It's very popular to criticize the Energiewende as a failure because it apparently failed to reduce CO2 emmissions of the whole country. And of course, it's true that Germany could have had greater reductions if nuclear was kept alive instead of coal. But the Energiewende actually changed Germany. Suddenly everywhere you go you have solar panel farms and many houses have them on their roofs and there are wind turbines. It was a cool time to live in germany to see these projects realized everywhere. They were done in an era where the price of renewables was very high compared to other technologies. The big contribution that Germany has done to the world with the Energiewende is:
* demonstrating that an industrialized nation actually can start a gradual transition towards renewables and most importantly
* by buying renewables at high prices, helping the manufacturers to get the price of renewables down. I think it's partially thanks to Germany that renewables have become the cheapest form of elecricity generation this fast, with impact observable around the globe!
From that second point alone I think the Energiewende should be considered a success. Could it have been better? Sure. Is it perfect? No. Do I like the high energy prices now? No. But I'm definitely glad we had it.
Also consider that we here Germany in fact do have a nuclear catastrophy right below our feet in the form of Asse 2.
> But the Energiewende actually changed Germany. Suddenly everywhere you go you have solar panel farms and many houses have them on their roofs and there are wind turbines. It was a cool time to live in germany to see these projects realized everywhere
Does it really matter to see all those solar panel farms if the end result is they were not much helpful? The money which went into this is absolutely massive and could have been used in a better way to fight climate change.
I also get a warm fuzzy feeling from solar panels and wind farms. But we are losing our planet to climate change, and warm fuzzy feelings do not help. Lowering CO2 emissions does.
Germany could have had zero CO2 emissions by now, if money were invested into nuclear instead of the current efforts. The declaration to move away from nuclear power was misguided and will be regarded as a huge error in the future.
And this is why environmentalism is a failure. It values appearance over results.
So basically it looks good to have lots of Solar and Wind, never mind if it actually does anything useful?
It's called Greenwashing, and if people don't stop doing it this planet is going to get worse and worse.
You realize you've basically said that they only success of this project was reducing the price of PV Panels? If that was your goal there are WAY WAY better methods to do that.
> demonstrating that an industrialized nation actually can start a gradual transition towards renewables
That's not what it demonstrated though. It demonstrated than even a highly motivated industrialized nation failed in transitioning to clean energy sources.
I agree with you. Germany did not accomplish it's goal of CO2 emissions reduction, but in the process of trying it did a whole lot of other great things. And I hope we will all learn from the experience Germany made and it will contribute to all of our next efforts.
The biggest issue, unintended I assume, is that CO2 certificates are not rare enough (or expensive enough). The result is that coal is actually cheaper than the most modern gas plants. That is based on variable costs, so. In that regard the renewables are basically "free". Which means that renewables are fed in first followed by coal. Which leaves not enough demand for the cleaner and more flexible gas plants. Obviously CO2 emissions go through the roof.
billions and billions down the drain for symbolism. Mostly private individuals like me payed that via crass energy taxes. It's nice that you get enjoyment out of seeing solar and wind farms but in the end they'll do nothing but serve as testament of the hubris and stupididty of politians.
I agree that Energiewende is important and that reducing the cost of renewable was sorely needed, but at the same time the decision to close the nuclear plants (rather than coal) was a gigantic mistake.
1) Because it costs a lot of lives. Coal + Lignite in Germany cost 8000 lives per year (funnily everybody also seems to forget that coal release more radiation in the air than nuclear plants).
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(07)61253-7/abst...
By not closing 10GW of nuclear production, Germany could have prevented 2000 deaths by year, so in total 20000 deaths over ten years.
2) Because it gave the impression that a carbon free electricity could be achieved by wind and solar alone. This is not the case: first Germany will only close coal in 2038 (in 20 years!!), and plan to use gas to replace coal at least up to 2050. Gas is way better than goal for air health, but it still release a lot of CO2. 2050 is way too late to be carbon free.
The problem with wind and solar is the intermittence: if you look at the data from
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
you will see that on average wind is at 20% capacity and solar at 10% capacity. So even with batteries to smooth things out (which don't exist at the huge scale we are speaking with), Germany would need a lot more solar and wind that it does. For a peak consumption of around 70GW, this mean it would need 350GW of renewable energy. It is so far only at around 100GW, having added 50GW the last ten years. So at this speed it would still need around 50 years. This is without counting the fact that:
- the energy stockage problem is at least as hard to solve
- solar panel and wind turbines have a lifetime of 20 years, so this does not take into account replacing existing ones
- it is getting harder and harder to find place to put them. In 2018 the rate of installation of new renewables slowed down a lot because of this problem.
3) By contrast nuclear cost less, when taking into account this intermittence problem and the cost of interconnection (which is not counted by the figures usually given); it is a lot easier to interconnect a huge centrale than a lot of small ones. But cost is not an argument anyway when we are talking about climate change (if there was a proper carbon tax at least Germany would have closed coal before nuclear).
It is friendlier to the environment (wind turbine kills a lot of birds, and solar panel take a lot of room from wildlife).
It is as safe as solar and wind, and way safer than hydroelectric and coal.
Banqiao Dam collapse was 230000 deaths. Yet nobody is calling for stopping
hydroelectricity.
Again, Chernobyl was "only" 4000 deaths (high range estimate using a linear
model rather than a threshold model are at 10000-20000 deaths), Fukushima
was 0 deaths (but 1500 due to the evacuation, including zones where the
radiation was the same order of magnitude of the natural one). Chernobyl
cannot happen with modern reactors; a Fukushima style incident could, but
the nuclear operators increased the security of the points of failures that
Fukushima revealed. Again, living near a dam is probably less secure than
living near a nuclear plant. And building and installing solar panels and
wind turbines cost lives too (as do building dam and nuclear plants, and so
on); on average as much as nuclear killed. Yet there is a lot of hysteria
about nuclear plants, because an accident is so much more spectacular and
visible.
4) I am not saying nuclear fission is a miracle energy (fusion would be).
It is as safe as it is in developed countries because of all the
regulations, this model would not be applicable in developing countries.
For these countries, wind and solar is the way to go, and in this respect
Energiewende which paved the way is a success.
There is the problem of nuclear waste, but this frankly this is a (small)
problem at the scale of 100s of years, this should not at all be our
priority given the very small time frame we have to reduce climate change
(the ship has unfortunately sailed for preventing it from being too
impactful [aka more than a few million deaths], the real question is
whether we limit it to be really impactful or a total catastrophe). This is
like worrying about a leak in the sink when the whole house is on fire: bad
priorities!
5) But, by making the illusion that 100% carbon free electricity could be
achievable without nuclear, Germany set a dangerous precedent. It is not
currently possible (as proved by Germany not really reducing its CO2
emissions), it may be possible in 30 years (current prevision is only a cut
of 65% in 30 years, the 95% cut is from a very optimistic plan by
Greenpeace) but this is way too late.
By refusing to use nuclear for purely ideological# reasons, Germany is
depriving itself from a vital tool against global warming. And by
vindicating some green movements to call for the closing of nuclear plants
along the development of renewable (whereas the sane thing to do would be
developing nuclear along renewable: solar panel in sunny places like
desert, offshore wind turbines and nuclear plants), it may indeed have done
a whole lot of harm. And when we are speaking about the future of human
civilisation, this may prove to have been indeed a very costly mistake
indeed.
[#] And yes, when you take into account that coal each year kill more in
Germany than Chernobyl did globally (and way more than Fukushima); and that
even if there was a Chernobyl every 10 years (which cannot happen with the
nuclear reactors we have) anyway it would still be a drop of water compared
to what climate change is going to bring us, closing nuclear plants can only
be ideological.
I don't see how that makes sense. How much nuclear does 600 billion € buy you nowadays? 20GW? 40GW? That isn't even anywhere close to the amount of energy Germany needs and the other half would still have to be generated with coal and completely negate any theoretical gains just like it happened with renewables. This crappy situation was caused by government inaction, not by choosing the wrong technology. Germany produces 45% of the energy with nuclear+renewables already but it didn't make a dent in it's CO2 emissions because coal emits 800g of CO2 per kWH and nuclear or renewables at most 12g per kWh (mostly emissions during construction). You know what would help? If they simply switched their natural gas plants instead. Germany would immediately see a 40% reduction in CO2 today (at least in the electricity sector) and since gas plants can do real time load following they wouldn't become obsolete when the renewable percentage rises in the future.
Anyone using Michael Shellenberger and his faux front for nuclear lobbying is as an authority is participating in a fraud designed to mislead and misinform. Please don't.
It's crazy to move from Nuclear to coal for the sake of the environment. Renewables are great when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, but the rest of the time Nuclear is the better choice
There was a radioactive cloud over most of Europe after Chernobyl. It is much harder politically to defend nuclear energy once you lived through that disaster.
I think the history is one of a failed economic subsidy program that accidentally accelerated the PV-industry by a few years.
There were several growing PV manufacturers in germany up to around 2011/2012. In that timeframe the manufacturers were all busy building new factories, but the government noticed that the subsidy program became large enough to be expensive and suddenly severely cut the subsidies.
None of the manufacturers survived that, the remains were sold to the chinese.
The Energiewende is actually one of the reasons I still live in Germany: I want to see how it happens. It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of. And by the way, private energy consumption is heavily taxed (for a good reason), yet energy hungry industries are exempt from it. And they feel the effect: because of the growing effect of the renewable energies, they now pay one of the lowest electricity prices in the world.
There are actually good books that explain how all this works, why there are also short term "unsuccessful" years and how about everything will benefit in the end. And, most importantly: why the Energiewende actually enables a comfortable, good life.
> It is stuff that our grandchildren will be proud of.
The French can be proud today, consuming electricity with 1/6 of the carbon footprint per kWh, compared to electricity in Germany. And paying half the price, too, compared to what electricity costs in Germany.
> yet energy hungry industries are exempt from it. And they feel the effect: because of the growing effect of the renewable energies, they now pay one of the lowest electricity prices in the world.
Not sure about the whole world, but Germany definitely has one of highest prices for elctricity in Europe:
I believe nuclear power is inevitable. Human power consumption has been growing exponentially, at some point renewable energy will not be able to catch up without causing extensive damage to our ecological system. There are finite amount of renewable energy per sqkm on earth, at some point the area required will begin to erode local ecology. Right now nuclear power appears to be the densest form of energy generation. I agree in the short term renewable energy is a great alternative to coal/natural gas.
I've always thought it would be more efficient to use a market system with something like a carbon tax and charges for other externalities rather than ad hoc policies for this and that.
We just asked you yesterday to please stop stoking nationalistic flamewar. If you won't follow the guidelines and post thoughtfully and informatively we'll ban the account.
[+] [-] est31|6 years ago|reply
* demonstrating that an industrialized nation actually can start a gradual transition towards renewables and most importantly
* by buying renewables at high prices, helping the manufacturers to get the price of renewables down. I think it's partially thanks to Germany that renewables have become the cheapest form of elecricity generation this fast, with impact observable around the globe!
From that second point alone I think the Energiewende should be considered a success. Could it have been better? Sure. Is it perfect? No. Do I like the high energy prices now? No. But I'm definitely glad we had it.
Also consider that we here Germany in fact do have a nuclear catastrophy right below our feet in the form of Asse 2.
[+] [-] realusername|6 years ago|reply
Does it really matter to see all those solar panel farms if the end result is they were not much helpful? The money which went into this is absolutely massive and could have been used in a better way to fight climate change.
[+] [-] jwr|6 years ago|reply
Germany could have had zero CO2 emissions by now, if money were invested into nuclear instead of the current efforts. The declaration to move away from nuclear power was misguided and will be regarded as a huge error in the future.
[+] [-] ars|6 years ago|reply
So basically it looks good to have lots of Solar and Wind, never mind if it actually does anything useful?
It's called Greenwashing, and if people don't stop doing it this planet is going to get worse and worse.
You realize you've basically said that they only success of this project was reducing the price of PV Panels? If that was your goal there are WAY WAY better methods to do that.
> demonstrating that an industrialized nation actually can start a gradual transition towards renewables
That's not what it demonstrated though. It demonstrated than even a highly motivated industrialized nation failed in transitioning to clean energy sources.
[+] [-] y0ghur7_xxx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wbl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hef19898|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 99_00|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sisu2019|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gondolin|6 years ago|reply
1) Because it costs a lot of lives. Coal + Lignite in Germany cost 8000 lives per year (funnily everybody also seems to forget that coal release more radiation in the air than nuclear plants). https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(07)61253-7/abst...
By contrast Chernobyl was 4000 deaths https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/
By not closing 10GW of nuclear production, Germany could have prevented 2000 deaths by year, so in total 20000 deaths over ten years.
2) Because it gave the impression that a carbon free electricity could be achieved by wind and solar alone. This is not the case: first Germany will only close coal in 2038 (in 20 years!!), and plan to use gas to replace coal at least up to 2050. Gas is way better than goal for air health, but it still release a lot of CO2. 2050 is way too late to be carbon free.
The problem with wind and solar is the intermittence: if you look at the data from https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... you will see that on average wind is at 20% capacity and solar at 10% capacity. So even with batteries to smooth things out (which don't exist at the huge scale we are speaking with), Germany would need a lot more solar and wind that it does. For a peak consumption of around 70GW, this mean it would need 350GW of renewable energy. It is so far only at around 100GW, having added 50GW the last ten years. So at this speed it would still need around 50 years. This is without counting the fact that: - the energy stockage problem is at least as hard to solve - solar panel and wind turbines have a lifetime of 20 years, so this does not take into account replacing existing ones - it is getting harder and harder to find place to put them. In 2018 the rate of installation of new renewables slowed down a lot because of this problem.
3) By contrast nuclear cost less, when taking into account this intermittence problem and the cost of interconnection (which is not counted by the figures usually given); it is a lot easier to interconnect a huge centrale than a lot of small ones. But cost is not an argument anyway when we are talking about climate change (if there was a proper carbon tax at least Germany would have closed coal before nuclear).
It is friendlier to the environment (wind turbine kills a lot of birds, and solar panel take a lot of room from wildlife).
It is as safe as solar and wind, and way safer than hydroelectric and coal. Banqiao Dam collapse was 230000 deaths. Yet nobody is calling for stopping hydroelectricity.
Again, Chernobyl was "only" 4000 deaths (high range estimate using a linear model rather than a threshold model are at 10000-20000 deaths), Fukushima was 0 deaths (but 1500 due to the evacuation, including zones where the radiation was the same order of magnitude of the natural one). Chernobyl cannot happen with modern reactors; a Fukushima style incident could, but the nuclear operators increased the security of the points of failures that Fukushima revealed. Again, living near a dam is probably less secure than living near a nuclear plant. And building and installing solar panels and wind turbines cost lives too (as do building dam and nuclear plants, and so on); on average as much as nuclear killed. Yet there is a lot of hysteria about nuclear plants, because an accident is so much more spectacular and visible.
And yes an accident would leave an exclusion zone, but it would actually be smaller than this stretch of no man land (a coal mine in Germany): https://twitter.com/LejeuneXa/status/1124749045996634118
4) I am not saying nuclear fission is a miracle energy (fusion would be). It is as safe as it is in developed countries because of all the regulations, this model would not be applicable in developing countries. For these countries, wind and solar is the way to go, and in this respect Energiewende which paved the way is a success.
There is the problem of nuclear waste, but this frankly this is a (small) problem at the scale of 100s of years, this should not at all be our priority given the very small time frame we have to reduce climate change (the ship has unfortunately sailed for preventing it from being too impactful [aka more than a few million deaths], the real question is whether we limit it to be really impactful or a total catastrophe). This is like worrying about a leak in the sink when the whole house is on fire: bad priorities!
5) But, by making the illusion that 100% carbon free electricity could be achievable without nuclear, Germany set a dangerous precedent. It is not currently possible (as proved by Germany not really reducing its CO2 emissions), it may be possible in 30 years (current prevision is only a cut of 65% in 30 years, the 95% cut is from a very optimistic plan by Greenpeace) but this is way too late.
By refusing to use nuclear for purely ideological# reasons, Germany is depriving itself from a vital tool against global warming. And by vindicating some green movements to call for the closing of nuclear plants along the development of renewable (whereas the sane thing to do would be developing nuclear along renewable: solar panel in sunny places like desert, offshore wind turbines and nuclear plants), it may indeed have done a whole lot of harm. And when we are speaking about the future of human civilisation, this may prove to have been indeed a very costly mistake indeed.
[#] And yes, when you take into account that coal each year kill more in Germany than Chernobyl did globally (and way more than Fukushima); and that even if there was a Chernobyl every 10 years (which cannot happen with the nuclear reactors we have) anyway it would still be a drop of water compared to what climate change is going to bring us, closing nuclear plants can only be ideological.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jseliger|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anoncake|6 years ago|reply
We should just build a lot of nuclear reactors somewhere in Germany that's hundreds of kilometers from anything we'd care to lose.
[+] [-] Bombthecat|6 years ago|reply
A) dumping in the ground and hope for the best
B) some magic tech will pop which will solve the issue.
[+] [-] imtringued|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhayward|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liminal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spython|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yourMadness|6 years ago|reply
I think the history is one of a failed economic subsidy program that accidentally accelerated the PV-industry by a few years.
There were several growing PV manufacturers in germany up to around 2011/2012. In that timeframe the manufacturers were all busy building new factories, but the government noticed that the subsidy program became large enough to be expensive and suddenly severely cut the subsidies. None of the manufacturers survived that, the remains were sold to the chinese.
[+] [-] jplayer01|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cygx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geff82|6 years ago|reply
There are actually good books that explain how all this works, why there are also short term "unsuccessful" years and how about everything will benefit in the end. And, most importantly: why the Energiewende actually enables a comfortable, good life.
[+] [-] sampo|6 years ago|reply
The French can be proud today, consuming electricity with 1/6 of the carbon footprint per kWh, compared to electricity in Germany. And paying half the price, too, compared to what electricity costs in Germany.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136192091...
[+] [-] eukgoekoko|6 years ago|reply
Not sure about the whole world, but Germany definitely has one of highest prices for elctricity in Europe:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
[+] [-] akrauss|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BiasRegularizer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anoncake|6 years ago|reply
That has to stop. Power generation cannot grow exponentially forever
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HocusLocus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anoncake|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] golemiprague|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zavi|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sctb|6 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html