>Robert Habeck (Invidious link), provided insight into current political activities and stressed that energy-efficiency isn't getting the required attention yet.
if you didn't shut down your nuclear reactors you wouldn't need to worry so much about energy efficiency.
The same "green" politicians who forced the shutdown of a perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors, meaning Germany's dependence on coal is increasing, now more than a third. All the energy-saving software in the world won't cancel that out.
>Emissions from German coal-fired power plants are set to be responsible for a projected 26,000 attributable deaths between 2022 and 2038
German Green party "environmentalism" is completely fraudulent, they should be international pariahs. Any "sustainability" conference sponsored by them is a farce and should be boycotted, same as if it were sponsored by Exxon or Shell.
For the love of god, stop with putting the blame for this absolutely shit situation on the current green politicians. The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations. The government parties that ratified the Atomausstieg in Germany were the conservatives (CDU) and socialists (SPD).
Also, the route forward the greens wanted were green energies - solar, wind, biomass. This was blocked as much as possible by the last coalition of CDU and SPD, including a complete construction stop of new wind energy in Bavaria (caused by the CSU, a fundamentalist conservative sister of the CDU)
Afaik, one of the largest blocker for wind in bavaria is the 10-H rule: the distance from a wind turbine and the closest residential building has to be more than 10 times the height of the wind turbine.
This does not exactly seem a concern focused around industry.
Large industries don't need nuclear energy. Nuclear only produces electricity anyway. And renewable already delivers far more electricity than nuclear since decades. Large Industries are moving to renewable now, to replace coal and gas, because they never cared much about nuclear.
>The reactors in Germany were well past their lifetime, some had serious security concerns, and weren't maintained to allow for continued operations.
This was a political choice, not technical. It was entirely possible to extend their lifetimes. They just chose not to.
The Green politicians and activists are the ones who spent decades hyping up the dangers of nuclear, they influenced a whole generation. The fact that it was a different party that implemented it is immaterial; they were the authors of the whole ideology. Fanatical minority parties force the hand of cowardly or indifferent moderates all the time. It would not have happened without them.
Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds, when Russia started the war and suddenly Germany couldn't rely on gas anymore. But they didn't. They chose coal.
It's completely preposterous to say it's not the Greens' fault.
---
Can't reply to other comment because of cooldown, putting my reply here:
>No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year.
Nope, nope, nope. Greens have continually lied about this. Inspections would not have taken years:
>Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view.
>The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months.
Nor was there any problem of fuel availability. Westinghouse offered to make new fuel rods and could have delivered them by Q4 2022; Habeck just said no.
I repeat: there was no technical, safety, or logistical reason whatsoever that the plants couldn't have been brought back up. It was purely a political choice.
---
>Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions.
German reactors are inherently safer than Soviet RBMK reactors, in that they have containment vessels and are not shrouded in institutional secrecy. Literally nobody died from the Fukushima disaster. And there is no rigorously imaginable scenario where a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a 10 metre high tsunami could happen in Germany. If the plants were in a poor condition, then bring them to a better condition. There was no reason whatsoever for the Fukushima disaster to trigger outright decommissioning of Germany's nuclear fleet. It just doesn't rationally follow. No new relevant information was learned; people already knew what a meltdown was.
>The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 yea...
Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions.
The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 years where politicians from both parties were actively sabotaging the building of new wind and solar in favour for more coal. Sigmar Gabriel, being a prime example of that.
The law proposition was written by CDU/CSU and FDP. Majority public sentiment at the time was to get rid of nuclear energy. The greens specifically called out the lack of renewables in the law.
If you think you can just last minute decide to keep nuclear reactors running, then you have no actual idea of how any of this works.
2 of the reactors, Neckarwestheim and Emsland, had only old fuel rods left over. Estimates suggest at best a continuation at 60% capacity for 80 days. Acquiring new ones isn't something you can just do. From order to delivery it takes 12-18 months. Since reactors were being shut down, they simply didn't have the personal to keep them running. There was also no planned upkeep since 2009, which is another major time and cost point. So at best, those reactors would have run for 80 days before having to power up coal again. Instead of spending all that money on mainting old infrastructure, we can just as well massively build and invest into green energy. That would produce more energy, for a lesser amount of money.
> Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds
No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year.
Good job leaving out some important details to blame the greens.
1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet
2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark.
3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear
4. It was conservatives who stopped or slowed down the shutdown of fossil power plants, because of the "but muh job" gang
5. It was conservatives, once again, who put ridiculous rules in place to prevent wind power from being built in sufficient amount (Bavaria)
6. Greens weren't in power for 16 years, but still get the blame. Once again it was conservatives in the majority, who did their best to make fossil fuel lobbyists happy the entire time.
7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it?
So if you want to blame someone, blame the CDU/CSU for their lobbyism and the SPD for their lack of a spine.
> 1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet
Not true. France had their nuclear fleet in limbo, unable to know how to plan due to EU rules saying X amount of energy must be generated from a green source. Sadly EU (well Germany) blocked that for many years, causing France to be stuck in a position of unable to invest or develop its nuclear energy (which btw they used to export lots, including to Germany). https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-l...
That got fixed in the end, as long as they agreed to label Gas as green energy generation, which Germany wanted and indeed, needed to comply with EU rules they help create.
You could say Germany handicapped France and held them to ransom, you could say that, but to say France messed up would be utterly unfair with the full context at play.
edit: I think I misread your claim about EU rules and "gas" as being about e-fuels, but I'll leave the comment as it still seems broadly relevant.
Regarding your claims about what "Germany" was up to, the article I posted elsewhere in the thread suggest it was the FDP overuling the Green's agenda.
> They're particularly worried about Berlin's blockade of an EU ban on sales of polluting cars and vehicles from 2035, which the German government previously agreed to, and was specifically promoted by the Greens. However, at the very last stage of the legislative approval process, the FDP of Porsche-driving Finance Minister Christian Lindner threw a spanner at the works, demanding that the European Commission create a loophole for cars operating with synthetic fuels, or e-fuels.
Aha, we use gas to refer to "natural gas" and mindful of some countries refer to what we call petrol as gas. Hence, the whole car aspect is a whole other subject.
Sorry for the confusion.
I didn't go into, nor felt need to go into the finer political drivers, beyond, the overall representation of effect that was Germany, who sign and agreed things with the EU as a country, hence said Germany.
That looks more like a somewhat recent thing. There is the Ademe study, which showed that renewable would be a good idea for France. Which was swept under the table, because it didn't fit Macrons idea of going full speed nuclear.
Maybe having a sizeable renewable fleet would have helped to avoid much of the problems France has now. But i guess they also had a government playing that back and forth game...
>1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet
... and they would not have needed to do this in the first place if Germany's nuclear fleet hadn't already been crippled on purpose. You cannot deliberately reduce your baseload capacity, and then blame another country for an accidental reduction.
>2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark.
They should never have been "meant to be turned off" in the first place. And by the way, the gas did go low. That was what all the energy rationing and crazy prices were about. People and businesses had to reduce their consumption of energy.
>3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear; >4. It was conservatives ...
Yes and who was forcing that back-and-forth? They're trying to win anti-nuclear votes and get shit done in states with Green coalitions. You recognize that the fossil fuel lobby can sway the behaviour of politicians without literally being in power as a formal governing party, yet you don't recognize the lobbying influence of the Greens, which is much stronger in practical terms?
>7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it?
This is a funny thing Green apologists do: they'll say nuclear can't fix gas dependency overnight. But the gas-dependency problem is only in existence because years ago nuclear was chosen to be phased out, and the only alternative was gas. In the counterfactual world where this didn't happen, a greater share of houses would have electric heating rather than gas, like it is in France, so the problem would not exist. In other words, Green anti-nuclear policies create an artificial problem, then they'll use the fact that nuclear can't instantly fix that problem as an additional anti-nuclear argument.
Nobody else is as fanatically opposed to nuclear power as the Greens. They ran a focused, deliberate campaign of propaganda, lies, obstructionism, protest, and sabotage, over decades. Conservative fecklessness doesn't get you to this situation. UK conservatives aren't much different to yours; they take money from fossil fuel interests and have to listen to anti-wind NIMBYs. But somehow our old reactors are still running, and yours aren't, and the difference is something in the German political culture that made the Greens more effective there than here.
Imagine a counterfactual Green party, actually worthy of the name, that shed the anti-nuclear message after the Cold War ended, and embraced nuclear as a valuable tool to fight global warming. Imagine that party is as effective in that timeline as it is in ours. In that timeline, the Energiewende doesn't have a gas-dependent "transitional phase"; instead existing nuclear reactors are kept running and new ones begin construction around the end of the 2000s, coming online in the late 2010s, where they form the backbone of a decarbonized grid. Electric heating gradually displaces gas heating, Putin's regime doesn't get as much hard currency from gas exports, and nobody would have ever heard of Greta Thurnberg.
Fission power is just too expensive - it's done and it won't come back at a large scale anywhere because the price point is not great (and France is good example there). Doesn't mean no new reactors will be built.
If there is a new nuclear, it will be fusion which so far has not been given anywhere close to as much funding/subsidies as fission (or fossil fuels).
> The same "green" politicians who forced the shutdown of a perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors
So you say that they "forced" the shutdown by somehow convincing a completely opposite political party (the CDU)? I agree that shutting them down, especially without building alternatives quickly enough, was wrong. But blaming it on the greens? really? They might take like 1% of the blame in your argument.
If they really had that much falsehoods, lies and propaganda in their claims, the energy companies, their lobbyists and, like, _the whole government_ might have found at least some of them questionable and debunked them, don't you think? And "the greens"(I'm pretty sure that a big part of them and their voters is actually not anti-nuclear) were the first to criticise the shutdown, although mostly in how it went down.
Blaming the shutdown (solely) on the greens is downright bs.
Nuclear is not carbon-free, and the green did not shut down the reactors. That decision was made in 2011, and 2019 was the latest point where it could have been cancelled. Both times when the green had no significant power to force anything.
Yes, but no. It's similar, but different. A major source of emissions for both is building the plants, which is roughly 1/3 of for nuclear. But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source, which makes roughly 2/3 of its emissions. This overall leads to far higher emissions. Though, they both are small compared to the like of coal, gas or burning stuff.
> But Nuclear additionally has the fuel-production as another major source
Where do the rare earth, metal, &co for solar and wind harvesters come from ? These things are getting rarer by the day and harder to mine = more pollutants. It's very very far from clean
Germany's electricity generation from coal has over the long run substantially decreased. The low of 2020 appears to correlate with the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase since then appears to be more of a reversion to the original trend than anything to do with changes in electricity from nuclear.
2022 coal use is a third greater than 2020, as _dain_ mentions, but 2020 was anomalously low usage rather than representing a normal baseline for comparison.
While any increase in coal usage is a problem, the coal use should be compared to the average of the last few years with the anomaly of 2020 removed. This would produce effectively no increase or decrease in coal usage.
If Germany had kept all its nukes running in the past 20 years, it would be 100% coal-free RIGHT NOW. It would have saved literally MILLIONS OF LIVES. There is absolutely no possible excuse for this.
Germany isn't all Europe. Also, at it's highest nuclear was 22.4 GW, at its lowest coal was 37,9 GW. So, your second point, about being 100% coal-free if nuclear had been kept, is also not correct.
Nuclear plants can run at nearly 100% capacity all the time, while burning more coal gets more expensive. You can't simply compare raw theoretical power. Else Germany would already be 100% on renewables.
You're looking for excuses. Nuclear power killed precisely zero person in Europe in the past 20 years (and exactly one in the whole world). Coal power killed at the very least hundreds of thousands in the same time. Period. Beat around the bush as much as you want, there is no possible escape from the facts.
From your source: in 2022, 4.1GW of nuclear power provided 34.7 TWh (theoretical maximum : 35.9 TWh, load over 90%), while 37.9GW of coal provided 183 TWh (less than 60% load : burning coal is expensive).
In 2002, still according to your own source, nuclear power plants provided about 180 TWh. So I stand by my affirmation: with continued 2002/2003 nuclear capacity, Germany would be virtually coal-free right now. Had they spent the money spent on buying coal on building some more wind turbines, it would definitely be a done thing.
If Germany had kept its nuclear plants available in 2003 today (which was completely feasible), it would be 100% coal-free TODAY. Imagine that. There is zero excuse. Any ton of CO2 emitted is a problem.
> perfectly good fleet of carbon-free nuclear reactors
The planning to decommission them started in 2011. It was a big hurdle to just extend that for the last few months. This also meant that long-term maintenance wasn't done. So perfectly good they are not, and keeping them online now would be extremely expensive.
Until there are off the shelf nuclear-plant solutions, (which don't take decades to get up and running) it just won't happen. I really hope a few of the current SMR startups become successful.
46 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 87.3 ms ] threadif you didn't shut down your nuclear reactors you wouldn't need to worry so much about energy efficiency.
https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/health-impacts-of-...
>Emissions from German coal-fired power plants are set to be responsible for a projected 26,000 attributable deaths between 2022 and 2038
German Green party "environmentalism" is completely fraudulent, they should be international pariahs. Any "sustainability" conference sponsored by them is a farce and should be boycotted, same as if it were sponsored by Exxon or Shell.
You absolutely need nuclear energy for that.
No one believed their fairy tales.
This does not exactly seem a concern focused around industry.
This was a political choice, not technical. It was entirely possible to extend their lifetimes. They just chose not to.
The Green politicians and activists are the ones who spent decades hyping up the dangers of nuclear, they influenced a whole generation. The fact that it was a different party that implemented it is immaterial; they were the authors of the whole ideology. Fanatical minority parties force the hand of cowardly or indifferent moderates all the time. It would not have happened without them.
Besides, they are actually in coalition right now, and had the opportunity at the last minute to change their minds, when Russia started the war and suddenly Germany couldn't rely on gas anymore. But they didn't. They chose coal.
It's completely preposterous to say it's not the Greens' fault.
---
Can't reply to other comment because of cooldown, putting my reply here:
>No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year.
Nope, nope, nope. Greens have continually lied about this. Inspections would not have taken years:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-gas-crisis-...
>Responding to the government's nuclear safety concerns, TUEV, a major provider of industrial testing and certification, said it was possible to continue operating the three remaining nuclear power plants from a safety point of view.
>The plants are in a technically excellent condition," Joachim Buehler, managing director at TUEV, told Reuters, adding that an extensive check, which is usually done every 10 years, was necessary but could be done within a few months.
Nor was there any problem of fuel availability. Westinghouse offered to make new fuel rods and could have delivered them by Q4 2022; Habeck just said no.
https://public.substack.com/p/anti-nuke-greens-menace-europe
I repeat: there was no technical, safety, or logistical reason whatsoever that the plants couldn't have been brought back up. It was purely a political choice.
---
>Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions.
German reactors are inherently safer than Soviet RBMK reactors, in that they have containment vessels and are not shrouded in institutional secrecy. Literally nobody died from the Fukushima disaster. And there is no rigorously imaginable scenario where a magnitude-9 earthquake followed by a 10 metre high tsunami could happen in Germany. If the plants were in a poor condition, then bring them to a better condition. There was no reason whatsoever for the Fukushima disaster to trigger outright decommissioning of Germany's nuclear fleet. It just doesn't rationally follow. No new relevant information was learned; people already knew what a meltdown was.
>The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 yea...
Hard to swallow pill for some, but every word is true.
Correct, they hyped up the dangers. Considering what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima, I'd argue the we're and are spot on about what happens when reactors critically fail. In 2011, several of Germanys reactors were in horrendous conditions.
The Greens were always advocating for safe and clean alternatives. Thats solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal, but instead of following that path, CDU and SPD decided to buy more gas from Russia. There were multiple periods in the last 16 years where politicians from both parties were actively sabotaging the building of new wind and solar in favour for more coal. Sigmar Gabriel, being a prime example of that.
The law proposition was written by CDU/CSU and FDP. Majority public sentiment at the time was to get rid of nuclear energy. The greens specifically called out the lack of renewables in the law.
If you think you can just last minute decide to keep nuclear reactors running, then you have no actual idea of how any of this works.
2 of the reactors, Neckarwestheim and Emsland, had only old fuel rods left over. Estimates suggest at best a continuation at 60% capacity for 80 days. Acquiring new ones isn't something you can just do. From order to delivery it takes 12-18 months. Since reactors were being shut down, they simply didn't have the personal to keep them running. There was also no planned upkeep since 2009, which is another major time and cost point. So at best, those reactors would have run for 80 days before having to power up coal again. Instead of spending all that money on mainting old infrastructure, we can just as well massively build and invest into green energy. That would produce more energy, for a lesser amount of money.
No, they had not. It takes several years to refuel the reactors and check them. At this point they are empty because of the long planned shutdown. Additionally, it would cost billions in penalty, because of the poor decisions of past conservative government. And finally, the nuclear fuel for Germans reactors comes from Russia, which would defeat the whole purpose of all sanctions in the last year.
1. Coal was turned on because France messed up their nuclear fleet
2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark.
3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear
4. It was conservatives who stopped or slowed down the shutdown of fossil power plants, because of the "but muh job" gang
5. It was conservatives, once again, who put ridiculous rules in place to prevent wind power from being built in sufficient amount (Bavaria)
6. Greens weren't in power for 16 years, but still get the blame. Once again it was conservatives in the majority, who did their best to make fossil fuel lobbyists happy the entire time.
7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it?
So if you want to blame someone, blame the CDU/CSU for their lobbyism and the SPD for their lack of a spine.
Not true. France had their nuclear fleet in limbo, unable to know how to plan due to EU rules saying X amount of energy must be generated from a green source. Sadly EU (well Germany) blocked that for many years, causing France to be stuck in a position of unable to invest or develop its nuclear energy (which btw they used to export lots, including to Germany). https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-to-veto-eu-plan-to-l...
That got fixed in the end, as long as they agreed to label Gas as green energy generation, which Germany wanted and indeed, needed to comply with EU rules they help create.
You could say Germany handicapped France and held them to ransom, you could say that, but to say France messed up would be utterly unfair with the full context at play.
Regarding your claims about what "Germany" was up to, the article I posted elsewhere in the thread suggest it was the FDP overuling the Green's agenda.
> They're particularly worried about Berlin's blockade of an EU ban on sales of polluting cars and vehicles from 2035, which the German government previously agreed to, and was specifically promoted by the Greens. However, at the very last stage of the legislative approval process, the FDP of Porsche-driving Finance Minister Christian Lindner threw a spanner at the works, demanding that the European Commission create a loophole for cars operating with synthetic fuels, or e-fuels.
Sorry for the confusion.
I didn't go into, nor felt need to go into the finer political drivers, beyond, the overall representation of effect that was Germany, who sign and agreed things with the EU as a country, hence said Germany.
https://www.reuters.com/article/france-nuclearpower-idUSL8N1...
Maybe having a sizeable renewable fleet would have helped to avoid much of the problems France has now. But i guess they also had a government playing that back and forth game...
There was also a lot going on there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Histor...
So, putting all blame on Germany alone doesn't really fit the history. Oh, and we're also net exporter of energy for many years now: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331853/electricity-impo...
... and they would not have needed to do this in the first place if Germany's nuclear fleet hadn't already been crippled on purpose. You cannot deliberately reduce your baseload capacity, and then blame another country for an accidental reduction.
>2. They were meant to be turned off. But due to Russia's boyscout army having a field day, they were put on ready, in case the gas goes low. Which didn't happen, but ironically they had to be turned on to keep France from going dark.
They should never have been "meant to be turned off" in the first place. And by the way, the gas did go low. That was what all the energy rationing and crazy prices were about. People and businesses had to reduce their consumption of energy.
>3. It was conservatives who messed up the renewable thing and did a back and forth with nuclear; >4. It was conservatives ...
Yes and who was forcing that back-and-forth? They're trying to win anti-nuclear votes and get shit done in states with Green coalitions. You recognize that the fossil fuel lobby can sway the behaviour of politicians without literally being in power as a formal governing party, yet you don't recognize the lobbying influence of the Greens, which is much stronger in practical terms?
>7. The majority of households heat with fossil fuels (mostly gas nowadays). No amount of nuclear can change that overnight. Millions of homes need to switch their entire heating systems. This should have been done long ago, but guess who prevented it?
This is a funny thing Green apologists do: they'll say nuclear can't fix gas dependency overnight. But the gas-dependency problem is only in existence because years ago nuclear was chosen to be phased out, and the only alternative was gas. In the counterfactual world where this didn't happen, a greater share of houses would have electric heating rather than gas, like it is in France, so the problem would not exist. In other words, Green anti-nuclear policies create an artificial problem, then they'll use the fact that nuclear can't instantly fix that problem as an additional anti-nuclear argument.
Nobody else is as fanatically opposed to nuclear power as the Greens. They ran a focused, deliberate campaign of propaganda, lies, obstructionism, protest, and sabotage, over decades. Conservative fecklessness doesn't get you to this situation. UK conservatives aren't much different to yours; they take money from fossil fuel interests and have to listen to anti-wind NIMBYs. But somehow our old reactors are still running, and yours aren't, and the difference is something in the German political culture that made the Greens more effective there than here.
Imagine a counterfactual Green party, actually worthy of the name, that shed the anti-nuclear message after the Cold War ended, and embraced nuclear as a valuable tool to fight global warming. Imagine that party is as effective in that timeline as it is in ours. In that timeline, the Energiewende doesn't have a gas-dependent "transitional phase"; instead existing nuclear reactors are kept running and new ones begin construction around the end of the 2000s, coming online in the late 2010s, where they form the backbone of a decarbonized grid. Electric heating gradually displaces gas heating, Putin's regime doesn't get as much hard currency from gas exports, and nobody would have ever heard of Greta Thurnberg.
AFAIK the prices for electricity is lower in France than in Germany.
Yes, renewable is cheap now, but it was expensive when the rollout started.
"How Germany helped bring down the cost of PV"
* https://energytransition.org/2016/01/how-germany-helped-brin...
From 2017, "Germany’s High-Priced Energy Revolution":
* https://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energ...
"Germany Paid Record $38 Billion for Green Power Growth in 2020"
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/germany-p...
So you say that they "forced" the shutdown by somehow convincing a completely opposite political party (the CDU)? I agree that shutting them down, especially without building alternatives quickly enough, was wrong. But blaming it on the greens? really? They might take like 1% of the blame in your argument.
If they really had that much falsehoods, lies and propaganda in their claims, the energy companies, their lobbyists and, like, _the whole government_ might have found at least some of them questionable and debunked them, don't you think? And "the greens"(I'm pretty sure that a big part of them and their voters is actually not anti-nuclear) were the first to criticise the shutdown, although mostly in how it went down.
Blaming the shutdown (solely) on the greens is downright bs.
It's always hard when reality hits. Good luck powering your industry now that the US basically destroyed your source of cheap, eco-friendly energy.
https://www.politico.eu/article/german-government-coalition-...
In the same way solar and wind aren't carbon free either yes
Where do the rare earth, metal, &co for solar and wind harvesters come from ? These things are getting rarer by the day and harder to mine = more pollutants. It's very very far from clean
https://www.goudsmit.co.uk/fears-over-the-supply-of-neodymiu...
https://www.eurometaux.eu/media/20ad5yza/2022-policymaker-su...
2022 coal use is a third greater than 2020, as _dain_ mentions, but 2020 was anomalously low usage rather than representing a normal baseline for comparison.
While any increase in coal usage is a problem, the coal use should be compared to the average of the last few years with the anomaly of 2020 removed. This would produce effectively no increase or decrease in coal usage.
Source: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/STR... via https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/
Estimates are less than 5000 deaths per year in Germany. Quite a bit off.
[1] https://www.greenpeace.de/klimaschutz/energiewende/kohleauss...
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Report-Fi... https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanres/PIIS2213-2600...
Some sources say as much as 200 000 deaths per year: https://www.lemondedelenergie.com/electricite-allemagne-char...
If that's true, that means that coal killed about 4 million Europeans since 2003.
[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
You're looking for excuses. Nuclear power killed precisely zero person in Europe in the past 20 years (and exactly one in the whole world). Coal power killed at the very least hundreds of thousands in the same time. Period. Beat around the bush as much as you want, there is no possible escape from the facts.
In 2002, still according to your own source, nuclear power plants provided about 180 TWh. So I stand by my affirmation: with continued 2002/2003 nuclear capacity, Germany would be virtually coal-free right now. Had they spent the money spent on buying coal on building some more wind turbines, it would definitely be a done thing.
The planning to decommission them started in 2011. It was a big hurdle to just extend that for the last few months. This also meant that long-term maintenance wasn't done. So perfectly good they are not, and keeping them online now would be extremely expensive.
Until there are off the shelf nuclear-plant solutions, (which don't take decades to get up and running) it just won't happen. I really hope a few of the current SMR startups become successful.