Laying out key priorities for the EU’s upcoming Clean Industrial Deal, German Economy State Secretary Sven Giegold said on Monday (30 September) he wants the Commission to prioritise renewable energy, taking a tough line on nuclear power and France’s renewable targets.
Alongside a quicker roll-out of renewable energy facilitated by “further exemptions from [environmental impact] assessments,” Giegold outlined several other German priorities for the EU’s upcoming strategy.
Based on the 2030 renewable energy targets, the EU should also set up a 2040 framework, complemented by new, more ambitious targets for energy efficiency, he said.
“It should include new heating standards, a heat pump action plan and a renovation initiative,” he explained, noting a heat pump action plan was last shelved in 2023.
Hydrogen, made from renewables, should be governed by a “a pragmatic framework,” the German politician stressed, reiterating calls from his boss, Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), to delay strict production rules into the late 2030s.
This comment is a preventative measure:
No, Germany didn’t replace nuclear with coal. They replaced it with renewables.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants, and shutting off nuclear was an important incentive to build more renewables.
Here are some charts on Germany’s energy mix and long-term development (April 2024), it supports @superkret@feddit.org’s statement:
No, Germany didn’t replace nuclear with coal. They replaced it with renewables.
That’s… One way of looking at it. Another way to look at it is: “the closing of nuclear power plants has allowed gas and oil plants to stay in operation”.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants
But it could have been even lower.
Actually, the plan was to phase out coal and nuclear while building up wind and solar and using gas as a bridge. That was 2004. Then a coalition of conservatives and social democrats took over from the coalition of social democrats and greens in 2005 and coal was back on the menu and the exit from.nuclear was postponed, over time devastating the renewable industries almost completely. 2011 with Fukushima happened, nuclear was to be exited sooner again, but nobody cared about renewables anymore under a coalition of conservatives and libertarians. Meanwhile, Merkel said something about “Wandel durch Handel” (change by trade) and made the german power supply dependent on Russia and Putin by buying too much gas there, which backfired completely in 2022 (because nobody in Europe cared in 2014) and the now again green minister of economics had to deal with it, but the nuclear exit was done by now, without having build up renewables in the meantime as planned almost 20 years before.
So no, shutting down nuclear was not the reason gas plants kept working as long as they did, conservatives (and socdems and libertarians as their junior partners) shutting down renewables are the reason.
Coal power production is now much lower than before they shut off their nuclear power plants
But it could have been even lower.
Yes, but not because of exiting nuclear.
Edit: also, gas power plants and nuclear power plants have different tasks.
Second edit: nuclear isn’t exactly clean either.
No, because specific power levels need to be available at specific moments. The flat production curve of nuclear does not pair well with varying production from solar/wind. Gas sucks for climate-change reasons but at least you can regulate it up/down in a matter of half hours to react to variability of your other production. While we still had nuclear, wind parks needed to shut down more often.
In the longer run, batteries will shift solar peaks over the day and H2 will likely be used to replace methane.
You make it sound like the completely predictable power output of nuclear is a problem and unpredictable variation in output of the wind/solar is great.
There are ways to modulate production even with “flat” production. A clever way is to use water as energy accumulator: you pump water into a dam during the night, that you later let flow through turbines during the day.
No it couldn’t because nuclear power plants are much too inflexible in their power output to fit into a grid designed for renewables. Wind power often had to be shut down when its output was too high for the grid cause you couldn’t shut down the nuclear power plants.
This is a myth, most of the nuclear reactors can be throttled down, it is not instant but they can go as low as 20% in around 30 min.
The thing is it is much easier to stop a wind turbine than to throttle a nuclear reactor, and unlike fossil fuel power turbines most of the cost of the nuclear reactor is fixed cost, whether the reactor is running or not it still costs the same.
Additional interesting stats, especially regarding statement on the safety of nuclear energy and waste:
IAEA-database of nuclear and radiological incidents
Note that although the list which is linked above gives an impression of the spread, diversity and frequency of incidents and accidents with nuclear power plants radioactive transports, it is not a complete list of all nuclear incidents and accidents; different national regulators have different regimes as to which incidents to report to the IAEA and which not.
One article on nuclear energy in the UK from May 2024 says:
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK’s nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money…The waste itself includes 110,000 tonnes of uranium, 6,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuels & about 120 tonnes of plutonium. – Source
[Edit typo.]
A related article with interesting stats on the world’s nuclear power plants: the U.S. and France have the largest fleet, but China Is rapidly building new nuclear power plants as the rest of the world stalls
“There are probably not more than seven countries that have the capability to design, manufacture and operate nuclear power plants,” Cui Jianchun, the Chinese foreign ministry’s envoy in nearby Hong Kong, said during an official visit to the plant. “We used to be a follower, but now China is a leader.”
And yet, China is still building out solar, wind, and coal faster.
That’s despite nuclear having a lot of advantages in China:
- high level of centralization (even SMRs produce 0.5TW)
- high level of governmental involvement in economy (which means huge investments can be a lot easier)
- low level of governmental transparency (which means you don’t have to deal with NGOs or Nimbys)
- rapidly increasing demand for electricity (which creates an incentive to build as much supply as possible)
- first-class universities (for independent R&D)
- large land mass (which is useful both for mining and disposal)
- lax environmental policy (same)
Seems more like a german french beef.
I’m all for renewables and let’s kick nuclear out when we have enough of them (and the tech tunuse them ofc.) to scrap oil, coal & gas.
And my personal wishlist would be to kick the German lobbyists out of the room. Solar is great, but wind is a dead end. Nuclear is clean enough and the waste hysteria is overblown, there isn’t all that much radioactive waste to manage.
It’s one of the few things the Chinese government actually got right.
Wind energy covered 19% of EU electricity production. More than twice as much as solar. The total costs per energy produced are on the same level like coal and nuclear is more than twice as expensive.
It is the strongest renewable energy source. It seems like you know very little about energy production.
I don’t doubt the energy production of wind, only the (non monetary) cost of area.
