Germany Hits 62.7% Renewables in 2024 Electricity Mix, with Solar Contributing 14% (pv-magazine.com) 174
Due to a "rapid expansion of solar capacity," Germany generated 72.2 TWh of solar power in 2024, reports PV magazine, "accounting for 14% of its total electricity output, according to Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.
"Wind power remained Germany's largest source of electricity in 2024, generating 136.4 TWh..." Hydropower also saw a slight increase, contributing 21.7 TWh in 2024. Total renewable energy generation reached 275.2 TWh, up 4.4% from 2023. Biomass plants, with an installed capacity of 9.1 GW, generated 36 TWh of electricity.
Generation from coal-fired power plants declined sharply in Germany in 2024, with lignite production dropping 8.4% and hard coal falling 27.6%, according to Energy Charts. Lignite-fired plants produced 71.1 TWh, roughly matching the total output from photovoltaic systems, while hard coal plants generated 24.2 TWh... Germany's CO2 emissions continued their downward trend, falling to 152 million tons in 2024, a 58% reduction from 1990 levels and more than half of 2014 levels...
Battery storage capacity saw substantial growth, with installed capacity rising from 8.6 GW to 12.1 GW and associated energy storage increasing from 12.7 GWh to 17.7 GWh. Germany's battery storage capacity now surpasses pumped storage by approximately 10 GW, underscoring the shift toward renewable energy integration.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
"Wind power remained Germany's largest source of electricity in 2024, generating 136.4 TWh..." Hydropower also saw a slight increase, contributing 21.7 TWh in 2024. Total renewable energy generation reached 275.2 TWh, up 4.4% from 2023. Biomass plants, with an installed capacity of 9.1 GW, generated 36 TWh of electricity.
Generation from coal-fired power plants declined sharply in Germany in 2024, with lignite production dropping 8.4% and hard coal falling 27.6%, according to Energy Charts. Lignite-fired plants produced 71.1 TWh, roughly matching the total output from photovoltaic systems, while hard coal plants generated 24.2 TWh... Germany's CO2 emissions continued their downward trend, falling to 152 million tons in 2024, a 58% reduction from 1990 levels and more than half of 2014 levels...
Battery storage capacity saw substantial growth, with installed capacity rising from 8.6 GW to 12.1 GW and associated energy storage increasing from 12.7 GWh to 17.7 GWh. Germany's battery storage capacity now surpasses pumped storage by approximately 10 GW, underscoring the shift toward renewable energy integration.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.
That's failure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany's transition didn't fail (Score:5, Insightful)
The nuclear reactors were shut down because they didn't trust them in a post Fukushima world. I don't blame them. If you could keep the nuclear reactors being run publicly that would be fine but that's not politically tenable. Sooner or later somebody's going to privatize those things.
So now Germany is playing catch up doing the renewable switch over They should have done ages ago.
To be fair Germany wasn't just after cheap oil and gas They wanted to tie Russia up economically so that Russia would be less likely to do things like invade other countries. The problem is that doesn't work because they underestimated just how much control Putin has over his population. Russia's economy is a smoldering crater and their people are facing runaway inflation and still the war continues. It's been going so long their entire economy is now transitioned into a permanent wartime economy and they don't know what to do about that either. It's a complete fucking mess.
The point being that since Russia just doesn't care how their people suffer you can't use that against them. You can't use those kind of economic entanglements
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Lol, they thought they were going to get hit by a tsunami? In Germany?
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That "failure" comes from coal plants in Germany needing to run to prop up the failing French grid. You have been told this before. Yet you keep lying.
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The German people picked coal over nuclear. That's why they failed.
I am sure you know what you are talking about. Otherwise you would has shut up, wouldn't you? /sarkasm
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Nope, you are just lying some more. And you know that you are lying, because it has been explained to you when and at what prices France exports and when and at what prices they import.
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There is no failure in creating an economy of scale for renewables that helped bring prices down dramatically, triggering global expansion of renewables.
While CO2 emissions from the electricity sections are still high (and was also high when Germany still used nuclear), it is dropping continuously as coal production continuous to fall. Coal mining in Germany stopped 2018 and lignite mining is on its lowest since 1915.
The main mistake was not investing earlier in renewables.
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The main mistake was prioritizing renewables deployment for ideological reasons, instead of prioritizing an actual low carbon electricity grid based on a mix of hydro, nuclear, renewables.
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The accusation of "ideological reasons" is meaningless ranting. I agree that Merkel's decision after Fukushima was a knee jerk reaction and the risks of nuclear are overblown. It is still true that nuclear is far too expensive, slow to build, and would be even more expensive when scaled up to relevant levels. In contrast, renewables with storage are viable strategy and all numbers together with simulation studies indicate that this will work cost effectively.
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The accusation of "ideological reasons" is meaningless ranting.
I agree that Merkel's decision after Fukushima was a knee jerk reaction and the risks of nuclear are overblown.
This is the definition of "ideological reason".
It is still true that nuclear is far too expensive, slow to build, and would be even more expensive when scaled up to relevant levels.
Because you assume that the only two options are either full nuclear, or full renewables. Breaking news: both don't work. A mixed approach is the most sensible, both short and long-term.
In contrast, renewables with storage are viable strategy
Unfortunately, there is no proof that renewables (in the sense of solar/wind) are a viable strategy. Actually, all recent experience, including Germany which has been at it for the past 30 years, seem to indicate that trying to go only with solar/wind is doomed to failure. Which
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It seems those saying "ideological reasons" are often disagreeing because of ideological reasons.
There are nuclear risks, they're not minor. However a major challenge is that nuclear power is amazingly expensive, and chief reasons for the expense is indeed due to risks. No one wants a quick and dirty nuclear plant. Even decommisioning a plant is amazingly expensive, which is done at a time when there is zero revenue. So either there's a massive government subsidy, or a huge increase in rates. The priva
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It was a knee jerk rejection from the Merkel government, not of the German public, which was consistently against nuclear as you correctly describe.
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Glad we agree that end result is the same though: Germany still emits a shitload of CO2eq/kWh generated, showing the world that trying to rely on solar/wind alone is not working good/fast enough. Too bad we wasted so many years to see the result of that experiment. At least, smart countries are moving toward the right solution since a few years now: a mix of hydro/nuclear/solar/wind.
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The failure is 372 g CO2eq per kWh. Also US and Chinese investment in solar and wind outstrips German. So they created the economy of scale not Germany.
The main mistake was shutting down your nuclear and not investing in more nuclear.
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If you start out with 760 g/kWh and transition to renewables with the aim of 0 g / kWh, then - at some point in the middle - you will have 370 g / kWh. That some idiots run around and then call it a failure, is among the most stupid things I see on the internet. It is certainly true that Chinese investment is now larger. Germany invested much earlier though and the helped get this off the ground. Also not difficult to understand.
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Germany's high carbon intensity compared to, say, the UK, is entirely down to its continued reliance on coal, which demonstrated the enduring value of 80:20 rule of thumb by delivering a touch over 20% of its leccy in Dec 2024 but nearly 70% of its emissions. We (almost) all want the drop in coal use to go faster, but this article nonetheless is a sign of tangible and dramatic progress.
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We should do both! My point was that Germany hasn't "failed" in its transition in the sense of "things will never decarbonise more than this" that the OP was implying; it can and will decarbonise much further, and the main driver will be the continuing work to reduce coal usage while ramping up renewables and storage. But if you were to ask me whether I consider Germany to have failed in the sense of not having gone close to as fast as it should have, I would say yes, it has -- in the exact same way that th
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372 g CO2eq per kWh is a failure [electricitymaps.com] Meanwhile France with their nuclear fleet is at 41. Germany has spent half a trillion dollars on their energy transition and failed.
Oh look this again. Firstly Germany hasn't spent half a trillion dollars on electricity production. They've spent half a trillion dollars on all greening projects which includes energy consumption reductions, subsidies for houses and industry, dealing with waste, etc. Only a small fraction of the half a trillion dollars has gone into something which can be measured in CO2eq / kWh.
Secondly how is it that you're still amazed the a country that is not just significantly warmer than another and a country who di
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Re:That's failure. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That's failure. (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, Germany isn't "half as polluting as America".
2023 generation, USA was 369 g CO2 per kWh. Germany was 381 according to my source [ourworldindata.org].
The USA's going towards renewables almost as fast, but more hydro and nuclear would account for it.
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You're comparing the wrong metric. CO2/kWh isn't pollution. It's a single source of emissions from one sector and normalised per unit of consumption. Not only does Germany as a total and on a per capita basis use far less kWh (leading to far less pollution from that sector). They also pollute less in non electricity generating matters.
But you're right Germany isn't half as polluting as the USA in this regard. They are actually on per capita basis closer to 1/3rd. https://www.energyinst.org/sta... [energyinst.org]
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Some Background on the "failure" (Score:2)
Germany "failed" because we relied on cheap "natural" gas from Russia for providing less polluting (than coal and lignite) electricity when renewables were not enough. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and trying to keep Germany from interfering Gazprom stopped supplying gas. In addition the Nordstream pipelines were sabotaged (apparently by Ukrainian actors). So Germany had to struggle getting enough gas from other sources which drove gas and electricity prices up. But these are nearly back their pre war levels
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Germany is already 1/2 as polluting as America.
Not "already" and not as a result of adding more solar or wind. Germany's per capita CO2 emissions was half that of America a full two decades ago - long before its current energy mix. In fact, its current per capita CO2 emissions are about 10% higher than 2003 - probably because it's burning proportionately more coal now.
What are you doing to fix that? Just more complaining about people who are doing better than you are again.
Digging deeper into the numbers is important. Germany's lack of progress indicates that it's strategies of decommissioning down nuclear plants and depending on Putin for natural gas weren'
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There is no "lack of progress": Electricity production from coal and lignite in Germany in 1990 was 312 TWh, in 2000 it was 288 TWh, in 2010 263 TWh, in 2020 it was 135 TWh and in 2024 it fell to 105 TWh. So there is an accelerated removal of coal and lignite. Mining of hard coal was stopped in 2018 and mining of lignite fell to a value as low as in 1915.
Source for electricity production: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]
Re:That's failure. (Score:4, Informative)
Germany is also on track reducing CO2 according to agreed goals and certainly reduced CO2 emissions more than the US:
Link AC posted as respons to parent above, but to give it more visibility:
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
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Germany is already 1/2 as polluting as America. What are you doing to fix that?
America is restarting recently shuttered nuclear power plants, and making plans for more new nuclear power plants. There's likely to be a continuation of natural gas and onshore wind to replace coal. It would be nice to see some new pipelines put in place, but we've seen politicians fight over those for decades.
If America's production of fossil fuels disturbs people over in the EU then we can stop shipping LNG over there. Would that make you feel better?
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It is not America's production of fossil fuels that is the primary concern (also that too), but its excessive and wasteful consumption.
In 2023, the percentage of gas imports to Germany via LNG was 7% of the total imports (with the largest part coming from Norway). So I personally I would say: Yes, this would make me feel better.
Let's see how the nuclear story goes in US. Sadly, I believe this will simply delay effective action to further reduce CO2, because building nuclear plants takes so long and the few
Re:That's failure. (Score:4, Informative)
France was Europes largest export of elecirctity in 2024.
Germany is at 372 g CO2 eq per kWh and their economy is in a bad spot.
They haven't deep decarbonized which means they haven't proven anything. Get back to me when the get below 100 g CO2 per kWh.
If Germany succeeded I would be the first person to admit I was wrong. If anything that last comment of yours was an example of projection from an antinuclear zealot.
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France was indeed the largest exporter in 2024. The main reason is that they often have surplus energy because you let nuclear plants run once you have them (the cost is construction and much less operation of the plants. So they sell cheap energy often, but still rely occasionally on imports to keep the light on. Such as in 2022 when almost half of their fleet was out-of-order, or sometimes in winter when electricity is used for heating, or sometimes in summer when rivers get too hot and they need to curb
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Nuclear fans were desperately hoping that Germany failed, and are even declaring it a failure just as it proves it is succeeding. The desperation is palpable.
I mean, I think many people are desperately worried about CO2 emissions, and Germany is not doing a very good job there. It doesn't matter how you slice it, France, Sweden and the UK are all doing substantially better in mass of CO2 per kWh.
It's also proof that you don't need nuclear to do it,
Well it isn't because they haven't done it yet.
But good grie
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What was the alternative for Germany? Spend untold billions and decade after decade trying to build nuclear plants, while people install their own solar anyway? It doesn't seem very practical, or democratic.
One of the things people miss about Germany is that it's not just a transition towards clean energy, it's towards more democratic energy. Generate your own, own part of a community wind farm, even build your own interconnection.
Or hand the money to huge companies and their shareholders, and in the UK's c
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Have you seen France's economy lately?
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Have you seen France's economy lately?
So your argument is: "but but... look at the neighbor, they are not doing better!". Do you have any experience debating an actual topic with grown-ups, or are you just full propaganda?
Also, you might want to look at actual facts [theguardian.com]: "Industrial production has fallen for five straight months and is more than 7% below its pre-pandemic levels. The International Monetary Fund expects Germany to be the weakest economy in the G7 group of leading rich nations this year, and the only one to see output fall."
This was i
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Five months of decline, what a strange timeframe to pick for making a point and a decades long economic policy.
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Pick more points, story is the same. Actually worse.
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France also has hydro, wind, and some solar. German renewables include biofuels which are dirty. So in reality France is closer to 90% clean while Germany is below 50.
It's algebra not "Alegra" DF
Don't mention the imports (Score:3)
Imported electricity was 24.9 TWh, more than half from France's nuclear reactors. As to prices the AI thingo says "As of January 2025, electricity prices in Germany are the highest in Europe, with a family of three to four paying almost 40 cents per kilowatt hour. This is despite Germany offering subsidies to industrial companies, which some say are still too high to be competitive."
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Imported electricity was 24.9 TWh, more than half from France's nuclear reactors.
And in 2022 they net exported double digit TWh electricity. What are you trying to convince us of? That France over built baseload production to the point of inefficiency and unable to adjust to suit local demand, or that you don't understand what the point of an interconnected grid built on a geographically and resource diverse generation is? France has it's own uranium (sort of, they colonized places with Uranium). Importing power from them (allies, and trading partners) is a good thing and not a failure.
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Wholesale prices can be found here: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Household prices are much higher, but those have a lot of fees and taxes added. The "this is despite" sentence is misleading, as the household price you cite does not benefit from subsidies for industrial companies.
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We pay 33 cents per kWh and that's not even the cheapest you can get. Also Germany's electricity is not the highest in Euro. Poland's and Italy's are higher. And France is cutting subsidies for electricity from nuclear power, we will see where that leads.
As for imports: Germany imported electricity because that was cheaper then starting up gas powered electricity plants, not because they couldn't.
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Need all the relevant data (Score:2)
What's the producer price of all this green energy, per kWh? What's the retail price per kWh?
Is total energy production up or down annually?
At least they gave us total Wh produced which is what we normally don't get.
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Capacity factors for wind and solar for each month would be nice.
how come.. (Score:2)
How come all this renewable energy, free wind, free solar, free hydro, hasn't lowered energy prices in Germany?
Batteries are not renewable energy (Score:2)
Battery storage capacity saw substantial growth, with installed capacity rising from 8.6 GW to 12.1 GW and associated energy storage increasing from 12.7 GWh to 17.7 GWh. Germany's battery storage capacity now surpasses pumped storage by approximately 10 GW, underscoring the shift toward renewable energy integration.
I am not sure there is a direct connection between battery storage and renewables. Battery storage is becoming cheaper than a natural gas peaker plant. But the source of electricity when charging the batteries can be anything.
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An EU minister just announced today that if the Germans elect AfD to reverse these policies the EU will nullify German elections - "to save Democracy".
Can you be more specific; who said that, or where it was reported?
Re:Numerator and Denominator (Score:5, Informative)
The context is Germany has a massive shortfall of total available energy sending prices through the roof and causing a devastating shut down of industry.
People are cutting down forests at an unprecedented rate in modern times just to stay warm. Massive LNG imports from Texas are 4-5x as expensive per BTU.
Be careful what you wish for.
An EU minister just announced today that if the Germans elect AfD to reverse these policies the EU will nullify German elections - "to save Democracy".
Yeah, really.
Can you be more specific; who said that, or where it was reported?
As far as I can tell it came from a X account called Visegrád 24 that posted a video captioned: "Former European Commissioner Thierry Breton says the EU has mechanisms to nullify a potential election victory of the AfD" which was picked up and amplified by Elon Musk. This is basically a pile of bullshit, the EU has no such power except perhaps in the overactive imaginations of right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Re:Numerator and Denominator (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks. Here is a better source https://www.berliner-zeitung.d... [berliner-zeitung.de] (Firefox can translate that for you).
My take: of course you're right the EU does not have the power to cancel any election, and Breton isn't even in any position of power right now. Therefore when he says "we did it in Romania" (we annulled the Romanian presidential election), he means "we" in a generic sense ("we Europeans", not "we the powers of EU"), as in "we" he can only be a regular citizen, not a person of power.
His implication isn't "if AfD wins", but "if Elon uses Twitter to influence the election", like an unidentified power (most likely Russia) used TikTok to manipulate the Romanian election. Breton implies there was backstage discussion that lead to the Romanian election being annulled. It is reasonable to expect that important decisions are discussed before decisions are made, so I'm not shocked that the Romanian leadership discussed the topic with EU counterparts.
Now the thing is Elon used Twitter/X to support AfD in next German elections. (At least, contrary to the TikTok case, he does it in the clear.) It was said (chancellor Scholz) that Elon is in his right to give his opinions. Breton seems to be opposite opinion. My opinion is that if Elon gets an official position in the new US administration, his words might start to be considered interference from a foreign power. Romania suspended TikTok on that ground, maybe we can get a combo with Twitter in Germany.
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Thanks for the correction; The Romanian regulation agency ANCOM *requested* the suspension, but it has not yet been accepted.
* The previous source was Visegrád 24, a well known disinformation account on twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* The new source is a 80 year newspaper that sells 80,000 paper copies daily (2021 number) and hires award-winning journalists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sucking Putin's dick for 25 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sucking Putin's dick for 25 years has an attached price.
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Well, Trump will do that now. He is already arranging a data for it.
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So what do you suggest instead? *Looks at what Germany has available* Oh coal. You want Germany to make coal great again.
Look I get it, you feel so privileged on your high horse that the arbitrary line drawn around the planet defining your country grants you some specific resources. Good for you. But in reality most countries need to trade resources with others. And what is German's strategy? Oh to follow the economic strategy of the good ol' USoffuckin'A the principles created by the USA that trading with
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And the US is still sucking Putin's dick by importing nuclear fuel from Russia.
Re:Numerator and Denominator (Score:5, Informative)
>> Germany has a massive shortfall of total available energy sending prices through the roof and causing a devastating shut down of industry.
Not according to the article. The chart shows that electricity generation has climbed steadily since the gas shutoff from Russia and now exceeds 2020 production.
"Energy Charts noted that Germany has sufficient capacity to produce and export electricity during winter, unlike Austria, Switzerland, and France, which face seasonal shortfalls."
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Indeed, France in particular is an interesting example. Their nuclear plants can't handle the summer heat, and can't meet winter demand. They were reliant on neighbours to keep the lights on, which is fine within the EU, but it does lead to very expensive electricity when they have excess and renewables in Spain are exporting for pennies.
Re: Numerator and Denominator (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s patently false.
France had issues due to maintenance delayed from the covid period. Looks like the whole system is back at selling a number of GWh to Germany right now
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>> selling a number of GWh to Germany right now
Lets see a cite for that.
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Right now it is pretty balanced in 2025: 360 GWh exports to France and the same amount imports from France. Overall Germany exported 2.7 TWh in 2025 so far, and imported 1.9 TWh. It is true so that in 2024 Germany imported much more than exported: 77.2 TWh imports vs. 48.9 TWh with 16 TWh imported from France vs. 3.1 TWh exports to France. This is generally attributed to higher prices for CO2 emission certificates which make it not profitable to spin up coal / lignite plants (which produces fewer electrici
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Sorry, I wanted to add the source for the numbers: https://www.energy-charts.info... [energy-charts.info]
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France gets screwed regularly by renewable imports. They have to subsidize the nuclear plants to keep running, on top of the normal subsidies.
Their electricity is incredibly expensive, they just hide the cost in taxes so that bills are reasonable.
Re: Numerator and Denominator (Score:2)
Taking a step back, I'd rather have expensive energy that generates way less CO2. We need to consume less energy anyway. And mitigating global warming is a good way to spend taxpayer money. The only significant issue I see with nuclear is that the risk of war is increasing and that can be a bad mix.
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Nuclear is a very expensive energy compared to renewables.
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Not relative to nuclear.
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There's also the fact that it takes 20 years to build in Europe, so we can't really wait for it.
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They have to subsidize the nuclear plants to keep running, on top of the normal subsidies.
And everyone who has a higher CO2 emission rate in the mix (which is almost everyone else) is simply externalising costs and making literally everyone else pay. You are subsidising Germany's energy.
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Data from RTE (the electricity transmission operator) https://analysesetdonnees.rte-... [rte-france.com]
I find the statement correct for the months of December and January for period 2015-2021 (typically France importing from Germany in these two months). Year 2022 and first months of 2023 were awful for France (all months importing power from Germany). However second half 2023 and entire 2024 (including winter months) were positive (France exporting to Germany).
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Nice hallucination you have there.
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It is amazing that somebody could actually believe this BS.
Re:While their economy collapses (Score:5, Informative)
>> because of high energy prices.
You'll have to do better than that. The price of electricity in Germany has been somewhat higher than most of the EU for more than 10 years, and it still tracks with the rest of the EU. There has been a spike in cost recently as a result of the Ukraine war. The price actually dropped some last year and maybe that is due to the renewables being cheaper than fossil.
You can see that the curve of the charts is very similar.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
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The price of electricity in Germany has been somewhat higher than most of the EU for more than 10 years, and it still tracks with the rest of the EU.
The prices for electricity, and all energy more generally, will track across the EU because there's plenty of trade among the nations of the EU. What I wonder is if Germany's energy policies are driving up prices. I may have found my answer in the fine article.
Electricity prices on the exchange surged in November and December, making fossil fuel power plants more profitable and reducing imports.
There has been a spike in cost recently as a result of the Ukraine war. The price actually dropped some last year and maybe that is due to the renewables being cheaper than fossil.
My guess is the price drop was from improved ability to ship in LNG from Canada, USA, and other nations. Russia declaring war on Ukraine has certainly made energy more expensive for the EU. Another contributing factor to rising prices would be tro
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>> to see a greater percentage of energy from solar PV
Solar PV generated only 14%. "Wind power remained Germany's largest source of electricity in 2024"
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PV generation set a production record of 72.2 TWh in 2024, despite less favorable weather, due to the rapid expansion of solar capacity. Fraunhofer ISE's âoeEnergy Chartsâ report shows that 12.4 TWh of this total was used for solar self-consumption, marking an 18% year-on-year increase and raising the share of PV in electricity generation to 14%. July was the record month, with solar systems producing 10.7 TWh.
The fine article stated that solar PV made a larger share of total electricity production so I'm confused on the point you were trying to make.
The fine article throws out a lot of numbers but still seems to leave me with an incomplete picture on what is happening. I'm getting the impression they cherry picked numbers to make solar PV look better than it is, which should not be a surprise from a website that advocates for solar PV.
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My point is that the contribution of solar is small. It increased a couple percent, so your speculations about the effect of it are overblown.
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Germany imports only %7 of gas via LNG and gas use for electricity production is only a small percentage of overall use (mostly heating). BTW. the nuclear industry in the US imports a substantial amount of fuel from Russia. Germany imports zero gas from Russia since mid 2022.
Germany coal use is on a historical low: While it is still not zero, that renewables somehow increased coal use is a grotesque lie:
Numbers: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]
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While it is still not zero, that renewables somehow increased coal use is a grotesque lie:
Numbers: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/... [ag-energiebilanzen.de]
Germany didn't make the best of decisions when they started decomissioning all their nuclear power plants, and they ended up in a situation where they replaced nuclear instead of coal with wind and solar for many years. You can very clearly see this in the link you posted on the row "Kernenergie".
It would have made a lot more sense to replace coal with renewables and keep the nuclear power plants and only then start talking about the future of nuclear. Nuclear isn't very cheap anymore compared to wind and s
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I would agree with you that they should have kept the existing nuclear plants running longer and instead replace coal first, but this was not point I was correcting but the idea that Germany would use more coal due to the use of renewables, which is definitely not true.
But it is also not as easy as you might think to simply use stable nuclear power instead of coal. Coal plants you can ramp up and down to compensate the fluctuation in renewables. With nuclear this is not really feasible (theoretically, but
Cost vs. price (Score:2)
>> The prices for electricity, and all energy more generally, will track across the EU
You're confusing price and cost.
The cost of electricity may be similar due to markets, but the price is not (it's higher in Germany due to taxes)
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Also the fact that renewables are nowhere close to being as volatile in price as fossil fuels and are produced domestically. So countries are not subject to a massive price shock when a war breaks out or whatever.
Please don't feed the trolls (Score:2)
Or at least change the vacuous/racist Subject.
Re: While their economy collapses (Score:2)
They are in economic decline because of their own energy policies and practices https://hir.harvard.edu/german... [harvard.edu]
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That's a worthless opinion piece.
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Lower than Italy's and Ireland's, and nearly the same as the UK's energy prices. source [statista.com]
California's residential electricity price is effectively about $0.35 per kilowatt hour. source [energysage.com]. So far the tech industry there doesn't seem like it is collapsing. But those guys always embraced globalization, so that's not a surprise.
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California's residential electricity price is effectively about $0.35 per kilowatt hour. source. So far the tech industry there doesn't seem like it is collapsing.
I noticed over the last few years of tech companies opening up some quite large data centers across the USA. When it comes to energy prices we are seeing tech companies funding the restart of some recently shuttered nuclear reactors to get reliable electricity at lowered costs. This is not a "collapse", yet, but it's not a good sign for the technology industry in California.
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I don't think you can draw meaningful conclusions on long-term economic outlook based mostly on what you see as differences in regional electrical markets.
Of course having electricity is important. But for most industries it is not the biggest cost. It is of course troublesome for datacenter and AI.
But let us hope there is more to economics than who can build the biggest AI cluster.
I think having a port and having roads, and people to pilot ship and drive trucks, is a bigger factor than a 2X cost for reside
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And if that were true, it would be a problem. It is not true. You should stop using Fox news.
Specifically electricity was indeed expensive for a while, when the French bought all they could to prop up their failing nuclear grid. But that is mostly over now.
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Personally, I think Nord Stream 2 was Russia screwing up, not Biden's choice. The damage resembled more an internal explosion from a water hammer type effect.
It's also barely a blip climate wise, as it was shut down at the time.
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My sources says otherwise. What's yours?
https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
German per capita CO2 emission fell a lot since 2003. In fact it's going down quite fast since 1990.
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International Energy Agency. I reported incorrectly and reversed my numbers - you're right - it's down 20% since 2003 and, according to the same source, the US is down 30% although still at substantially more per capita in absolute terms.