this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.
That's basically what Germany did. They recently shut down their nuclear plants and restarted their coal plants.
That is just blatant misinformation. Name one single coal plant that has been restarted since nuclear power was phased out.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-reactivates-coal-fired-power-plant-to-save-gas/a-62893497
The Mehrum plant in Hohenhameln and the Heyden plant in Petershagen (whose operation has been extended).
Unless your nitpick is that these were started before the final nuclear shutdown, but I never said otherwise, only that both things happened recently.
They were extended specifically because of natural gas supply issues, caused by the war in Ukraine. Not because of nuclear shutdowns.
I understood it as coal was phased in as nuclear was phased out. The thing that astounds me still though is how recent the last 3 were shut down.
I think they were planning on natural gas, but that went down the tubes because they were planning on buying from Russia. Coal plants were restarted to fill the gap.
What the plan is now, I don't know.
The end goal was always renewables with smart net, storage and hydrogen plants to offset spikes. Gas prices are dropping again, so it will be used as a bridging solution. Energy production in Germany is actually on track of its climate goals compared to transportation.
The actual problem was stopping to fund solar, smashing a hundred thousand jobs in renewables under the pretense of "saving workers". ~20k jobs in coal heroically saved.
And yet coal power production is practically at the lowest level ever (except for corona months 03/20 and 04/20)
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&year=-1&month=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute×lider=1&legendItems=000001010000000000000
Germany is now using coal as base load. The main reason coal has not increased considerably is because all this new generation and loss of nuclear baseload along with limited ng generation has resulted in average energy prices doubling from 2017 to 2021 prices. Simply put the cost of energy is now so high that people and industry is using less. Done large industries shut down with loss of jobs. Solar and wind had been very expensive even with government subsidies. Subsidies that take money out of government coffers resulting in less services. This ignoring the increase in energy importation of which some may be from coal generation.
Shutting down nuclear simply denied millions of people a clean energy source unless they were willing to pay nearly double that of past years.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/germany-goes-all-energy-transition-with-nuclear-shutdowns-2023-04-19/#:~:text=The%20steep%20climb%20in%20electricity,hydropower%20output%20due%20to%20drought.
You know that with merit order pricing the cost of electricity only depended on the cost of the most expensive producer? So nuclear plants have close to 0 Influence on the price.