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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.
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It's very clear how desperate green tech advocates are to paint the current developments as a win for the climate. But by doing so they only reinforce the status quo.
No need to clear new land for solar power. Panels can coexist with agriculture, and even help it since many crops thrive in partial shade and/or benefit from water retention under the panels.
“Maize is grown by about 50% of farmers in Tanzania. Maize is also a sun loving plant. So the fact that we had an 11% yield increase in maize [under solar panel arrays] is a phenomenal result,” he said.
BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.
Greer's understanding of energy and the capabilities of renewables is spot-on, but his assessment of risk sounds off. Just because a nuclear war hasn't happened doesn't mean it never will. I'm not saying it's inevitable either, but the risk is much higher today than it was even ten or twenty years ago, and due to climate change is only bound to increase with time.
In my opinion, it was a silly idea to replace natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen burning, primarily because it is not produced in an environmentally friendly way and the current method pumps out lots of #GreenhouseGases and #Pollution, thus negating the supposed benefit of burning it.
Finally got around to switching to Octopus Flux, which gets us cheap electricity to charge the batteries during the night. Of course, the day it goes active we get glorious sunshine and now I have a full battery but nowhere to store the solar. shakes fist at sun#solar#solarpower#batterystorage#renewables
Big Oil and its allies are attacking the International Energy Agency for forecasting a relatively imminent peak in fossil-fuel demand and the rapid uptake of #renewables
The fossil fuel industry is shooting the messenger, because the message contains the words "stranded assets".
If the banks hear that message, that industry is DONE.
With #renewables, even just domestic solar panels and privately installed batteries we can get domestic electricity mostly for free in a few years in many developed regions of the world. The electricity companies will do everything to make that impossible. But their claims of a grid that can't cope only shows their centralised approach that favours big consumers is failing ;)
Complexity of building electricity grid based on #renewables is probably best illustrated on days like this in #Germany^1:
instantaneous electricity consumption is 67 GW
Germany has 66 GW in wind, but it’s merely potential output if there was wind - and there’s now enough wind to produce 3.8 GW satisfying 5.67% of the demand
Germany also has 69 GW in PV, but same story here - there’s enough light to produce 5.3 GW (7.74%)
Note that each of these, wind and PV, have installed capacity alone exceeding the current demand! But installed capacity isn’t much worth when it doesn’t produce any electricity. Statistically that’s the case with wind and PV most of the time (capacity factor <50%)🤷 I think this gives you some idea about the feasibility of postulates such as “we just need to build more renewables!”
Now let’s factor in time. Watt is the unit of instantaneous power, how much the country uses electricity right now. At this load (66 GW) to survive one hour Germany needs 66 GWh (unit of amount of electricity). Lower than that, and you need to start switching off factories, electricity supply to houses, trains, hospitals etc.
Germany, like most of us, is not ready for these consequences of variability of renewables. And this is the sole reason why it runs on gas and coal, including lignite, the dirtiest form of coal: these can be switched on and off whenever needed (they are dispatchable).
Of course, there are other dispatchable sources of electricity which are also as safe and low-carbon as renewables, such as #nuclear (see #France for comparison)^2. However, Germany governments in the course of #Energiewende decided that 0.03 deaths/1 TWh (nuclear)^3 is too much and instead chose to switch to 24.6 deaths/1 TWh (coal) as the dispatchable source.^4
Of course, there are days when wind and PV perform much better so would electricity storage help? Let’s take the 66 GWh hourly consumption: there was much talk about how battery storage is going to fix the whole variability of renewables. ElectricityMaps doesn’t show the total capacity (GWh) of available batteries directly, but it can be somewhat estimated from 30 days average (at the bottom)^1.
Over the last 30 days German batteries supplied 1 TWh to the grid, which makes ~53 GWh per day, which makes ~2 GWh per hour. While we don’t know their total capacity to estimate maximum period they could keep the country running, that’s still 30x less than the hourly consumption. A very rough guess, the battery farms built in Germany in over a decade (Energiewende started in 2011) could power the country for around 2 minutes.
I guess from now on you can make your extrapolations and assess the feasibility of statements like “we just need to build some more storage!”
It’s a windy day and just look at the UK’s electricity mix: 70% renewables and only 8% fossil fuels. And those numbers are only going to improve with time. Hooray! #energy#climate#renewables
Portugal is crushing it: renewables met 91% of Portugal’s electricity needs in the first 4 months this year & have pushed their⚡️prices to a 4 yr low!
Renewables are carrying an increasing % of their electrcity demand in the first 4 months in 2024:
95% April
91% March
88% Feb
81% in Jan
Portugal’s rapid transition is evidence it can be done: renewables are up from 27% in 2005 & 54% in 2017 with their last coal power plant shut down in 2021. #nature#environment#renewables#earth
According to this Progress Playbook article, Uruguay has been running on 100% renewables for four straight months now – cutting its production costs in half, creating 50,000 new jobs, and becoming a net exporter of electricity in the process.
#Germany cutting down parts of Reinhardswald forest for wind turbines is being pointed out as an example of a hypocrisy^1 of #renewables supporters… and it’s largely correct. While the claims of the opponents are often exaggerated as it comes to cutting down the oldest and most valuable trees^2, this doesn’t change the fact that on-shore wind is a source of electricity with a large impact on land.^3
And it’s not true that only small spots for the turbines will be cleared of trees: wind turbines are huge mechanical constructions of hundreds of tons of concrete and steel. They do not appear on the site magically from the sky, but require kilometers of roads built for heavy equipment to even get to the construction site, with the sufficient width and curves. Then they need to be connected by a new electrical grid for the electricity to be received. And the turbines require periodic maintenance, like replacing hundreds of liters of gear oil each of them contains.
Most notable in this conflict is the silence of “environmental” organisations, such as Greeenpeace or WWF. The project has been praised by local “Greens” politician Priska Hinz who essentially said that cutting forests for wind towers is the best way of preserving forests.^3 But none of the usual activists are chaining themselves to the trees and blocking the heavy machines. Which is not really surprising since Greenpeace Germany trading Russian gas and voting in 2019 for extension of coal (it was the only way to get rid of nuclear and keep 24/7 lights on).
The conflict of interest originates from another physical feature of wind power: it requires wind, and on the land the strongest winds are usually at elevated points, like hills. The hills that haven’t been yet used up for human activity in densely populated areas like Europe are usually considered valuable from environmental point of view. As it comes out, on-shore wind requires you to build heavy industrial machinery where you don’t want to build them, and where you could build them, there’s usually not enough wind.
Yesterday I let my bot manage the inverter charging and discharging for the entire day. It did quite well! Our entire electricity demand was met for less than zero cost with solar and automated load shifting on the Octopus Agile tariff. #solar#renewables#solarpower
Live a million years & you'll never see a clearer example of #BigGovernment meddling. #DanielleSmith still sees herself as a #BigOil henchman first & an Alberta Premier as a distant second (at best). This is straight up arson perpetrated against Alberta's economy & future.
In France at the moment, not only is their a legal requirement for car parks over a certain size to have solar panels, supermarkets with smaller car parks are now doing it voluntarily as it makes them money #renewables
Germany likely to pass 50% mark for renewable power this year - minister (www.reuters.com)
BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.