"""
Economy Minister Robert Habeck has for months pushed for an energy subsidy scheme, arguing that German industry faces five tough years before the transition to renewable energies bears fruit. The top Green politician has warned that, without state support, "we will no longer have industry," as companies would shift operations to countries like France or the U.S., where energy prices are much lower.
"""
The panic about the economic stagnation is from the energy price shock (Russian gas disappeared) and the slow-down in China. But:
"These outside shocks have exposed cracks in Germany’s foundation that were ignored during years of success, including lagging use of digital technology in government and business and a lengthy process to get badly needed renewable energy projects approved."
Why laugh? Because 215 GW of #solar with 10% capacity factor (because it's Germany, not California) will roughly replace 20GW of #nuclear power that they retired since 2011. So many years lost...
The climate community tends to bash on Germany for having reduced its nuclear fleet after the Fukushima incident.
I'm looking for an article I once read that says it is exactly that event, and Germans' willingness to pay - through the nose - for renewable energy, that helped jumpstart the nascent commercial PV market. The rest is (Chinese) history.
I'll look a little harder for that article, it's interesting.
I take that back: in fact, German willingness to pay high prices for energy predates Fukushima. It started in 2004 when Germany introduced generous feed in tarriffs for rooftop solar.
"Germany’s deployment of wind and solar when the technologies were expensive is now widely celebrated as the reason why significant production capacity has been set up worldwide, leading to plummeting prices for the benefit of developing countries in particular."
Even before the war in Ukraine and before Russia cut off fossil gas flows to Europe, Germans paid some of the highest electricity prices in the world.
The generation cost is only 25% of the consumer price. The rest is taxes and charges, many having to do with building out more renewables, strengthening and expanding the electric grid, etc. It's an investment, in other words. Smart.
Yes and that's only going to intensify when petrol/gasoline cars are banned.
I think the west is in denial about the coming energy transition. The countries that dominate the next century will be those that have access to reliable energy sources. Nuclear, geothermal (and to a lesser degree) hydro. With an emphasis on 'reliable'.
The other joker is that the so called 'green' transition is heavily dependent upon mining, but mining needs oil. Lithium batteries, or hydrogen, are too damn heavy and lack the energy density.
Obviously climate change is real and a huge problem. But all of the solutions that don't assume significant degrowth, seem to be in total denial about the scale of the challenge.
I came to realize that what is important to most governments, as well as to most people is not actually stopping #ClimateChange, but keeping things the same for as long as possible.
Western countries want to hold onto their imperial privilege. Their citizens want to continue their way of life.
In effect, any "green" policies will only work insofar as they don't conflict with the societal values mentioned above.
Keeping things are they are is not the great thing most people think it is. If you think about it carefully, our current lives are not that great. That is, compared to how it could be, once we unshackle ourselves from fossil fuel dependence, the colonialism that requires, and the costs it brings.
I agree, but unfortunately most people in the west disagree with us.
And it would be a dramatic change. Hopefully we could hang onto stuff like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, along with antibiotics. But large cities and computers are probably doomed. And our children will probably have to work harder than we do, much of it hard physical work that we've abandoned. It's not the easiest thing to sell.
People on here get upset if you suggest that maybe cars shouldn't be a thing, because it would mean they can't visit their grandmother who lives in a remote village. The fact that there may not be a village, or grandmother, if we do nothing doesn't seem to occur to them.
Most people in the west have been brainwashed, and need de-programming.
Nobody's gonna take my washing machine!
My goal is to use my e-bike and eventually use a carshare for the heavy grocery shopping, and a rental car for trips. No more car maintenance! Imma dig up my driveway and plant veggies and flowers.
Sometimes how hard the work is physically is okay if it's meaningful work, rather than - say - jumping when the boss tells you to jump. It will be different, yes.
@CelloMomOnCars@jackofalltrades#australia did a something similar with the renewable energy target which effectively subsidised the installation of solar panels and the large feed in tariff that encouraged a massive uptake. It was a great success, so much so that the LNP government that followed tried to kill it off but failed and then started to point out that electricity prices were higher because all people were subsidising the RET. Largely, the cost to electricity users was not discussed before the scheme was implemented. Pretty much moot now as solar panels and batteries are considered a good investment.
That has been largely an effect of redlining former colonies. If you had to pay a - very large - premium on interest on your loans, you would also have a hard time getting your industrial sector going.
I'm not arguing with the data on the chart - I'm asking why that data is the way it is, while obviously the Global South has the superior insolation.
It's a version of thinking women can't be doctors or engineers, thereby wasting the talent of half the population.
We're in total agreement here. The only way to tackle #ClimateChange is to do it equitably.
So I only wanted to point out that saying that the increased #solar production has been "for the benefit of developing countries in particular" is disingenious. It could have been for the benefit of developing countries, it should have been, but it wasn't.
Wow.
At the recent meeting in Nairobi, leaders of African countries were saying that the continent can be a provider of climate solutions (and everyone needs to stop painting it as only a victim of climate change - although it is that too).
This graphic really supports that.
Willingness to pay, and also willingness to subsidize solar/wind even in situations where it made little sense (because the location doesn't generate sufficient power).
But Germany was able to do this in part because it had a ready supply of natural gas, which meant it had backup power for when it didn't have sufficient solar/wind/hydro. Without gas, you have to find a storage solution. Storage solutions are not very good, and unfortunately there's not much reason to think they will ever be sufficient. At least if we want reliable energy. Which the modern world needs.
@jackofalltrades@CelloMomOnCars If they would have closed the nuclear plants after their 40 year lifespan instead of earlier (which I agree with you is a shame) only 11 GW would be running now, not 20 GW. They did however 'replace' nuclear with loads of renewables. But still having 25,5% of electricity from coal could have been largely avoided by keeping the 11GW online for their 40 year lifespans. It wouldn't have made much of a difference in amount of waste or other 'negative' points.
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We find that reductions in nuclear electricity production were offset primarily by increases in coal-fired production and net electricity imports. Our estimates of the social cost of the phase-out range from €3 to €8 billion per year. The majority of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.
"""
Yup.
All I can say is, the Germans (and other Europeans) were also the ones who subsidised diesel for cars because that reduced the CO2 pollution, even though it worsened the PM pollution for their own populations.
As a policy choice to shoulder their own pollution burden, I think that deserves a measure of respect. It's better, morally speaking, than enjoying the energy that pollutes elsewhere.
@jackofalltrades@CelloMomOnCars 215/3 = 72 ish, so am laughing in UK abject failure where we have 14.4 GW installed and a population only 20% smaller 🤦♂️
Tories have been the tireless handmaidens of the fossil fuel industry for decades. Maybe time for a change; isn't the election next year at the latest?
@CelloMomOnCars@jackofalltrades constitutionally, the election itself doesn’t have to be until January 2025, when we have the opportunity to install a supremely neoliberal incarnation of the Labour Party with strongly authoritarian instincts 😬
If it's any consolation, #solar at this latitude isn't so great anyway.
Germany currently has 75.17 GW of installed solar capacity.
In June solar generated 9376.9 GWh resulting in a capacity factor of 17%. Nice, right? Well, in January solar generated 917,5 GWh resulting in capacity factor of 1.7%.
The idea that solar can meet the energy needs of Germany is quite ill-informed IMHO.
@jackofalltrades@CelloMomOnCars although I note that even a northern state like Maine is at the same latitude as the Bordeaux estuary. I guess the US as a whole is a lot more south than I tend to think of
Despite the high altitude, solar is being developed in both Germany and famously rainy Netherlands.
I don't double-guess those developers, I assume they did their due diligence, and they would not be investing in solar in these regions if they didn't think there was money to be made!
The secret sauce: wind energy.
Wind and solar are complementary in NL and D.
@CelloMomOnCars@jackofalltrades we'll definitely install lots more solar in the global north, while telling ourselves that the scale and shape of our economy doesn't need to fundamentally change, only to find that it really, really did and we’d done not remotely enough in the interim to ensure that we had the means to flow enough of the build-out back into a rebuild when it wears out 3 decades later. Woohoo!
Based on 2022 data, in Germany there was 68.5 GW of solar, 58.1 GW of onshore wind and 8.2 GW offshore wind.
If we treat this as a combined 134.8 GW system, we are going to get a spread of generation between 12,353 GWh in August (capacity factor 12.3%) and 23,105 GWh in February (capacity factor 25.5%).
BTW in Germany electricity demand is higher in the winter.
I dug the numbers for 2022 from EIA. US had 110.1 GW of solar and 140.9 GW of wind for a total 251 GW system.
Wind+solar generated 44,427 GWh in August (capacity factor 23.8%) and 64,523 GWh in April (capacity factor 35.7%). Both top and bottom bounds were decided by the wind output, as it generates more than twice the energy than solar.
Overall, the US gets double returns on their solar+wind investment compared to Germany or UK.
@jackofalltrades@CelloMomOnCars according to my maths and some digging, US energy consumption per capita is 1.76x that of Germany and 3.8x that of the UK.
US:
energy demand: 100.41 quadrillion Btu (2022)
population: 333 million
Germany:
energy demand: 14.29 qn Btu (2021)
population: 83 million
UK:
energy demand: 5.32 qn Btu (2021)
population: 67 million
Here's another interesting trend reversal: the lowest point for the average car fuel consumption in the UK was 2016. After that point Brits started buying bigger and heavier cars and the fuel consumption has been growing ever since.
@jackofalltrades@urlyman@CelloMomOnCars I'm sure this is true in Ireland. The number of egregiously large gas guzzlers on the road is quite astonishing (giant Landrover Discovery models eg), and most seem to have one person in them most of the time. They pay more road tax but it's clearly nothing like sufficient yet to persuade many people to opt for smaller vehicles.
This is the "Supersize Me" model applied to cars: you push the large ones and don't give the customer a chance to buy the small ones, and your profits rise.
This is why US streets have become much more dangerous in the past decade: it's mostly SUVs now. (Learn the lesson: Don't let this happen to you!)
I'd like to highlight another quote from the article:
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A 10 billion-euro ($10.68 billion) electrical line bringing wind power from the breezier north to industry in the south has faced costly delays from political resistance to unsightly above-ground towers. Burying the line means completion in 2028 instead of 2022.
"""
Getting energy from producers to consumers is a gargantuan task, made even harder when producers are scattered and unreliable, like with solar and wind.
It was the same with coal plants, really: Those were built to be close to mines not population or industrial centers, and then they would need long distance high voltage lines to transport the juice. Same for nuclear, for that matter: they had to be sited where it made sense.
So the generation now happens at different locations.
Similarly, China has been building HVAC and HVDC lines. Wish the US would start on theirs.
Historically industrial centers grew around abundant sources of coal, like the Ruhr valley in Germany or Upper Silesia in Poland. It makes sense for the industry to move to places with the abundance of cheap energy.
That neatly connects with the original article. Industries will move whenever energy access becomes uneconomical.
The other problems were largely caused by austerity measures that Germany self-imposed upon itself (as well as southern Europe). But there isn't an alternative to natural gas for a lot of Germany's heavy industry, as electrical processes can't provide sufficient heat.
In addition for many industrial processes (including, ironically, solar panels) not only do you need high heat, but also a reliable source of energy. If these factories shut down for even a moment, then the materials they are making are ruined.
I'm not sure what the solution is (maybe nuclear, but I'm skeptical that the US, or Europe, can build nuclear power at this point), but solar/wind aren't it. Maybe there is no solution and we'll just have to learn how to deal with decline.
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