- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
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next up: zero teslas.
if germans chose a route, they, walk. (ww2, manufacturing cars, end of nuclear power…)
so fuck you elon. we hate you so much.
One of the nicer upshots of cutting the cord with Russia is the sky high price of electricity incentivizing big investments in renewable energy.
Biomass may well be renewable, but I still don’t think it counts as green.
Why not? Doesn’t creating the biomass require sequestering carbon?
I just feel that if you’re growing a load of trees, it’s slightly more environmentally friendly to just let them carry on growing rather than chopping them into bits and burning them.
I mean I get it, it’s a way to use those old coal power stations for something, but it should be something else we need to phase out.
Coal is sequestered carbon.
Difference is timescale. Coal “sequestered carbon” over millions of years, and released over a few decades.
Biomass gathers and realeases on the same timescale
Then you’re saying biomass is not really sequestering carbon, essentially.
Neither is solar or wind. But they’re all net-zero or near-zero carbon emissions when considering the entire lifestyle of the energy and machinery production.
Nice graph with no freaking labels.
Meanwhile, the USA is 24%-ish renewables and 60%-ish fossil fuels. Damn fossil fuel industry and anti-progress politicians.
*state dependent. ;)
For anyone who is interested in a detailed view of these stats worldwide in real time and cross-border with carbon intensities and individual breakdowns by electricity source: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h
WTF is Australia doing? Aren’t they aware they have plenty of sunshine and an insanely long shoreline?
Australia is just an oil company, a coal company, and a mining company disguised as a trench coat. The Liberal party (essentially just American Republicans opposed to guns) spent 2 decades killing any green energy initiatives in favor of fracking the Outback
IIRC Australia mines a huge amount of coal
Shame, innit? They could be the n1 Solar panel producers per capita and panel exporters…oh well. This is why the charge against fossil fuels has to be led by net consumers (in the name of defense against geopolitical risk) and the producers will inevitably reduce extraction for export…but local consumption of coal probably will never disappear completely unless locals complain about air pollution and lag in exportable tech.
Australia likes its coal like america its guns.
The sun doesn’t shine at night. Have a look when it is daytime there and you’ll see upwards of 60% of their electricity is solar.
Or use the EM site and check for past statistics.
The sun doesn’t shine at night.
Wind blows at night at the shoreline.
Have a look when it is daytime there and you’ll see upwards of 60% of their electricity is solar.
Well, over 12 months it’s not that rosy, except for Tasmania:
I thought you’d at least have a chuckle when you realised that it was night time when you made your dumb comment.
Over the last 12 months it is 25% solar and 13% wind. The population centres on the east coast are worse than WA, SA and TAS in that regard.
Yes, 45% of coal generated electricity is awful, but you were still incorrect in saying Australia is doing nothing.
A collosal solar farm and transmission cable to Singapore is under construction which is will be a great achievement when complete.
you were still incorrect in saying Australia is doing nothing.
Except I did not say that. I asked what’s going on and that things aren’t that rosy. You must me have confused with someone else.
Really cool. Thanks for the share. Also quite depressing, most countries (even rich ones who have like triple responsibility) are barely even trying.
They used to have nuclear too
Yeah, what’s up with that? Nuclear works well for France, so why did it fall out of favor in Germany?
It’s not perfect, but it does a fantastic job at providing a base load alternative to batteries, which could significantly reduce rollout costs if they had existing plants. It’s probably not worth switching now, unless they have some dormant plants that could be fired up quickly (like we’re doing in the US).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder
Step 1 shut down nuclear, and switch to gas
Step 2 get hired by gazprom
Sorry but the German people and not Schroder were the ones who chose anti-nuclear. And the reliance on Russian gas may have backfired, but at the time it enabled perhaps the most efficient economy Europe had ever known.
Germany was once the star of Europe for having so much nuclear energy. Completely independent from russian gas.
Ehh no. Germany never had that much nuclear in its energy mix. At most it was 10-15%. Compare that to France with their around 30-40% nuclear energy in the mix.
Nuclear works well for France
Apart from that the plants don’t work in summer and the prices have to be capped/subsidized to keep power affordable…
All the plants still work in summer during heatwaves. When they stop it’s because they are not essential at the time (electricity consumption is lower in summer than winter) and to protect the river ecosystem. Since the water is already very hot and stressing the ecosystem they don’t want to add more heat into the river.
In the mean time the carbon intensity of France was 31CO2/kWh in 2024, Germany was at 364gCO2/kWh. 12 times more.
But it is going down for both countries, so it’s a good point.
Prices capped have nothing to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with stupid EU price policy.
France used to have a monopoly by a state owned company on electrIcity: EDF. But everyone knows that’s terrible, and private market is the way to go. At the time, electricity in France was the cheapest across Europe, but it’s still terrible because… well that HAD to change!
In order to introduce some competition, generation, network and “distribution” (billing…) activities were separated.
Then private distributors (again: billing companies with 0 generation capabilites and 0 grid network) were allocated some quota of electricity from the nuclear electricity generated by EDF at low cost.
In addition, and that’s the European policy: electricity price on the market would be set at the cost of the most expensive generator at a given time. Example: 100% nuclear today: cost is set at cost of nuclear. 95% of electricity from nuclear, 5% from gas: 100% of the electricity that day is billed at cost of gas! 80% nuclear, 15% gas, 5% coal: 100% of the electricity billed at cost of coal!
Why? So that the priate newcomer would get huge benefits and be able to invest in electricity generation. But: there was 0 constrain in doing so, so they just rack up benefits at the expense of EDF and clients! Even better: since they get such low prices from their quota, they’re cheaper than the EDF split distributor company. So at some point, their quota was insufficient for their client’s demand. Time to invest… hahaha! No I’m kidding: time to ask for a bigger quota, of course granted by Macron and his team.
Then came Ukraine invasion. Uh oooh! Gas price exploses, even the “distributors” start to feel the pain. What to do? Well, kick out their clients! Refure to renew contracts, or ask for such a ridicuously high price to make sure they just go! EDF’s hisorical distribution company is legally obligated to take them back. And that’s where the 2nd joke kicks in: EDF gave s much quota of nuclear electricity that they no longer have enough for these clients they have to take. No worries: the “distributors” sold back the electricity quota… at market price, ie mostly gas price!
With the price of gas multiplied n times determining the cost of the whole production, it became unbearable for clients. That’s where genius Macron and Lemaire (Minister of Economy) set a “shield” (cap) on the bills. It’s no shield nor cap. It’s actually the state of France paying the difference in the bills between the actual bill and the cap they set. That’s public money!
And again, that money didn’t go to resources. It went straight to “distributors” (rather call them parasites).
For sure, the heavy maintenance work on the nuclear power plant done at the time didn’t help. They decided to do it on all plants at once (another bad call) and it lasted longer than planned.
But the price issue has nothing to do with nuclear and everything to do with stupid policies.
And now, lesson learned (not): Spain and Portugal got out of that absurd elecricity market. Germany and France (and many other countries) made a few changes and keep going. Because competition with multiple private actors in electricity is good. Can’t you see it??
Why don’t they work in the summer?
They do. But you need to reduce the generation to make sure you don’t heat up too much the water for the ecosystem that lives in. Less water means the temperature difference before and after the plant is higher. That’s the constrain.
Yeah, what’s up with that? Nuclear works well for France, so why did it fall out of favor in Germany?
Lobbying (corruption).
Nuclear power is much more expensive than renewable power. Also nuclear ist not that good to regulate to compensate for swings in renewable power. And if you downregulate the nuclear power it gets even more expensive. Building new nuclear plants takes ages so renewable can be much easier scaled up. Combined with batteries the unsteady renewable power will be a lesser problem.
The outphasing of nuclear power was a bit early but in the Ende needed.
Also france Bad massive problems with their nuclear power in the summer because of a lack of cooling water.
Don’t forget the propaganda. Thanks, Green party.
I love that chart you can’t read.
Yeah that sucks, they haven’t shared the source, only what site it’s from.
This is the closest I could find: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=public
But this includes all sources, where the chart shown only includes renewable sources. I can’t find it on the site, but I’m kinda dumb so maybe somebody else can find it.
UK for comparison (Average over year)
GW % Coal 0.18 0.6 Gas 8.31 27.7 Solar 1.52 5.1 Wind 9.36 31.1 Hydroelectric 0.41 1.4 Nuclear 4.36 14.5 Biomass 2.15 7.1 Edit: Imports are the remainder
The sum of those percentages is 87.5%. So what’s the rest, maybe import from France or Norway?
There’s a joke in there about the power of hot air but I’m not confident enough in my knowledge of British politics to make it
Yes it’s imports. Norway / France and Netherlands mainly.
Well, we’ve a single cable coming over from France that makes up about 3% (I think) of our total electricity supply. So “French Nuclear” should be a bigger entry in that table than coal, solar, hydro or bio. That’s not the only import, either, so it’s not completely impractical for the missing percentages to be imports.
There are other cables as well. One of them runs through the chunnel. The UK regularly gets upto 10% of its supply from France (seasonal, time, cost dependant)
That’s an incredible amount of wind power.
I love it, I like it like my new contract they send me with new prices for electricity (44% up)
Sounds off, because renewbles are typically cheaper than the alternatives.
Any chance you got a ‘fossil only’ contract?It sounds strange, but that’s how it is, and it’s Ökostrom. Luckily, I can change my provider when they raise the price, so it won’t increase that much for me, but it will still go up, and I’m not the only one in my area because some friends of mine received the same ‘greeting.’ (To those who give dislikes, that won’t change the facts no matter how much you would like it to.)
renewbles are typically cheaper than the alternatives
But firms will charge market rate regardless of the source of energy. This is a problem we have in Texas under ERCOT.
Green power can come in at such high rates that local power is practically free. But because the energy is bundled and auctioned with coal and gas across the grid at large, and because electricity is priced at the maximum auction rate, a shortage in one municipality that’s filled with high priced fossil fuel power raises the retail price of energy into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars a MWh.
I wonder how long it takes to bundle renawables only with batteries and sell that without subsidising fossil based electric energy.
May the fossil burners go bankrupt rather sooner than later as it’s a more reliable way to get them out of the mix than regulation is.bundle renawables only with batteries and sell that
Significantly less efficient than a green grid. Roof solar isn’t going to practically compete with industrial scale solar or wind, much less state subsidized gas.
May the fossil burners go bankrupt rather sooner than later
The demand for energy is only increasing. I don’t think anyone is going to go bankrupt selling electricity into this market.
why would market electricity prices have any relation to what you pay on your power bill? turns out that companies will charge whatever they know they can, regardless of the cost of acquiring something to sell, should the cost of something be more than they know they can sell it for, they just won’t sell it.
The idea that market prices influence what you pay for something is basically one of the main lies of supply side economics.
Are you sure its the actual cost of the electricity or the fact that many other costs are often bundled into your bill?
Obviously, you don’t live in Germany or the EU, and it’s questionable whether you’ve ever paid a single bill. Because the electricity bill is always separate from other bills and is a special contract.
lol. well I dont live in the EU thats true. seems like you’re the misinformed one. its pretty common for ‘electricity usage’ and ‘delivery’ to be separated. hence my question. dont worry if you struggle understanding your bill we can help if you want.
Prices mainly go up due to things like transmission fees.
Remember Berlin has a latitude of 52.5°. That puts it far north of the 49th parallel border.
My friend is dumb and doesn’t know the significance of the 49th parallel. Can you explain it to them?
US/Canadian border from roughly Vancouver to Winnipeg. Berlin is further north than Saskatoon, Karlsruhe is on the 49th parallel. The lot of mainland Europe is north of Albuquerque. In fact much of Tunesia is north of Albuquerque. Miami is on about the same parallel as Bahrain, Orlando on the same as New Delhi.
True, but climate in Central Europe is different to the US-Canada border.
I’m thinking solar is hard.
Yeah, you get even more clouds.
Sure, but Munich is south of the 49th parallel. I’m not sure how amenable it is to solar down there, but surely there are some areas that would work, no?
If baveria wasn’t one of the worst NIMBY hell holes in the (known by me) world.
Wasn’t Germany that weird one where ‘gas’ was labeled as ‘renewable’? Or was that something diffrent?
Wasn’t Germany that weird one where ‘gas’ was labeled as ‘renewable’?
Biogas from decomposition is renewable. That definition is accepted internationally.
Doesn’t mean it’s ecological. There’s a difference.
Depends on whether you grow crops specifically to turn into fuel or ferment waste that would otherwise ferment in the open.
The main point on the European level revolved around whether construction of gas plants should get access to some green fund or the other, to which the answer is yes because they’ll always carry some on-demand load, and seasonal storage is bound to include syngas because we’ll need that stuff anyway as chemical feedstock.
Yes it was, but I can’t find the sources now. It was some time after the recent invasion of Ukraine by the eastern hordes; titles were something like "Germany reclasified natural gas as renewable’. My memory fails me, so it may have been different gas and different purpose than electricity. Anyway, it came as a very poor taste.
In other news, Germany imports quite some percentage of its electricity from other countries, like nuclear-produced electricity from France. So, in a sense and to a degree, it outsources the emissions to other countries.
Edit: sources of both claims below.
Electricity imports also rose to 24.9 TWh, driven by lower generation costs in neighboring countries during summer.
For the love of God, please just build nuclear instead of virtue signaling with solar panels while you import your energy needs.
All our nuclear plants are shut down and weren’t maintained for further usage, than that few years ago when they were shut down, for decades. They are basically trash. Now just take a look at UK or France how cheap and easy it is to build new ones (when you can’t sacrifice workers and environment like China). And then take a look at France’s nuclear power production in recent heat summers. And finally take a look where that sweet little uranium is coming from when imported (Germany has none). And now give me a single good reason why investing in nuclear is better than investing in dirt cheap, decentralizeable renewables to cover future electricity needs.
There’s no sense in spending limited public funding on nuclear now - renewables and storage is winning on all fronts.
Shutting down what nuclear existed was a costly mistake, but going down that path again is an even worse one
They’re getting poorer and deindustrializing at a rapid pace.
The ironworks in Ruhrgebiet died a century ago, in case you didn’t notice.
