Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time

Why aside? Germany had to burn gas and coal to compensate for the nuclear reactors they shut down, (and to import electricity from France which didn't shut down the reactors). Germany could've weathered the transition much better, and suffered without Russian gas much less had they not shut down their reactors.

Something is wrong with Germany. Go to Our World InData's Electricity Production per Capita page and have a look at Germany, Vietnam, and say Israel.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge...

We have right to roam in nature here, which is quite rare across the world (and even compared to the few other countries that have something similar, the Swedish variant is stronger). I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Ummm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

At least according to the list, Americans work ten weeks more a year than their German counterpart.

I would bet everything that life, at least right now, is comfy. But I don't see it as remotely sustainable.

But those headlines are about the step where you find out who won these auctions because that's when that magic price number is known, wind power for £68.35 per MWh or whatever.

Going from the fun headline to actual contract signing in which there's a legal promise to actually try to make electricity and get paid, takes several months. After they've signed they begin the actual work, which still includes planning not just the mechanical aspects.

Just building a solar farm might take 12 months, and wind farms are often slower.

AR6 took place in 2024, you'd have read headlines back then about some excellent solar farms, getting paid about £50 per MWh. First, those are 2012 prices, for comparison reasons they choose a base year and then calculate inflation adjusted pricing in reality but I bet that £50 figure was what you saw in a headline, of course the solar farm didn't exist in 2012, so £50 per MWh was never the real price.

More importantly though, those solar farms weren't built in 2024. The plan when the bids went in, said 2026/27 for some and 2027/28 for the majority. A few of those AR6 solar farms (by no means the majority) were live in time for the July sunshine, in 2026. But you've already read headlines about AR7, and like I said maybe even AR8.

A big boost in practice is home install. A big business can take six years to do contract paperwork, get something signed off, build it and then commission it. A home owner is angry after six weeks without work done. Where are my fucking panels? You were going to install solar panels, make it happen! So lots of individuals and small businesses which own a building with a roof installed a few panels, they might add up to only 5kW each but if a million people do that it's 5GW of nameplate electricity generation, a sizeable fraction of UK usage for several hours per day.

Oh my, where ever else will we be able to find hydrogen, the (checks notes) tenth most common element on our planet ?

No, there's actually plenty of hydrogen, what people who say they "need" methane to make hydrogen actually mean is that they don't want to pay what this really costs.

For the remainder, the wage costs - more specifically - the overhead costs are the true killer. If you want to pay someone 80k a year in Germany, the actual costs are closer to 100k a year in purely salary overhead costs, not to mention the other bureaucratic overhead in Germany

There are thousands of such companies in Germany, called Energy-Intensive Industries.

Think chemicals, mining, materials, paper pulp, glass, ceramics etc.

Stats available here: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-Unternehmen/Indus... (unfortunately only available in German)

Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.

It's a political choice by our own politicians.

Are you sure? Jobs are no longer in industrial companies, and that isn't where the growth is. However when I look at the numbers I see heavy industry output is still growing.

Plants don't cry out for days when their children are taken away from them. Plants don't remember your face, come up to you and want attention. Plants don't scream when they are killed (no matter what some edgy research shows).

Or to put it more simply, would you feel bad pulling a plant out the ground? I would imagine probably not. Would you feel bad pulling the lever and watching as a pig is lowered into a gas chamber? Or while slitting a cow's throat? I would imagine probably yes (hence why slaughterhouse employees have so many mental health issues and there is such high turnover).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

not accusing, but in case any commenter is going down a slippery slope: what produces the most harm? people! why dont we just kill ourselves instead of cutting out beef? vegetarian options have never been more accessible, and increasingly so

its certainly regional and cultural in the US. there are many towns and cities i visit where its quite difficult to find menu items without meat. i expect it will change over time

>IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.

They said cheese not milk. Note that it takes more than 1 unit of milk to produce 1 unit of cheese. From this source I found, they estimate ~10 input units of milk per output unit of cheese [1].

Assuming both of these are true, and assuming that the cheese making process produces no carbon, then a chicken filet would have the same carbon impact as .8oz of cheese or roughly a single slice of cheese.

The cheese making process does produce carbon (e.g. heating the milk) but it also produces whey as a valuable byproduct.

[1] https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_e/E216/

Why do you think outside of the coffee shops of the large metropolises people aren't

Rather than saying "hey shift your car to electric as its cheaper and more powerful and less smoke in your neighbourhood", it's "you need to stop consuming energy"

Rather than saying "support that local solar plant rather than growing ethanol", it's "stop eating meat otherwise you kill the planet"

Rather than saying "hey maybe we should get rid of oil so we're not reliant on fragile international supply chains, here's how we can make fertiliser from thin air" it's "you shouldn't drink milk"

I live close to a large meat processing facility, and it appears to be quite an energy intensive operation from the outside. Never been inside though, so I can't say for sure. But transporting live cattle, feed, water, slaughter, freeze, freeze+transport all might be pretty carbon heavy.

The problem is we have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not too much of various assorted carbon-based compounds on the planet.

It would be bad enough with all the burping and farting but at least we would not destroy the rain forest so we could produce more soy for fodder

I've seen plans to run an engine in your furnace, thus creating both electric (at 20-30%, and capturing the rest as heat to the house. I've never seen this in the real world and experts who have looked as those systems said they won't enter a building that has one using that design. (it is possible to make a design they would trust, but they haven't seen any)

North Sea oil and gas are long past its prime, Norwegian supply is already nearly as expensive as LNG shipped from half the world away. The ideal gas station is Siberia, but that is what it is currently.

So, dunno, what's left, the Arctic? Frack the polar bears?

People always blame German politics, but German management is as responsible if not more responsible for the decline. They simply made bad management decisions for decades and they didn't see the future coming.

Secondly, energy != electricity. Coal is mostly used for central heating (a plant heats water, water is then transported to a whole neighborhood). Electricity is sometimes also produced, but usually not the primary reason for the plant to exist in the first place. Nuclear plants are usually used for generating electricity (in Germany). Germanys carbon problem is the heating infrastructure being dependant on fossil fuels (mostly gas), but it has no lack of electricity sources.

Thanks for stating your openmindedness re/ nuclear discussion, BTW, IME statements like this can really lift the whole level of discourse.

It raised some interesting questions about priorities.

Schröder was talking about it in 2000:

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/15/johnhooper

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder#Domestic_poli...

Oh, and he was appointed to Gazprom (and other Russian energy companies) after leaving politics:

* https://www.dw.com/en/former-chancellor-schröder-sworn-in-at...

(He did encourage renewables as well.)

> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.

The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.

> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.

It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).

See perhaps:

> […] Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.

* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...

Very few things in the power grid has insurance against major accidents. It is even doubtful for example if a forest fires caused by transmission lines will be repaid in full by the insurance of the power company, and to the degree that will pay all costs to property and land owners

Energie-Wende: Wachstum und Wohlstand ohne Erdöl und Uran [Energy transition: growth and prosperity without petroleum and uranium]

https://web.archive.org/web/20160914043645/http://www2.hu-be...

I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.