These were the shenanigans of some German fossil power plant companies producing intentionally a bit less to drive the price. The German people are a bit disgruntled about it, but not very mad, as those plants days are numbered.
This is also the government that cancelled 17 planned wind parks for no reason and then has the audacity to lecture other countries about energy security. I am pro nuclear power but Ebba Bush is so psychotically pro nuclear that it borders on kink territory.
More wind capacity wouldn’t solve these issues. They arise specifically when it is cold, dark and windless across Europe, due to a lack of dispatchable electricity production in Germany. Germany instead imports electricity from its neighbors, and Sweden (due to EU regulations) has to export. This in turn drives prices through the roof for Swedish consumers, despite a de facto electricity surplus.
The thing with wind power is that it doesn’t blow all the time but it always blows somewhere so a large spread of small wind farms gets more stable as it grows. Also, nuclear power is also unreliable because they regularly gets shut down for maintenance or safety reasons.
Also, nuclear power is also unreliable because they regularly gets shut down for maintenance or safety reasons.
This sounds like one of those bizarrely bad anti-nuclear talking points.
Everything needs maintenance. That’s how literally everything works. But nuclear is by leagues and bounds more stable, predictable, and reliable compared to every other power source. Cold, hot, light, dark, windy, calm, rain, snow, desert, it doesn’t matter. Nuclear just works.
Which in turn would require enormous amounts of excess generation capacity and transmission lines.
Beyond a certain point it’s simply more efficient to install dispatchable electricity generation.
Oh and as for your last statement it is simply incorrect. Nuclear power plants are the single most reliable electricity producer. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close
Well, to be frank, Sweden is Europes second largest, or largest depending on the state of things in France, electricity exporter in Europe. Sweden do not necessarily need more large scale electricity production. Specially not given the drive towards micro production that is now ongoing.
The only reason to build large scale is to accommodate AI or some other extremely energy dependant technology. They can happily build and run their own electricity network and not include the ordinary consumers, nor the taxpayers.
This time, it seems, they found the golden nugget despite being blind.
Building energy production to export even more electricity is surely very profitable and also good for the environment.
I remember the winter 1 or 2 years ago when we exported a fuck ton electricity and apparently our clean electricity displaced enough foreign dirty electricity to reduce the carbon footprint by as much as Sweden annually carbon footprint from cars.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ekonomi/svensk-elexport-minskar-utslappen-motsvarande-hela-biltrafiken
No denying that there are positives, but geopolitically we can’t have Berlin on it’s knees just because Kremlin had a Chinese cargo ship drag it’s anchor half way across the Baltic sea. That’s a no go for an independent Europe.
(Tl;dr at the bottom)
Is this AI generated slob? Because it reads like AI generated slob. And the ‘picture’ of that lady looks like it’s AI generated as well.
Needless to say, what this lady is saying in regards to Germany has no basis in reality. She claims Germany’s unstable energy prices are a result of Germany shutting down it’s nuclear reactor. This is an oversimplification of the highest order.
For reference, the newest nuclear powerplant that went online in Germany, did so in 1989. The most recent plan to build even newer reactors was cancelled in 1999. 2002 a law was passed that prohibited the building of new nuclear reactors and limited the operational life of all nuclear reactors to at most 32 years. That would have meant that all reactors had to be shut down after 2021.
However in 2010, the operational life of a few select reactors was lengthened by 12 years.
2011 then, after Fukushima, the operational life was reduced to just two additional years; the last reactor was set to get shut down in April 2023. This all was decided by the conservative government led by the CDU.
In 2022, the Green minister for energy and the economy, Robert Habeck, passed an emergency resolution, allowing the at that time 3 remaining nuclear reactors, which in total provided at most 6% of Germany’s energy needs, to run for half a year longer.
So let’s tally up: The last nuclear reactor was built 1989. Since 2002, by law, no new nuclear reactors were allowed to be built. In 2022, the operational life of the last 3 reactors was extended by the Green minister for energy and the economy. Those 3 reactors provided at most 6% of the German energy mix.
What happened to the rest of the nuclear output that had to be replaced? The conservative, CDU-led government, in their infinite wisdom, killed the incentives to build up renewable energy, which Germany was a world leader in at the time (keyword: “Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz”, “Solardeckel” if you’re interested to read about that whole saga). They then allowed Putin to basically capture the German energy market with cheap russian gas. We all know how that worked out.
Compounding is the issue that southern, conservative-led states in Germany (mainly Bavaria) are blocking both the expansion of renewable energy (keyword: “Windrad Abstandsregel”), as well as the expansion of the energy grid, so cheap energy created in the north through renewable sources can’t be transported to the south.
But surely we could just build new nuclear reactors, right? The conservative state-government in Bavaria certainly thinks so (after being in favor of the nuclear shutdown even as late as 2020). The simple answer is: No. Renewable energy is simply too cheap. Nuclear energy was always subsidized in Germany, both during construction and during operation. And the task of finding a suitable location for storing the nuclear waste also falls to the government. So unless you are ideologically captured, financing new reactors as the government doesn’t make sense. It also doesn’t make sense for the energy companies either, because nuclear power is way too long of a commitment for them, compared to simply throwing up more wind turbines or solar panels. “German efficiency” would complicate the matter of building new nuclear reactors further. Nuclear reactors going online in Europe in the past years did so with hefty delays, cost overruns and construction times ranging between 12 and 20 years. And if the BER airport is used as a comparison, it would be even worse in Germany.
Bonus: A timeline (in german) highlighting steps towards the shutdown of nuclear power in Germany: https://www.base.bund.de/de/nukleare-sicherheit/atomausstieg/ausstieg-atomkraft/ausstieg-atomkraft_inhalt.html#a449768
Tl;dr: So no, dear AI generated swedish person, nuclear energy is no viable path for Germany, and also no, neither the shutdown, nor the ban on new nuclear reactors is the fault of Robert Habeck.
Personal opinion: Robert Habeck is the closest we get in Germany to a politician that is both ‘electable’ in the eyes of the broad public and genuinely for the people. Smears like that AI lady’s have been all too common in an effort to discredit him, most of those have been lies or deliberate misconstructions. So a heartfelt “fuck you!” goes out from me to her.
I’m aware she’s a real person, the photo is credited with her instagram after all. I’m still going to call her AI lady though. She certainly has the same spotty reasoning skills as contemporary AI models.
I mean, I agree that at this point, building nuclear reactors probably won’t help with these problems. But shutting down already built reactors that could still have been safely used for years was incredibly stupid imo. They could have used these as backup for peaks instead of coal and gas.
The neoliberal has spoken. You know that politics can change circumstances?
Yeah sure, let’s listen to that totally real AI lady and build new nuclear reactors. Just ignore that a sizable portion of the German people is still against nuclear energy. Just ignore that it costs more than building up renewable energy. Just ignore that even the energy companies don’t want to start building new nuclear reactors based on how risky that endeavour is. Just ignore that Germany still has no long term storage for nuclear waste. Just ignore the 15-year construction time that would do nothing to help our energy needs now. Let’s just ignore all that. But sure, I’m neoliberal.
Politics is about changing exactly those circumstances. Nothing is eternal. If Germany really wants to, Germany can build nuclear within a decade (I mean Germany has previously done far more extreme things in less time, like energiewende, or inventing nuclear reactors while fighting a total war). It’s of course a big economic risk because of the possible high alternative cost. That’s why the government should do it. You have to compare that with the risk of not having a fossil free alternative to gas and coal within 15 years. Actually, the risk is not that great because you will get fossil free energy either way.
You sure write like a neoliberal. Maybe you’re just not aware of that. Not seeing politics as a viable tool is maybe the most neoliberal thing one can do. And it’s very damaging to society in all western countries right now. Unless you weren’t ironic…
Many arguments call countries’ names, but actually prices are dictated by companies (directly or indirectly by their behavior) that want to make a profit. Sweden’s electricity prices, as a rule of thumb, are always lower than prices in Germany, so from an economic p.o.v. it makes sense to buy as much electricity in Sweden as can be transported south. Of course, that drives prices up in Sweden to historic level (but still cheaper than in Germany). Why are prices so high in Germany? Several reasons have been discussed here, but one I would like to highlight is that operators of gas and coal power plants, which are meant as reserves in cases of high demand and low supply, do not produce sufficiently much electricity: they simply earn more by selling little electricity at high prices than by selling more electricity at lower prices. The politicians’ fault is that they have created a mostly unregulated market where under the right conditions some actors can make huge profits at the cost of everyone else. This is why more nuclear power plants won’t help: even their operators will have to pay back the huge debts left from construction and thus also will try to maximize profits from high prices via low supply.
So Busch is generally a pretty shit politician and wrong on most things that she says, but in the case of Germany needing to reform it’s electricity market, she’s not wrong.
She’s also not wrong that shutting down the nuclear capacity in Germany was a generally bad choice, but her opinion that we should go back to nuclear is hilariously bad.
Finally, there’s a clear need for a change in rules when it comes to electricity pricing in Sweden - the fact that we’re having to pay the rates that Germany offers for what electricity they import while most electricity in Sweden is still produced very cheaply is clearly an exploitative system.
