and solar can provide 100% of all electricity. But on windstill nights, it is closer to 0%. Without having a way to store a whole nation's energy needs for several days or even weeks, you still need fossil fuels (or nuclear).
> Without having a way to store a whole nation's energy needs for several days or even weeks
That requirement makes no sense, though. Do you foresee a massive volcanic eruption that there will be darkness for several weeks? Because it's sort of fact of life that the sun always rises tomorrow. Therefore asking for 100% of storage for weeks never made any sense.
Coal was the primary source for energy in Germany since the beginning of the industrial age. In the last decade we had some years were alternatives took over but since the emergence of nuclear power it was never the primary source for energy.
Don't freak out about a statistical variation. The trend is for wind power to increase and for coal power to decrease in Germany, so really the only interesting points in time are the first time when wind generated more than coal and the last time when coal generated more than wind. The first just happened in 2020, so freaking out about coal momentarily being on top in 2021 is pointless.
France will build more nuclear, and in the long run solidify its position as a huge exporter of electricity at high rates when wind is low. Weird arbitrage opportunity for them as the neighbors go all in on wind.
The overall radioactive waste in the environment will go down if coal plants in EU get replaced with nuclear plants in France, even if there would be future accidents at a similar rate per TW/h produced. Even more so if the coal mines get closed down, as those mines also tend to release a lot of radioactive waste into the environment.
Nuclear plants can in some way be seen as fossil fuel plants that store all the waste produced and only release anything if there is an accident. The fossil fueled plants do the opposite, constantly releasing a steady stream into the surrounding area with no risk of an single accident that release a large stored amount in a single instant.
Not quite. They're reducing their dependency on nuclear as well. Sure they might build some new reactors but they'll also close some old ones. It's expected that they will close more reactors than they will build.
Solely political for federal elections following the Fukushima incident.
It’s sad, and almost infuriating, how an event that would never threaten safe nuclear plant operation in Germany set the stone rolling for “Energiewende”.
Personally i think Germany is making a huge mistake and will regret this course down the road.
1. Fear (nuclear waste, radioactivity, incidents, association with nuclear weapons)
2. The Green party has been born out of the anti-nuclear movement. Without them, Germany would probably use nuclear energy for most of its electricity needs, like France does. If the Green party would embrace nuclear, they would have to admit that the anti-nuclear movement was a huge mistake and it is actually, for a good part, to blame for climate change.
Just imagine what the world would look like today if the development of nuclear power plants hadn't been stopped in the 80s and countries used nuclear instead of coal and natural gas.
Germany finalized the plans for a nuclear shutdown somewhere around 2021 in a binding law in 2002 (apparently this was based on "remaining energy to be generated", which doesn't naturally allow to put a precise date on it because of annual variations of demand, but all estimates I've seen in the past basically amount to "by very early 2020s"). This was 9 years before the Fukushima disaster. So please explain to me how this was "solely political for federal elections following the Fukushima incident". They would have needed a working crystal ball for that.
This actually dates back to 1998 when Schröder was chancellor and made the “Atomausstieg” a key topic for federal elections back then - agreed upon by the government and energy corps in 2000.
Momentum really was gained after fukushima.
Again, my personal opinion, this is a reactionary and short sighted approach answering emotional sentiments not scientific data and facts.
Since Schröder seems to be instrumental in the construction of Nord Stream pipelines, it seems there exist a pretty decent economical incentive to change the energy policy towards the use of more natural gas, using the Fukushima incident to hasten the progress. The less nuclear that exist in the grid the higher the peak price will be during periods of low wind conditions.
Are there other politicians that are invested into natural gas?
As far as I can tell, it became a law in 2002. I'm not sure how "momentum really was gained after Fukushima" when the phase-out procedures had to be followed ever since 2002. The whole thing has been in motion for almost twenty years.
My point is: it is a (really) dumb idea for a country that is facing serious infrastructural issues.
The days of great “german engineering” are mostly (i said “mostly”, ok?) a thing of the past - reality has it that this country lost focus and misses out on vital long-term investements and vision. And unfortunately most of this is driven on a political scale intertwined with classic german big corporations.
The “Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport” has been a joke from the beginning and is a showcase of how incompetent politicians can ruin a country.
Try making a call longer than 20 minutes while driving without it being dropped, charge your car…
Sorry for the rant, but it’s just sad where this is going.
I know. The point is that in the long run, the phaseout happened almost exactly as planned twenty years ago. This is no new development, of even a post-Fukushima-development.
Nuclear is "bad" and scary... Plus you know nuclear weapons. And solar and wind produce plenty... Apart form times when they do not, like many times during winter.
Let's approximate the cost of that.
The energy consumption of my country (the Netherlands) was 3157 PJ in 2017.
This was 980 kwh per person per week.
Solar batteries cost a bit more than $1000 per kwh.
So at these prices this plan costs approximately $1 million per person.
Solar batteries last 5-15 years.
If we say that they last 20 years, then the energy storage costs are $130 per person per day per week's worth of storage.
This plan sounds feasible if costs come down by factor of 10.
The problem with your reasoning is that no cost-optimal plan of providing the society with energy would call for a week's worth of batteries. Furthermore, another problem is that judging from the number, you're presumably calculating with annual primary energy spent per capita, which will not be the same number after electrification (electrification is expected to massively slash primary energy expended -- for example in cars, where ~20 kWh of electricity replace ~6 liters of gasoline, primary energy shrinks roughly by a factor of three). Therefore translating current primary energy consumption into electricity that will need to be stored in an electrified future is nonsensical.
A factor of three (which is very optimistic) doesn't change the conclusion: a week's worth of storage is not feasible with current battery technology, let alone a few weeks.
How much storage would actually be required is not clear to me. It depends on a lot of factors. A week doesn't sound totally crazy to me; we certainly want a good safety margin so that society doesn't collapse in a bad winter. If we take super optimistic numbers and have one day of storage and take your factor of 3 reduction in energy use, then the cost of storage alone would still be about twice what we currently pay for the energy. Expensive but certainly a cost that would be possible to pay.
For cars, the factor of three is not "optimistic", it's simple comparison of the respective primary energies consumed by typical vehicles in their respective categories. 20 kWh to drive 100 km = 72 MJ of primary energy. 6 liters of gasoline to drive the same distance = ~220 MJ of primary energy -- roughly triple of the former number.
> A week doesn't sound totally crazy to me; we certainly want a good safety margin so that society doesn't collapse in a bad winter.
Yes, but that doesn't imply you need the capacity to run the country 100% on batteries for a week. That's just not something anyone would ever do. For example, a gas turbine with a low duty cycle would definitely be cheaper than a battery after a certain period of time. So why would you use a battery for that?
The specific factor for cars is not relevant. The factor of 3 is wildly optimistic for general energy use. The point is that even taking the factor of 3, it's still extremely expensive.
Regarding the second paragraph: if you point is that it would be cheaper to duplicate a significant portion of our energy generation, one based on renewables and one based on fossil fuels for safety...that is perhaps true, but that only proves the original point, so I'm a bit confused why you phrase your replies in an antagonistic tone of voice when we seem to agree.
It was an example, since obviously different uses of energy will have different improvement factors - but major uses of energy have considerable improvement factors. In case of heating, for example, the factor is theoretically infinite because it's possible to build net-zero-energy buildings. And specifically in case of Germany, a very large portion of natural gas consumption goes into heating, so this is quite relevant here.
> if you point is that it would be cheaper to duplicate a significant portion of our energy generation, one based on renewables and one based on fossil fuels for safety...
I didn't say a word about basing something on fossil fuels.
> that is perhaps true, but that only proves the original point, so I'm a bit confused why you phrase your replies in an antagonistic tone of voice when we seem to agree
I don't see how we "seem to agree". The comment I initially responded to was proposing storing a WEEK's worth of PRIMARY energy in TODAY'S amounts in BATTERIES. Nobody would seriously consider such a contrived scenario; it would be completely pointless. So I can't possibly agree with those numbers.
I find it fascinating that you call me nonsensical for making the very reasonable assumption that energy consumption will stay the same for a back-of-the envelope calculation, and here you are talking about infinite improvement factors.
> I didn't say a word about basing something on fossil fuels.
You said: "Yes, but that doesn't imply you need the capacity to run the country 100% on batteries for a week. That's just not something anyone would ever do. For example, a gas turbine with a low duty cycle would definitely be cheaper than a battery after a certain period of time. So why would you use a battery for that?"
> I don't see how we "seem to agree". The comment I initially responded to
Note that I responded to that comment with a calculation showing that that plan is economically infeasible. The scenario is not all all contrived; what that person proposed we need is reasonable, and it would in fact be quite dangerous and insufficient to have only one week's worth. Years in which there is more than a week without wind and hardly any sun (due to winter) occur approximately every 10 years in Germany. Thus calling a week's worth of storage contrived is just wrong. If anything, it's contrived in the direction of not being enough.
Where did you get 1,000$/KWH of storage? Even at small scales (household-sized batteries, ~10~15KWH) prices are currently around 300$/KWH for lithium batteries including shipping in a 3rd world country (I know, because I live in a country where there's no 24/7 grid power and I moved my house to solar+batteries 2 years ago).
I'm pretty sure at the kinds of scale you'd need for a country price per KWH would be significantly less.
How does it compare to the cost of a nuclear power plant?
Storing a weeks worth of consumption on a 'per person' basis can be done for a fraction of $1m. But energy scarcity will lead to an increase in prices, which in turn will lead to a reduction in consumption. One big problem with energy is that it is still way too cheap.
Another problem is that there are a lot of subsidies involved for large consumers as well as extra taxation on small consumers.
Generating that amount of energy using nuclear would cost approximately $13.4 per person per day (IIRC ~3x what we're currently paying for it).
Note that I have not included the cost to generate the energy in the $130 storage costs, but that cost is negligible compared to the $130 anyway.
The environmental damage would probably also be much less with nuclear, versus a ton of solar + wind + batteries. But there would be disaster danger. It is unclear to me how the danger of nuclear disaster would compare to the danger of running out of stored energy in a winter month.
> Storing a weeks worth of consumption on a 'per person' basis can be done for a fraction of $1m.
How?
Since the costs of storage are currently so huge, it seems to me that if you want to go the solar + wind route, it makes sense to overprovision energy generation. That would reduce the amount of storage you need, and the extra energy during summer would be somewhat useful.
Note however that you would need massive amounts of wind+solar.
For an average household to satisfy its electricity needs, it needs ~10 average size solar panels (assuming perfect storage).
However, household electricity use is only 5% of our energy use.
So to satisfy energy needs with solar, you need approximately 200 solar panels per household. Even if you round that down to 50 due to reduction in energy consumption and use of wind energy, it's still a lot. But the Netherlands is obviously not a very good country for solar. In countries like Australia, the numbers would look way better.
Energy is too expensive, not too cheap. The real problem is that the market is distorted by subsidizing some forms of energy production and failing to price in the negative externalities of others.
Everything I’ve read on the subject (admittedly not much) tells me that wind power is not only a disaster ecologically (kills too many birds, though not as many as domestic cats) but also unable to produce enough power to govern everything even with interconnects.
Distribution of power is also difficult, but there was notably a “still” winter in Sweden which is driving up prices significantly due to hydro not being enough. (I live here, that’s how I know)
I don't really understand the strong position you take while at the same time admitting to not having read much on the subject, and then to regurgitate a bunch of debunked nonsense.
“Everything I have read contradicts what you just stated.”
Not sure how I could be clearer. Maybe I made a mistake by admitting my ignorance, but i would rather admit my ignorance than assume I know everything because I read 5 articles and watched a few YouTube videos.
For starters HVDC lines are being installed in many places and many are already operational, and the 'windmills kill too many birds' thing was a push by the fossil fuel industry and has been debunked.
I don't know which five articles you have read but I suggest you read a couple more and more recent ones.
As for 'citation please': that does presume that you have done your own homework, I really don't see why I should do it for you but as to those first two points of yours:
Windmills do kill birds. That isn't seriously disputed. Some large wind farms have had a significant impact on threatened bird species. We might consider that an acceptable cost but the issue hasn't been debunked.
Yes, they do kill birds. But you know what? Buildings kill a very large multiple of that and housecats a very large multiple of the buildings. So no, they're not meatgrinders. Yes, some threatened bird species were impacted disproportionally, but any change would impact them because there are so few of them left, which is usually because of other causes: Windmills tend to be situated rather closer to the habitats of large birds of prey than housecats and buildings because we left them very little habitat to begin with, and neither large birds of prey nor windmills work well in an urban setting. But taking good care of this when siting windparks can alleviate a lot of that particular concern.
There was a whole campaign around this, including endlessly recycled gruesome material of the same 25 birds that at one time flew into a particular mill. Obviously that stuff has legs because hey, gore and something I don't want in my backyard.
I always wonder what drives people to push these issues for more than they are worth.
Sad that this is downvoted. The hidden cost of nuclear is one of the biggest issue the tech-affine crowds tend to ignore and not want to hear about. You may not pay it on your utility bill, but society and later generations will pay it.
Countries that need a lot of reserve energy is paying a lot of subsidies to fossil fuels. Year in, year out. First you need to pay them in order to keep the plants on standby when renewables are plenty, and then you need to pay them again when demand exceeds the productions of renewables. The outcome is very large and steady stream of money going into the pockets of those who invest into fossil fuel.
Nuclear would need a lot in order to catch up to the same level of subsidies.
Your document's graph shows that France, and a bunch of other countries with nuclear, are subsidizing fossil fuels more than Germany.
That seems to be proving the oppposite of your point.
It's also interesting that France has generic "electricity" subsidies that are bigger than their "nuclear" subsidies and yet 70% of their electricity is nuclear.
The generic "electricity" subsidies in France seems similar to other countries, so my read is that they are things like transmission lines and other costs that is independent of the technology that generated the power.
Could you explain the logic behind that idea that France subsidizes to fossil fuel is proof that nuclear is expensive? To me it is proof that the fossil fuel industry will extract its cut as long as the grid is dependent on it.
Also, a technical details. In actually billions, France is not subsidizing fossil fuels more than Germany. France total subsidize is about half of Germany, so the actually money that goes to fossil fuels are quite much smaller as a result.
Someone said nuclear is expensive (compared with renewables) which is factually correct.
You said that this was wrong, because countries that deployed renewables needed to pay fossil fuels to standby and then pay them again when there's no wind or sun.
To back this up you pointed to a document about level of subsidies.
That document shows that Germany gives less subsidies to fossil fuels than other countries with nuclear plants, notably France, as a percent of GDP.
You now appear to be trying to wiggle out of this on a technicality because Germany has a bigger economy than France, though even then the final numbers are 12.2 billion vs 11.5 billion.
But, let's pretend that's what you were saying, oh look, countries with nuclear on average subsidize fossil fuels more in absolute terms.
(This is because they are bigger economies, so this is an entirely spurious correlation but even playing by your changed rules, your document doesn't support your argument).
As a leading politician of the German social democratic party famously said: a kwh you don't use is least expensive. I guess they'll save plenty of money when there's power rationing.
Which is a good thing. Just converting energy sources is not going to save us. We need to tackle the energy sinks too, i.e., getting smarter about how we use the available energy, i.e., mostly being more energy efficient. ("We" as in "humankind".) Raising prices is the right incentive here. In the long run, +50% is not actually that bad. There is room for a lot more.
Funny, I had this exact discussion with a colleague at work the other day. She claimed this is nonsense and won't change anybody's mind.
Then she mentioned that she just had bought a new car. I asked what kind, it's a hybrid. I asked why? Well, because her old car was using so much fuel, and with recent price hikes, that became too expensive, so she just bought one that was significantly more fuel efficient.
The _exact_ same person! Just 2 minutes after claiming monetary incentives don't work demonstrated that it actually worked for her!
I have high hopes that price hikes are what convinces people to change their behavior. Not ads, not appealing to ethics or conciousness or "the future of your kids" or pictures of dying polar bears. You need to feel it in your wallet, then you act, plain and simple.
> You need to feel it in your wallet, then you act, plain and simple.
In that case, we should make the price of power relative to your wealth, shouldn't we? I'm guessing you're an academic and work in tech or consulting, so you make two, three times the national average if you live in Germany. Trippling the price of power will barely register on your level, so you have little incentive to conserve energy. However, if we said that e.g. a kwh costs 1/15000 of your personal wealth, you'd have a lot of incentive, because even if you start the year as a billionaire, you'd be broke if you used 15000kwh.
I have a feeling that none of the -typically well-off- proponents of "we must make the people pay more so that they stop consuming" will be a fan of that.
Hybrids are not the same as electric. They get their fuel savings from the fact that they can convert kinetic energy from braking back to electricity. Plus the fact that electric engines are more efficient way to pull off (which is where the ICE wastes most fuel). None of those things require an external electricity source.
Maybe we should take step further. Make energy cost non-linear. Make it cost exponentially more with increased use. So if you do not use lot you pay base rate per unit. If you use lot you pay price multiple to the base rate per unit.
Everyone is talking about not doing enough. Everyday, even here. There is this strange fascination like in the 70s with fossil fuels that we can just worry later about it. It's the same with nuclear energy now, maybe even worse. Using one finite polluting resource is not gonna be the answer as much as everyone on hackernews wants it to be. Sometimes when you want progress you have to burn the boats. This is Germany burning the boats so they have to force alternatives and progress.
This is a nice example to show the illusion of explanatory depth [0]. Most people would say they know how a spray bottle works, but fail to describe all relevant details of the implementation,
> If you asked one hundred people on the street if they understand how a refrigerator works, most would respond, yes, they do. But ask them to then produce a detailed, step-by-step explanation of how exactly a refrigerator works and you would likely hear silence or stammering.
This is a terrible example because its essentially a trick question. The illustration would highly depend on context.
Say you meet someone on the street and you casually ask them this question, or you ask this on a birthday. "Works" with regards to a refrigerator refers to "knowing how to operate", or perhaps the basics.
Whereas if its for the TV quiz program "engineering of the kitchen" or "an applicant for technician repairing Samsung's refrigerators", yes then its clear that more depth is meant.
That's not to say the Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't apply here. Its just that there's a level set for a debate due to the context which then presets also the level of the expected answer.
Michael Faraday gave a great series of lectures on how candles work that also illustrates the difference between cursory knowledge and explanatory depth. Most people think they know how candles work, but when you dive into the details there are all sorts of interesting things going on.
That is indeed a wonderful recreation of a brilliant original, and I often think of it when trying to figure out how to provably and clearly demonstrate some absolutely novel concept. Faraday's genius shows through here.
Having watched the first lecture, I was thoroughly impressed by the design and presentation of this historical artifact, with (judiciously chosen) modern embellishments.
Yes! I coincidentally just learned about that topic recently.
What’s great about that problem is that it isn’t obvious that there even is a problem in the first place. “How do trains stay on tracks? Well... they have wheels, don’t they?”
Then when the problem is explained, it sounds impossible. The solution you first think of is probably wrong.
> In Minecraft, the imaginary worlds my son dreams up are expressed and realized in a virtual environment multiple people can occupy and affect together. When he tells me the floor is lava, I look down and notice that the floor is indeed made of burning lava, fatal on contact. In response, I construct a bridge.
I always wondered about my nephews fascination for minecraft. This is probably one of the main reasons.
The new government tries to accelerate the construction of renewable energy but I think their plans will fail because of worker shortage and supply chain problems.