[Taig]

> It's hard for renewables to replace coal or nuclear though, because coal and nuclear provide baseload power, whereas wind and solar are very intermittent and require basically 100% gas backup (as there will be circumstances with very low wind and solar, which tends to happen in europe on very cold, still, winter nights when demand is the highest).

I absolutely agree with you that we need the coal plants and imports for base load. For a fully renewable grid, we need massive storage capacity. This, however, is far from an unsolved problem. The problem is that the economic incentives aren't aligned with that goal yet. There is reason to be optimistic though, and that the money Germany is saving on nuclear, is more sustainably and effectively spent on renewables and storage.

[eldaisfish]

How is energy storage a solved problem? All the battery storage in the world today would power half of Germany's minimum electrical load for minutes.

[adrianN]

Germany has enough storage capacity for natural gas to last a couple of months. The same can be build for Hydrogen. Some of the existing infrastructure can even be reused.