Meanwhile in Germany:
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You are aware that this is over 5 years old data (2017!) for the German electricity mix, right?
Please don’t get me wrong, the scale up of renewable energy sources is certainly not going fast enough in Germany (thanks to our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years until 2021!), but please argue this position using the real data for 2023 (57.7% renewables in the German electricity mix)!
You’re right, I’m sorry. I chose the picture because it was the first okay one I found in English. I’ll change it right away.
our conservative government that ruled the country for 16 years
and the next 16 years, if everything works well Ü
!please kill me!<
And please don’t forget that Germany exports 26.3% of its electricity, while France imports 16.4% of it.
So, Germany could cut 26.3% of its fossil fuel generation and go up to 84% renewables if countries like France wouldn’t depend on it that much.
I love how we literally can’t do shit for ourselves here in Italy
You keep repeating this point but renewable energy HAS to be exported when production is over the grid absorption rate. And coal plants have to be on continuously to guarantee baseload due to you moronic energy policies. You can’t bring up a (cherripicked for a single extraordinary year) graph you don’t understand and think it’s a gotcha. Not even mentioning the fact that France exports its energy too.
you moronic energy policies
baseload
Just found one of the morons responsible for that policy.
This year is an anomaly because nuclear production was low because some power plants had to shut down for maintenance. Germany typically imports power from France.
Germany typically imports power from France.
2017 called, it wants to ask when anomalies become the normal.
I have found this nice article (in French) :
https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/exportations-délectricité-françaises-en-allemagne-finir-steven-lorantIt’s … more complex than one picture.
The average idea is that :
- if you consider physical exchange directly between France and Germany, on the average, France massively exports to Germany.
- but most of the electricity shared between Germany and France goes through Swiss. Swiss has dams to store energy. Germany has many surplus of production with renewables. Swiss is used for transit. As a result, Germany is a net exportator of electricity to France.
Why do you use this tone?
This is for sure fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but Europe has also exported some of its most polluting industries abroad. And then we also wag our finger at places like China and India.
China and India are great with solar: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity
Current government in India is heavily pushing for solar energy.
Incredibly based
but Europe has also exported some of its most polluting industries abroad.
Don’t even need to go that far. The french have outsourced their fossil-based electricity industry to Germany.
I don’t know how much of french electricity is actually fossil-free, but when someone says “68% nuclear in the mix” they should maybe mention the 16.4% foreign electricity in their mix, as well.
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You know France is the largest exporter of electricity right?
It’s not because you’ve picked one period to prove your point that it’s the truth over a longer period. And France has been a net exporter to Germany for much longer than the opposite.
And France has been a net exporter to Germany
Not for the last 6 years, at least. And I’m pretty sure those 13 TWh didn’t just randomly appear in 2017, you usually don’t abruptly go from exporter to importer.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20230112-france-exports-electricity-to-its-european-neighbours-again
With nuclear production low, France has been a net importer of electricity for almost the whole year (except February, May and from the end of December), something that has not happened in 42 years.
France has almost always been net exporter, don’t change the facts please.
Guess where all that Italian import comes from. Really, it’s clear you have very superficial understanding and very strong opinions. Typical for germans tbh
The EU’s consumption based emissions per capita have also fallen.
Meanwhile Germany could cut more than 13% of its fossil electricity sources if it didn’t have to export electricity to “97% fossel-free” France. Overall, Germany exports 26.3% of its electricity.
So it could go straight to 84% renewables if other countries weren’t dependent on its electricity.
We have a deep-seated problem with corruption. Most politicians are just cockpuppets of the economy, and fossil fuel corporations have plenty of politicians stuck on their cocks. We were the forerunners of green energy, now we’re just cum-soaked removed.
Least horny upset german.
Wtf is going on in Italy?
We’re lazy fucks.
France usually exports electricity, this year is an abnormality.
And last year was an anomaly as well? Next year, the French nuclear plants will be repaired and their rivers will carry sufficient amounts of water again?
Yes, exactly. It’s in the management PowerPoint for next year, so don’t worry about it
Germany typically imports power from France.
2017 called, it wants to ask when anomalies become the normal.
I mean, isn’t that the core of the intermitancy argument for fossil fuels? Consumers wouldn’t be willing to accept a 100% renewable grid which only met demand 95% of the time.
Perfect is the enemy of good. I’d rather have a 95% renewable grid than not even try. We can at the very least minimize fossil fuel use. It’s kinda silly to be doubling down on it in this day and age.
100% renewable requires opportunistic consumption, which is hard to do without eating people.
Most of internet infrastructure is base load. It has to work 100% of time.
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Exporting? Electricity doesn’t know about economics, it has its own laws.
France also had to close a nuclear plant because of germany, it was close to the frontier so created political tensions with germany.
But France also have a strong anti nuclear lobby, so it’s hard to build more nuclear sadly.if it didn’t have to export electricity to “97% fossel-free” France.
I mean, it doesn’t HAVE to, does it? Presumably it’s a voluntary trade?
Edit: Lol. Just like Reddit, get downvoted for asking a neutral question.
The united EU energy market means that essentially, yes they have to.
Maybe voluntary is the wrong word, but do they not get paid for the exports?
Presumably it’s a voluntary trade?
Well, I’d think so, too, but I’m not sure France voluntarily shuts off their nuclear reactors during the summer.
Sssshhhh, don’t interrupt the nuclear circlejerk.
Don’t tell them that nuclear is by far the most expensive source of electricity in europe, no matter which costs you include
while still producing an order of magnitude more CO2 than renewables
or their heads will explode. And don’t ever ask them why no energy company in the world build a new nuclear reactor without subsidies, because the answer is: nuclear power is so ridiculously expensive that it isn’t financially profitable.
Well, that is unless you let the taxpayers cover all the costs, then it’s perfect to reap the highest profits.
“Consequential cost to health and environnement” of nuclear if higher that coal ? Wtf, in what world ?
Coal is more radioactive than nuclear plant, and that’s the lesser issue, between air polution, plant burning, and the effect of that much co2 being released, that can’t be true.
Either it’s bullshit or I missunderstood the graph.
Its interesting they use “most recent generation of turbines” but don’t do that on nuclear. Also WISE is not a credible source. It’s an anti-nuclear organisation with guys like Mycle Schneider on board.
Which source says 117g/kWh for nuclear? IPCC 2014 says 12g, UNECE 2020 about 5.1g (for EU28 nuclear).
Its interesting they use “most recent generation of turbines” but don’t do that on nuclear.
Feel free to tell us how much cheaper current nuclear power plants are than the ones that were built in the 70s and 80s.
I’m sure there’s some great data from Flamanville, Olkiluoto or Hinkley Point, showing us all how cheap and affordable nuclear has become.
If you thought just a little bit about what I wrote, you would know I was discussing the second graph.
Answer my points, not reinterpret them to fit your agenda.
They shutdown half of their reactors temporarily for maintenance in 2022. It was a one time thing. Your statement makes it seem like they do it every year.
Electricity don’t know about capitalism, it has its own laws.
My electricity provider shuts off my power if I don’t pay, obviously physical laws of electricity allow at least that much.
Gritinks from Poland!
Italy isn’t any less
There’s no "unknown ", so that’s good at least.
Maybe in the Vatican.
Vatican is powered by holy spirit
Consumption by source
Weird way to put it… also wtf is hydro storage generating?
Electricity? Like, you use excess power to lift water and generate power from letting it descend when you need power. The latter is generated. Or am I not getting something?
I know. It never generates more than it consumes so it has negative production overall. Or is this a real-time chart despite saying “past 12 months”?
“consumption takes imports and exports into account, production ignores them”
Rain fills them without consuming energy
Yes, they are part of the water cycle, sometimes collecting water from a significant area, but usually not. This is the upper reservoir of our largest hydro storage plant:
Rain is only collected over the area of the reservoir, and it would only fill up a few centimeters on a rainy day. In fact, the water evaporates quicker than that so a lake would never naturally form in this location.Are all hydro storage like that though? It doesn’t seem too outlandish to think of a hydro storage plant that is also fed by a river
I said most
I mean, at that point you would just call it a hydro power plant. Pretty much all hydropower doubles as storage due it’s flexibility, but typically don’t bother pumping water back up as it’s a waste of energy (as opposed to waiting for the river to do it’s work)
I think the idea is that it only uses excess energy that would otherwise be wasted to fill it, so it kind of generates energy as it’s essentially filled for free.
Yes, I know. Still, misleading: they show up negative in these power generation charts most of the time and this is supposed to be a cumulative one.
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Maybe it’s getting the power out of the storage.
I’ve been to a hydro storage plant and I know how it works. It stores power by pumping water into an upper reservoir when there is excess power and then letting it through turbines at peak demand. Overall, it achieves about 80% efficient energy storage whose capacity scales very cheaply as opposed to battery storage, and can respond to demand in a minute.
However, it never generates power in the usual sense so it should show up negative on an overall chart. Is this a real time one? I don’t think so because it says “past 12 months”.
I understand that it’s a net loss but maybe they’re only counting the power generated while unloading (which is still stupid but hey)
Could a dam lake be counted as hydro storage? That wouldn’t require energy spending to pump water up, but it can work as a “cache”?
Nope, that’s just regular hydroelectric. All hydro power plants have valves to control the flow and they do adjust them on demand, for turbine/filter maintenance, and/or hydrological event control.
Also, dam lake is a misnomer because lakes are naturally occurring. The correct term is reservoir. However, a reservoir can be natural and not dammed, like the oldest Czech pumped storage power plant at Černé jezero, which I visited. (The reservoir is a beautiful mountain lake and unfortunately, nature preservationists capped the water level changes to 4 cm, limiting capacity.)
Yeah I didn’t know the correct term for it in English, in Finnish it’s called “fakelake” or maybe more accurately “artificial lake”, but fakelake sounds better
Then there are ponds and pools, which can be either natural or artificial.
Schleswig-Holstein is at 100% wind since 2014. It’s Southern Germany that lags behind. https://spd-geschichtswerkstatt.de/wiki/Energiewende
Alter, es ist immer mein reudiges Bayern, oder?
Vergiss nicht BW
Oida, i bin’s ned
Mein niederbayrisches Dach hat gestern Solarzellen bekommen. Sind zwar noch nicht angeschlossen, aber immerhin…
So macht ma des, Maggus!
Wir versorgen uns seit einem Jahr auch mit ca. 90% eigenen Solarstrom. Fühlt sich echt gut an.
I couldn’t be less surprised
Like most of the time, the answer is complex: Yes, there is less wind in the south, but also yes, the south could approve more wind turbines. Yes, the south slows down the construction of high voltage power lines from the wind-rich north to the energy-hungry south, but the states that have to be crossed also do “their part”.
In the end a couple different electricity-pricing regions would help in balancing all of this.
So you say they would also be at 100% wind energy if they only had more wind? And it has nothing to do with the miniscule amount of wind turbines?
I think that map shows more that the southern states don’t have much wind which is why that region is “lagging behind”. There’s plenty in the north and off the coasts so it should be built there and sent down south.
No, the south is lagging behind, because of incompetent governors, like the one in Bavaria who is well known for blocking the construction of wind turbines.
That’s the popular opinion, but the reality is also that Wind Turbines are a no brainer in the North, and in the south it’s often barely worth it
TL;DR:
From what I know, you are wrong.Long version:
Thanks for pointing out that this might be just the popular opinion. I took this as an incent to dive a bit deeper and I look now especially at Bavaria, the state with the largest area in Germany, while also being one of the southern states.Bavaria, with Söder as the governor, has been known and critisised for their lagging wind energy expansion. (I can provide you with various sources on that, but since you are already aware of this public opionion, I will provide them when requested.) This was also due to the 10H regulation, which mandated that wind turbines must maintain a minimum distance from residential buildings, equivalent to ten times their height, within certain designated areas. With heights of about 200 m for wind turbines, this means a distance of at least 2 km to residental areas. As a consequence this renders the usable area for wind energy in Bavaria to less than 0,05 % of it’s size and effectively stopped progress in the construction and installation of wind energy plants. Source: https://kommunalwiki.boell.de/index.php/10H-Regelung
This regulation was loosened a bit in November 2022, some exceptions were made and the minimum distance was reduced to 1000 m . Source: https://www.verkuendung-bayern.de/gvbl/2022-650/
That loosening should allow for 800 to 1000 new wind turbines (Number sources: 800: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/bayern-windkraft-gesetz-kritik-1.5642558 , 1000: https://www.bayern.de/bayerischer-landtag-beschliet-lockerung-von-10h/ ). However, of those 1000 wind turbines exactly 4 were constructed and put into operation about one year after loosening the regulation (well, there were 5 constructed, but one was deconstructed again, lol). Source: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/bayern-hat-2023-bislang-vier-windraeder-genehmigt-faktenfuchs,Tqwfrvt .
What a marvellous achievement… /s
Moving on to the next point. You said, that wind turbines are often barely worth it in the southern states. Still looking at Bavaria, the “Energie Atlas” (energy atlas) of the state’s government says:
Da die Windgeschwindigkeit mit der Höhe über dem Boden zunimmt, können heute mit modernen, technisch weiter entwickelten und höheren Windenergieanlagen auch in zahlreichen Regionen Bayerns gute Stromerträge erwirtschaftet werden.
https://www.energieatlas.bayern.de/thema_wind/potenzial
Translation by me:
Since wind speeds increase with height, good power yields can be generated in numerous Bavarian regions due to todays modern, technologically advanced and higher wind energy plants.Some contributing factors are also that wind turbines are getting cheaper ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00810-z ) and in Germany there are subsidies for renewable energy sources, including wind energy ( there is the Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (renewable energy law) for that, e.g., https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/eeg_2014/__28.html , https://www.kfw.de/inlandsfoerderung/Unternehmen/Energie-Umwelt/Förderprodukte/Erneuerbare-Energien-Standard-(270)/?kfwmc=vt.sea.bing.SEA_VT_EEU_Windkraft_GC_Förderung.Windkraft-Foerderung_GC.windkraft förderung&wt_cc1=umwelt&wt_cc2=unt|energie-umwelt&wt_cc3=78753109004179_78752692575892_bp_m, there are various resources on that and I’m too lazy to list more of them now ).
Even though wind speeds are not that high in Bavaria, it is surely far from “barely worth it”. If you disagree, please provide reasons and according sources for your conclusion.
They could at least build solar energy. They don’t.
Of course they do:
I’m saying the south would need at least 5x (you can fight me on the exact number) the turbines of the North to get to 100%.
This is due to
- higher energy consumption due to energy intensive industry
- lower wind turbine output due to less wind
Therefore it’s not worth it to build a ton of turbines in the south. Sure, we could have more in those locations where it’s worth it (dark spots on the map).
I grew up in a village near the Alps, one of the few with it’s own citizen-financed wind turbine. My parents invested. They’re lucky to get their money back because the return is so bad. Once the state money ran out it barely paid for itself
Lots of coal burning leads to a powerful coal lobby leads to lots of coal burning, it’s the circle of life. All that’s missing is coal entering the food chain, IMO we should bring back coal butter, so the country can depend on coal even more and the coal lobby can make even more profits.
That was a horrible thing to read but a wonderful thing to know.
“Coal butter! Power yourself with the power of coal! Available in lignite and anthracite! And for those extremely demanding consumer: new charcoal butter! 100% natural sourced!”
(I’ll excuse myself now.)
The utter beauty of the whole thing is that with the overall efficiency of the process of making coal butter, we could justify lots and lots of more lignite strip mining to both make the actual coal butter and to power the butter making process. Coal lobbyists will love it!
The wiki entry literally states that it was discontinued due to its manufacturing inefficiencies.
That’s my point, it’s so inefficient that it’s the perfect excuse for strip mining vast areas in order to get the coal needed to produce it.
Thanks for the TIL about coal butter!
Damn all these German tears in the comments could be used for enough hydro electricity to actually make the German grid cleaner.
That wouldn’t be long lived, though, because when implemented in the current German fashion, they won’t be using salt water resistant equipment for cost cutting reasons and neglect all maintenance to cut even more costs. The tear powered hydroelectric plants will be rusted through and seized up in no time.
No it wouldn’t. It would never be built because the FDP would block it and Söder would refuse to have it built in Bavaria and Merz would say something about immigrants using up all our German salt on the tax payers dime all day long and Sahra Wagenknecht would mention that we wouldn’t need it if we were all good friends with Putin and the SPD would do nothing anyway and the AfD would blame the green party for not reactivating 45 year old reactors instead of building it,…
…different organisational levels of the Greens would endorse an oppose it at the same time, because it’s climate friendly but its building requires trimming a hedge of brambles on the neighbouring plot. A local citizens’ initiative against it would form due to widespread concerns about the plant’s working fluid containing the dangerous chemicals Dihydrogen Monoxide and Sodium Chloride, this initiative would run for the next council elections and win in a landslide. Then everyone would sue each other, and after about 5 to 10 years of legal battle, construction would be approved under strict additional conditions. By then, the cost would have doubled and the plant as planned and approved would be technologically obsolete and important components out of production, so there would be no other choice than repeating the entire planning and approval process all over.
Bitte, aufhören 😭
I’ve never seen this man in my entire life
- Germans
Meanwhile here next door in the Netherlands, we have wind farms and solar all over, and we sell our energy to the UK…meanwhile we have some of the highest consumer energy costs in the EU.
Consumers get screwed over here a lot.
Kind of selfish form you, aren’t you thinking about the shareholders?
I’m baaaad that way.
If only you swamp-Germans knew our mobile numbers! You could send us ll a Tkkie for the electric! 😝
What? On your “handy”? 😜
Since it says “right now”, I doubt this listing is qualified for discussing the general state of the energy transition in these countries.
Edit: I checked it. Spain’s gas share (as a random example) was significantly higher than 17% all over 2023 when summed up monthwise with wind contributing up to 30%.
Edit2: correct data for Germany for the same time mark: 52% fossil free (38% wind)
The reason Czechs use „mld.“ instead of „Mrd.“ like Germans for billions (miliardy/Milliarden) is because mrd means “fuck” (noun) in Czech.
Those poor Czechs just cannot afford vowels.
We totally can! Look, my address is
Petr Zhltal
Strmý vrch 14 (čtrnáct)
Čtvrť zmrdů
Krnov 5 (pět) – Srch
ČR
Meanwhile in Germany: +13 GW new renewables so far this year…
They’re Germans. Reluctant to change, stingy and stubborn. I love you Germany but everything isn’t about saving a buck by any means necessary.
Without Germans the world would still think solar energy was just for satellites.
The world have used solar energy for all kinds of shit since the 1800s.
Thanks to Russia
ehhh Germany is buying less gas from Russia since they invaded Ukraine, which means that gas is more expensive and renewable energy is likely a more viable option. In no way would I thank Russia for that.
we may all say a big “THANK YOU!” to Philipp Rösler (FDP) and Peter Altmaier (CDU) for both destroying the German PV-industry, establishing the “Solar-Ausbaudeckel” and the CDU/CSU as a whole to block and hinder wind power for over a decade very effectively.
And their very hard work to make Germany overly dependent on fossil fuels, to keep it that way and therefore blow ALL climate goals appears to be a success model, as the CDU/CSU are currently winning the public opinion with that intend, whilst those trying to follow the steps of our european neighors are slammed into the ground (just as our PV industry).
In other words: Germans don’t want clean air. They don’t want a future.
Hey, coal and gas were cheap in those days… - why thinking about the future?
And new Putin’s yachts were new and shiny
Climate impact by energy type in Europe can be monitored live on this site.
I’m Portuguese and as much as I’d love to run on 96% green energy I can’t believe it… Last time I checked (it was quite a while ago I’ll give them that) we imported a lot of nuclear energy from France. So unless France is 100% green and still has a green energy surplus (which it isn’t/doesn’t) we’re just transfering our carbon footprint…
We do have a lot of wind turbines so maybe we don’t import as much anymore but still…
Nuclear is green though, so France is a good place to be importing from. It also has the lowest mortality rate per kWh of all power sources, Chernobyl included.
Not saying nuclear isn’t green btw.
I, personally, am all for nuclear. However given the choice I’d rather my country invests in wind geothermal, solar and others. Nuclear can be a liability as we’ve seen in Ukraine.
Is Portugal a good place for wind energy? It seems like it should be with a long coastline that faces west from Europe.
I can’t wait for the day when places that have renewable energy advantages become net exporters, supplying renewable power to the rest of the world.
Yep! Maybe not the best overall in Europe, but we do have some strong winds and also very sunny days so solar energy is also easy to come by.
In one of our archipelagos (Azores) we also have geothermal power plants since we have active vulcanos there.
Aditionally I think there were some major developments in harnessing the ocean’s waves so on that front, I think we would absolutely crush it.
That’s awesome. I wonder if the mountains would also make pumped hydroelectric possible too, so Portugal could use a clean method of storing power for when the wind was calm and the sun wasn’t shining.
Hopefully one day :)
When it comes to saving the environment, and considering you’re in the EU, the liability of nuclear as seen in Ukraine is minimal
Novaya Kahovka power plant is very not nuclear tho
Spoiler alert
It is hydro power plant.
I think there’s a nuclear power plant in Ukraine a lot of people know about in Chernobyl or something maybe? I’m guessing that’s what they’re hinting at.
Well that was just an example anyways. I thought it was nuclear but I might be wrong, never really looked too much into it.
Any nuclear power plant can become a liability during war times though. Hopefully it never comes to that, but you never know…
I don’t know about the others but I don’t think I can really consider solar green, it needs a lot of silicon not only to make enough panels to have an impact but also needs the extraction of stuff for batteries too, still better than coal ig.
Oh no. It needs lots of sand.
What’s the problem with silicon?
I still think in the long run it’s worth it. Maybe not as good as wind I guess, but 100% better than gas/oil/coal etc…
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The biggest chunk of our yearly consumption is still gas. And France’s carbon intensity is much lower than ours still (one of the lowest in Europe), so any energy we’re importing from them is actually lowering our CO2 average.
Meanwhile in my country, renewable energy sources are frowned upon and the government just announced plans to build 3 new coal powerplants.
That’s because Europe is buying up all the cheaper natural gas.
We’re just pushing the pollution down the chain.
The cheapest gas right now is Russian gas, and Europe is buying very little of that.
Not exactly. For Sechin to make up for those profits he would have stolen if those profits existed he hiked up gas price domestically. New yacht won’t buy itself.
Also fucking lukoil that still is not sanctioned keeps selling oil, petrol and gas in Europe.
RIP air quality
Are you in Europe? Wtf Isn’t it a EU wide goal to phase coal out by 2030 or something?
Is it? Coal is rampant in Eastern Europe.
I think Romania is the only outlier, and that’s only because their former dictator forced them to build hydro and nuclear (ironically).
In Portugal the last coal plant closed maybe a year or so ago. Apparently some countries will take longer but, here’s a link https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/
But yeah, Poland, turkey and some balkans don’t have much planned…
