this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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And yet coal power production is practically at the lowest level ever (except for corona months 03/20 and 04/20)
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&year=-1&month=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute×lider=1&legendItems=000001010000000000000
It should be 0.
Germany still has a very long way to go to be carbon neutral.
Almost 79% of its primary energy consumption is fossil fuel. 17% is renewable.
For comparison in France 46% of the primary energy consumption is fossil fuel, 14% renewable and 40% nuclear.
Look at the industry's growth in France though. Renewables has been growing at the expense of nuclear. This is happening in Germany as well.
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.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/germany-goes-all-energy-transition-with-nuclear-shutdowns-2023-04-19/#:~:text=The%20steep%20climb%20in%20electricity,hydropower%20output%20due%20to%20drought.
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.