Germanys Shift to Green Power Stalls, Despite Huge Investments

[FBaggins]

The benefits of the program have not been universally felt, however. A de facto class system has emerged, saddling a group of have-nots with higher electricity bills that help subsidize the installation of solar panels and wind turbines elsewhere. Germany has spent an estimated 189 billion euros, or about $222 billion, since 2000 on renewable energy subsidies. But emissions have been stuck at roughly 2009 levels, and rose last year, as coal-fired plants fill a void left by Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power. That has raised questions — and anger — over a program meant to make the country’s power sector greener.

This lack of progress is an “illustration of the partial failure of the energy transition,” said Artur Lenkowski, an energy analyst at IHS Markit, a research firm. “The whole point of the energy transition was to lower greenhouse gas emissions.” Now, Energiewende is at a crossroads. Chancellor Angela Merkel may have won a fourth term as Germany’s leader after elections last month, but her party lost sway. She must form a coalition with the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Liberals, parties that have diametrically opposing views, including on environmental policies.

...snip...

For instance, the country has focused on cleaning up electric power generation, with some success. About one-third of German electricity now comes from renewable sources, a fivefold increase since 2000. In the United States, that figure was about 15 percent last year. Britain generates about a quarter of its power from renewables, and France about 19 percent.

But that progress has been undone somewhat by the government’s decision to accelerate its phase out of nuclear power after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan. That has made the country more reliant on its sizable fleet of coal-fired power stations, which account for the bulk of emissions from electricity generation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/07/business/energy-environment/german-renewable-energy.html

[hunter]

1. It's not always pretty, but at least it's transparent.

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm

[defacto7]

2. And how much more emission would there be

if they didn't have solar and wind power? And how much is a nuclear disaster worth? How about the cost of updating/upgrading the nuke plants?
It's not always where you are but where you're going that counts.

[hunter]

4. Which nuclear disaster?

Has there been a tsunami in Germany I missed?

I know, we must burn more brown coal

Jobs, or some such madness...

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm

[defacto7]

5. Oh gee, I wasn't thinking...

There has never been a nuclear power plant disaster. And even if there were it wouldn't affect more than the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the US and certainly it would be completely contained. Or even if there were one it wouldn't have any fall out that would go 4 or 5 times around the northern hemisphere from say, hypothetically, the former Soviet Union and kill thousands from, cancer over decades or rain white ash on my head while I was living in Oregon or anything. Hell, it would only destroy my thyroid anyway. Or maybe a small one would only contaminate some insignificant town in Pennsylvania.
So I suppose one little nuke plant wouldn't cost more than a few million jobs in central Europe but then those people wouldn't need jobs when they've been killed by disease caused by radiation contamination. Let them all die and decrease the surface population anyway... hypothetically speaking.

[NNadir]

7. Perhaps, you think that 7 million deaths a year from air pollution is NOT a disaster.

Here's a comprehensive list, from the primary scientific literature, of the major causes of death and disease on this planet:

Air pollution kills seven million people per year, every year.

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (Lancet 2012, 380, 2224–60: For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.)

The anti-nukes like to rail against their rather myopic concern over Fukushima and Chernobyl as if they mattered.

They don't. In more than half a century, the nuclear industry has fewer deaths than air crashes, automobile deaths, and notably at Fukushima for instance, deaths from drowning in seawater, not that anyone in the anti-nuke industry gives a shit about rising seas so much as their dark fantasies.

Combined, both events over a period of decades, won't kill as many people as will die from air pollution in the next 48 hours, and yet the atni-nukes couldn't care less about coal. They declare it "safe" because they hate nuclear energy simply because they are incompetent to understand a damned thing about it.

Their selective attention is basically deadly. It kills people.

A coal plant doesn't need to fail to kill people. It kills people when it operates normally, lots of people.

The so called "renewable energy" scam didn't work, it's not working, and it won't work.

History will not forgive this generation for its stupid waste of resources to chase the so called "renewable energy" fantasy. It soaked up trillions of dollars in the last decade alone with the result that the rate of carbon dioxide accumulations is accelerating, not decelerating.

Here's what I have to say to all the obsessive and ignorant anti-nukes who are destroying this planet: Congratulations, no one living today will ever see dangerous fossil fuel waste below 400 ppm again.

[defacto7]

8. You're points are made. I'll look over your

links and comments again and do some digging. I admit my perspective is probably biased in that I live on Levothyroxine for my thyroid disease that began following the Chernobyl ash fall which I ignorantly brushed away, breathed and ingested.

I have no argument about the disastrous conditions air pollution causes the planet, but relating all air polution deaths to an anti-nuke positions is hyperbole. I'm firmly anti-fossil fuel and pro solar, wind or any other safe method of power production that can be developed but I still have reservations about nuclear power being one of those methods at this point in our technological capabilities.

I'll give thought to your position as I would any learning opportunity. Statistics and data can expand with time and if that is the case here and it leads to reasonable acceptability of nuclear power production, I will change my mind.

[NNadir]

9. Bullshit. It's not hyperbole.

The solar industry and wind industry are nothing more than fronts for the gas industry, and in case you missed it, the idiotic investment in so called "renewable energy" has soaked up more than two trillion dollars in ten years with the result that climate change is getting worse - increasing at the fastest rate ever observed - and air pollution deaths are going up.

They're not as safe as nuclear energy, and never will be, the main reason being that they don't fucking work; they're trivial forms of energy.

The chemical toxicity of the solar industry in particular, but also including the wind industry is a disgrace.

Quick: Which killed more people in Japan in the last 10 years instantly, radiation from the Fukushima reactor or an explosion involving the processing of trichloromethylsilane used to make solar cells?

Quick: What is done with the radioactive side products of lanthanide processing for making useless wind turbines to front for the gas industry.

As for your thyroid, there are lots of people on this planet who deliberately eat I-131, as a medical treatment:

Society for Nuclear Medicine Fact Sheet, I-131 treatment

It's 2017; Chernobyl, if you indeed were involved in some way, was 31 years ago. You seem to have lived. If your thyroid is destroyed, you can take a pill. If you have lung cancer from air pollution, it's um, a little more complicated.

About 570,000 people who die from air pollution, according to the World Health Organization each year are under the age of 5.

I'm unimpressed with your thyroid tissue, to be perfectly frank. It doesn't really compare with the destroyed lung of a five year old.

Nuclear energy saves lives, but it need not be without risk, nor need it be perfect in order to be vastly superior to everything else. It only has to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

[defacto7]

10. I guess I'll find a more reasonable source of info

than you present.

Bye

[FBaggins]

11. That isn't really the question

The question is what their emissions levels would be if they had stuck with their original plan of using wind/solar to replace coal.

It's not always where you are but where you're going that counts.

This isn't just where they are... it's also where they're going.

[pscot]

3. They're just too far north

for solar to be viable. I saw a study recently that said solar was problematic north of 46 or 48 degrees. I never understood the logic that led them to replace their nuclear generators with vast quantities of low grade brown coal.

[defacto7]

6. This is the problem I have read about. n/t