This conveniently leaves out that the former & regional governments have been intentionally sabotaging wind and solar energy installations (and energy transfer capacity) on a massive scale in the last 15+ years.
The implication you’re making here is that the actual reason coal mines are being reopened is due to sabotage of wind and solar energy installations. Then you proceed to argue the following:
In the early 2000 they were on a good track to replace a large percentage of the coal electricity production with solar and wind energy, but then the new conservative government under Merkel took power and deliberately killed that off to please their big business energy producers.
And this is where I’m asking you to provide hard numbers for the claim that the plans from 2000, that Merkel derailed, would actually produce sustainable renewable infrastructure that would replace large percentage of fossils. I’m not sure why you keep weaseling here instead of actually substantiating your claims.
So despite yearly investments being halved after 2011, the percentage of renewable electricity production in Germany has reached more than 50%, replacing hard-coal and nuclear electricity production almost completely.
The second chart says “public electricity generation”, what does that refer to and what percentage of total electricity consumption does that account for. For example, does this include the share of electricity used in the industry or is this public usage in homes?
Net generation of power plants for public power supply.
Says the description. As far as I can tell this means all electricity supplied to the public grid, which includes industry unless they have their own private power-plant.
Ok, so assuming that’s what that means as it stands, renewables produce around half of electricity. The jump to 65% seems pretty ambitious given prior data.
However, as I’ve already noted, the real question is around the lifecycle costs of the renewable infrastructure. For example, wind turbine blades need to be regularly replaced. This means blades have to be manufactured, and delivered, and installed, while old blades need to be disposed of. All of this requires energy to do. If you just externalize these costs that creates a skewed picture.
Yes indeed the overall picture isn’t so rosy, but I never claimed anything else. It could be much better though if the Merkel government had not sabotaged it in the last 15 years.
Also the live-cycle cost apply to any energy production facilities and are the main reason why Germany phased out nuclear, as the life-cycle (and political) costs were too high.
I think we’re in agreement that the picture could’ve been much better. I specifically said that this isn’t a competition between nuclear and renewables, but lack of interest on the part of the government to move off fossils.
And you’re right lifecycle costs apply to any energy production. However, nuclear fares much better than alternatives when it comes to lifetime costs.
Seems like the issue with nuclear is purely political, and this appears to be a problem across the western world with the exception of France.
One can argue that this is not necessarily true as there are some examples from France and Japan (and more recently China) that show it can be built in a non-cost prohibitive way. But actual more recent examples from Europe (including later French constructions) were all delayed 10+ years and cost triple or so of the original cost estimates. Again one can argue that this is mostly a result of state-capture and corruption, but it makes it very hard to justify new reactor constructions and I think that is a realistic assessment of how any such project would have gone (wrong) in Germany as well.
This goes back to inability to build any kind of alternative infrastructure be it nuclear or renewables. As you’ve repeatedly pointed out, Merkel’s government sabotaged renewable infrastructure investment as well. It’s possible things may change going forward out of necessity, but so far it seems like things are getting worse as opposed to better.
Let’s look back at what you actually said then:
The implication you’re making here is that the actual reason coal mines are being reopened is due to sabotage of wind and solar energy installations. Then you proceed to argue the following:
And this is where I’m asking you to provide hard numbers for the claim that the plans from 2000, that Merkel derailed, would actually produce sustainable renewable infrastructure that would replace large percentage of fossils. I’m not sure why you keep weaseling here instead of actually substantiating your claims.
Hard to find good English sources, but this presentation has a lot of graphs: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/news/2019/Stromerzeugung_2019_2.pdf (For example it shows that renewables have replaced hard-coal electricity production to a significant extend between 2002-2019)
They are mostly based on this interactive data platform, for example showing that the percentage of renewables has reached more than 50% of the total electricity production and keeps growing: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/renewable_share/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&share=ren_share&legendItems=10 (during the first weeks of 2023 it was almost 65% !)
This article outlines that investments into renewables plummeted after 2010/11 due to changes of the Merkel government: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/share-citizen-energy-projects-decline-funding-runs-out-and-big-investors-take-over
So despite yearly investments being halved after 2011, the percentage of renewable electricity production in Germany has reached more than 50%, replacing hard-coal and nuclear electricity production almost completely.
The second chart says “public electricity generation”, what does that refer to and what percentage of total electricity consumption does that account for. For example, does this include the share of electricity used in the industry or is this public usage in homes?
Says the description. As far as I can tell this means all electricity supplied to the public grid, which includes industry unless they have their own private power-plant.
Ok, so assuming that’s what that means as it stands, renewables produce around half of electricity. The jump to 65% seems pretty ambitious given prior data.
However, as I’ve already noted, the real question is around the lifecycle costs of the renewable infrastructure. For example, wind turbine blades need to be regularly replaced. This means blades have to be manufactured, and delivered, and installed, while old blades need to be disposed of. All of this requires energy to do. If you just externalize these costs that creates a skewed picture.
Furthermore, as you yourself have noted, electricity production is only a small portion of the overall picture. Renewable share in gross final energy consumption reached only 19.2% in 2021: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/renewable-energies/renewable-energies-in-figures
So, overall picture is far less impressive.
Yes indeed the overall picture isn’t so rosy, but I never claimed anything else. It could be much better though if the Merkel government had not sabotaged it in the last 15 years.
Also the live-cycle cost apply to any energy production facilities and are the main reason why Germany phased out nuclear, as the life-cycle (and political) costs were too high.
I think we’re in agreement that the picture could’ve been much better. I specifically said that this isn’t a competition between nuclear and renewables, but lack of interest on the part of the government to move off fossils.
And you’re right lifecycle costs apply to any energy production. However, nuclear fares much better than alternatives when it comes to lifetime costs.
Seems like the issue with nuclear is purely political, and this appears to be a problem across the western world with the exception of France.
See my comment further above. The problem is too high costs and construction delays.
One can argue that this is not necessarily true as there are some examples from France and Japan (and more recently China) that show it can be built in a non-cost prohibitive way. But actual more recent examples from Europe (including later French constructions) were all delayed 10+ years and cost triple or so of the original cost estimates. Again one can argue that this is mostly a result of state-capture and corruption, but it makes it very hard to justify new reactor constructions and I think that is a realistic assessment of how any such project would have gone (wrong) in Germany as well.
This goes back to inability to build any kind of alternative infrastructure be it nuclear or renewables. As you’ve repeatedly pointed out, Merkel’s government sabotaged renewable infrastructure investment as well. It’s possible things may change going forward out of necessity, but so far it seems like things are getting worse as opposed to better.