Germany To Phase Out Coal Use By 2038, Says Report (abs-cbn.com) 301
Germany has laid out a $91 billion plan to phase out its use of coal by 2038, a government-appointed commission said Saturday. "Under the plan, half of the up to $91 billion will go to the regions shuttering plants in the west and east of the country, while the other half will be spent on preventing electricity prices from rising," ABS-CBN News reports. From the report: The commission agreed to the deadline after months of bitter wrangling as pressure mounts on Europe's top economy to step up its commitment to battling climate change. The panel, consisting of politicians, climate experts, unions and industry figures from coal regions, announced the deal after a final marathon session ended on Saturday morning. The commission's findings will now be passed on to the government, which is expected -- barring a surprise -- to follow the recommendations of the panel it set up. The plan will be discussed at a meeting between Chancellor Angela Merkel, Finance Minister Scholz and regional leaders on Thursday, national news agency DPA said.
Several plants using lignite or brown coal, which is more polluting than black coal, would be closed by 2022. Other plants will follow until 2030, when only 17 gigawatts of Germany's electricity will be supplied by coal, compared to today's 45 gigawatts. The last plant will close in 2038 at the latest, the commission said, but did not rule out moving this date forward to 2035 if conditions permit. The affected regions, where tens of thousands of jobs directly or indirectly linked to brown- and black-coal energy production, will receive 40 billion euros as compensation over the next two decades. Two billion euros will also be spent each year over the same period to stop customers from facing rising electricity prices.
Several plants using lignite or brown coal, which is more polluting than black coal, would be closed by 2022. Other plants will follow until 2030, when only 17 gigawatts of Germany's electricity will be supplied by coal, compared to today's 45 gigawatts. The last plant will close in 2038 at the latest, the commission said, but did not rule out moving this date forward to 2035 if conditions permit. The affected regions, where tens of thousands of jobs directly or indirectly linked to brown- and black-coal energy production, will receive 40 billion euros as compensation over the next two decades. Two billion euros will also be spent each year over the same period to stop customers from facing rising electricity prices.
Disaster in the making (Score:3)
The great Chinese Climate Change Hoax claims yet another victim.
Those poor German fools are going to clean up their environment, make more livable cities, have cleaner water and less smog and create tens of thousands of new jobs. All for nothing.
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Meanwhile, in the real world, Germany is tearing down villages and forests in order to expand their mines. Lignite coal is the largest power source in Germany.
Closedown is supposed to be in 2022. So they need three years worth of coal. And you could tell us which village exactly is being torn down right now. For example, Elsdorf, Esch, Angelsdorf, Niederzier and all the villages around Hambach Forest seem to be quite safe to me.
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The only thing holding up nuclear energy is a better reactor design, rather than pulling down lots of energy in a short time from the fuel, pulling down a much smaller amount of energy over a much longer time, many reactors fuelled once, rather than a high output unstable reactor needing to be constantly refuelled. Still more work to be done on vertical axis wind turbines, all it needs is a smarter design to really take off and not that hard to do.
Coal is fucked and oil will follow, natural gas will last mu
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Hold on. In 2011, Germany's citizens voted to eliminate all nuclear power by 2022. This makes it highly unlikely they will meet any clean energy goal without nuclear.
I predict Germany will just end up buying power from neighboring France who have such an embarrassing large surplus of nuclear energy that they are in an economic crisis over plants that can't be funded due to the glut.
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At least the Germans are setting a date that is realistic, 2038. An not some "feel good" date of 12 years as stated by some newly elected dingbat. Of course by setting that far out most of the politicians set this goal will be long retired or dead.
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The original plan was 2030 ... but it was never put into "law" ... and for some reason we slowed down, well did not expand as fast as "assumed/planned" in renewables last decade.
And this "new 2038 thing" is not a law either ... it is just a result of many talks, so I doubt there ever will be an
"anti coal law".
Now we have an agreed plan, between "the state" the "federal states" and "the industry" and hopefully the society. Unfortunately for people living from mining it is still hard to sell ...
Problem is: th
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If you are really look here [eesi.org] or or maybe here. [nrdc.org]
If reading information-dense articles are too much for you here is one money-quote pulled from the second link above:
All told, nearly 1 million Americans are working near- or full-time in the energy efficiency, solar, wind, and alternative vehicles sectors. This is almost five times the current employment in the fossil fuel electric industry, which includes coal, gas, and oil workers.
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You're telling him that it's actually happening, but not why it's happening.
At a guess: wind and solar being more diffuse energy sources end up being more labor intensive to set-up and manage.
Alternately, it could be a transient phenomena, a sign that the industry isn't mature yet.
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At a guess: wind and solar being more diffuse energy sources end up being more labor intensive to set-up and manage. ...
At a guess: all the coal plants are built 30 or 50 or 80 years ago and don't need any "set up"
Prices (Score:2)
while the other half will be spent on preventing electricity prices from rising
If you are spending money to prevent prices from rising, you need to include that money in the price you are trying to lower.
You can hide the true price of something by subsidizing it so that buyers see a lower price, but that does not mean you are actually lowering the price. You are just obscuring that true cost.
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You are just obscuring that true cost.
And what is your point?
My power comes out of the plug in the corner of my room ... the price I pay for it matters. Well, not for me, but for some people.
Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:4, Insightful)
Although getting rid of coal is a nice effort from the standpoint of pollution, if you are truly serious about climate change, why is Germany getting rid of THIER use of coal.
I mean, whatever coal fired power plants they already have probably have really strict emission control equipment, right?
Meanwhile, what if you took 98 *billion* dollars and used that money all to improve the electrical power grid in India. From solar projects to simply putting CO2 and emission scrubbers on coal plants they have, would that not be a vastly more efficient use of money?
The whole point of the Paris accord was to shift money from rich to poor nations anyway. So why not make that shift a lot more direct, and actually focused on improving the worst emissions?
As it is the Germany effort just looks like virtue signaling that will have almost no real impact on worldwide CO2 levels.
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Germany's coal plants are among the dirtiest in Europe.
Nonsense. The coal is low quality, the coal plants are top notch. You may not realise that, but the more efficient a coal plant is, the less pollution from incompletely burnt coal it will produce. Which means the plant makes more money by being less pollutant.
Re:Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:5, Informative)
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You are looking at a very small part of the problem. Increasing emissions in any combustion cycle increases NOx (higher combustion temperatures). Once you get beyond that, this is coal we are talking about, so the “trace elements” have to be dealt with.
About the only way to have “clean coal” is to gasify it, which still isn’t that clean (even if you are capturing the CO2). At least then most of the waste products can be used for something.
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Re:Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:5, Insightful)
Most German coal is lignite, which is filthy low-grade crap that generates even more CO2 per KwHr than bituminous coal.
If the Germans had any sense they would have kept their nukes running and shutdown these coal plants long ago. I can understand not building new nukes, but shutting down perfectly good reactors that were humming along, producing clean power at very low cost, made no sense.
Re:Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Germans had any sense they would have kept their nukes running and shutdown these coal plants long ago.
As an American living in Germany, I never understood that decision either. It was definitely not based on sense at all . . . it was more like fear, emotion and almost religious in nature. The Chernobyl experience also most certainly played a role. It was most certainly not based on logic or science.
I've always been curious if the crew of Markus Wolf - "The Man Without a Face" - had their fingers in this. The East German Stasi tried to stir up trouble and discontent in West Germany. Much like what the Russians are very successfully doing in the US right now.
Re:Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine what life would be like today if the first two major airline crashes had caused us to stop pursuing aviation.
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There are a lot more jobs in coal mining than in the nuclear industry. Closing open-pit lignite mines faces strong opposition from unions and local politicians.
The decision to close down nuclear power plants, while keeping coal plants running doesn't make sense from the perspective of helping the environment. But it makes a lot of sense from a political perspective.
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As an American living in Germany, I never understood that decision either. It was definitely not based on sense at all
Probably you do not live in Germany long enough?
The population fought against nuclear power against the "establishment" since the mid 1960s. FINALLY 1998 the government was Greens and SPD and promptly they FINALLY abandoned nuclear power. Unfortunately their reign only lasted close to 10 years and Merkel prolonged the run time of nuclear plants. Until Fukushima, when she reverted their posit
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We don't even have a storages facility for all the spent fuel. The state with the most nukes strictly refuses to have a storage facility on their soil and the temporary storage is in a horrible state leaking brine.
Besides, the good reactors were the first ones to shut down because their operators considered them too expensive to run. The only low cost nukes were the shitty ones.
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Test done every year past 25 years?
30 years?
Not many nations had the skills needed to do reactor pressure vessel welding.
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Most German coal is lignite, which is filthy low-grade crap that generates even more CO2 per KwHr than bituminous coal.
Wrong.
Nether is lignite 50% of our coal based power production, or "most" as you claim, nor does it produce more CO2.
CO2 is produced from burning carbon, the fucking power plant can not suddenly produce more CO2 just because the carbon comes from a different source. I really wonder how stupid people are getting in our times.
Re:Couldn't that money be better spent (Score:5, Informative)
There is no such thing as "low cost" nuclear power, derp. You're leaving the investment off the balance sheet dishonestly.
The nuke plants were already built and running. So the capital investment was a sunk cost, and irrelevant to the cost of ongoing operations.
Nukes are very expensive to build, but dirt cheap to operate.
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Southern California Edison disagrees with you [wikipedia.org].
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Southern California Edison learned a few valuable lessons with this failure, two of which were:
1. Don't employ muppets who lie about basic maintenance.
2. Always verify your supply chain.
"Don't build a nuclear power plant" is not one of them, despite it being shouted by a small, but quite vocal, misinformed minority.
What will they do when subsidies run out (Score:3)
If $90B is required to keep renewables cheaper than other options, what will happen at the end of that? $90B in taxpayer subsidized energy buys a lot of nuclear plants which they also shut down.
Energy in Germany (with all the subsidies) now costs over 30c/kWh while my small town supplier (primarily hydro/nuclear energy sourced) costs me 3c/kWh (without subsidies).
On the other hand, all this investment in renewables hasn't made nearly any dent in greenhouse gas emissions within Germany over the last 3 decades.
Re:What will they do when subsidies run out (Score:5, Informative)
Annual German carbon dioxide emission per capita went from 12.93 tonnes in 1995 to 8.88 in 2016. That is a reduction of 32% (Wikipedia [wikipedia.org])
Population increased from 77.619 million to 82.5 million during that time, so the relative total reduction is a bit less.
Still I wouldn't call that "hasn't made nearly any dent". Still, in the face of global warming, more effort is required; and keeping some nuclear reactors running a bit longer to shut down lignite power plants a bit earlier would have helped. But doing so would probably have been hard given the political climate - there seems to be a strong anti-nuclear sentiment among the population; on the other hand opposition to open-pit mining of lignite is counterbalanced by the jobs it creates, and thus support from unions and local politicians.
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Greenhouse gas emissions per capita has gone down significantly in the US as well, 40% per capita in the US and much more across the UK as well as the rest of the EU. Compared to the sources of energy and overall energy cost, the promised 'cheap and emission-free' solar/wind don't seem to be coming, we're just shifting the emissions.
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In the timeframe used above ("3 decades"), 1995 to 2016, the US reduced their carbon-dioxide emissions by 22% (same source as used before for Germany).
While in general, the US still has a long way to go, there is one quite impressive aspect: The reversal of the decline of rail freight following the deregulation in 1980 (through AFAIK in recent years it started to decline a bit again). In Germany, rail freight market share in 2015 by tonnes-kilometers is just 18 %. For the US, recent data seems hard to find;
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Exports become more expensive.
A factory has to waste more of its profits on buying energy.
Thats money lost to investment, upgrades, jobs and production.
All to pay for virtue signalling power generation.
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Energy prices in producing anything in Germany are completely irrelevant.
Call me when they have tripled or increased ten fold, then my bread from my bakery will cost 10cent more, that is really a concern for me ....
Worse would be beer ... I really dread the moment the beer in the pub costs 10 cent or 50 cents more ... oh the horrors!!!
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Except for the people who have to save up and spend their currency to buy more expensive German goods and services.
All that cost of wind and solar power is making German exports cost more.
Germany exporters have to pay "money" for the energy they use every night and day to run their production lines.
A cost that is passed on with the "cost" of the product that is sold.
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Which part of "anything germany produces" has costs to produce and "the energy costs are below 1%" of the costs don't you grasp?
He?
Energy costs are completely irrelevant for stuff we export. They are "a little bit relevant" for a bakery, or a "brick manufacture". Bit for nothing else, except transportation.
We don't compete on price. We never did. We compete on quality, dumbass.
If energy prices increase ten fold, a product we export would increase in 9% of price ... and you can be sure even in socialist Germ
Way too late (Score:2)
Re:Way too late (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany is increasing its consumption of imported natural gas, mostly from Russia. The Nord Stream II pipeline is under construction at the moment, to bypass/supplement the trans-Ukranian pipeline currently feeding Western Europe as well as increasing supply capacity generally by about 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year. It's pretty certain that capacity will find eager customers in various European countries that are nominally pro-renewable but don't want to freeze to death in the dark.
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Germany generally does not heat with electricity hence the one has nothing to do with the other. The increased gas supply is a replacement for heating oil.
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Britain has vastly reduced its dependence on coal-burning to produce electricity by building out a lot of combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) generators which burn gas instead. Over the next couple of decades Germany's coal-fired power plants will be mostly replaced by similar CCGT plants which will continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. A quick Google suggests Germany already produces over 10% of its electricity from natural gas (83 TWh in 2018 from one source). Of course it also burns a lot of gas for do
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Highly unlikely. The most modern German combined cycle gas power plant was essentially closed a few years ago (the power plant operator wanted to shut it down completely because it is non competitive with renewables, but the network operator forced them to keep it running on standby as a reserve power plant for now). Generally the percentage of natural gas usage for electricity production has not changed much for the last 15 years varying between 10 and 15 percent without any clear tendency up or down.
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Over the next couple of decades Germany's coal-fired power plants will be mostly replaced by similar CCGT plants which will continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. ...
No it wont. Wind and Solar is cheaper
Of course it also burns a lot of gas for domestic and industrial heating too since electricity is too expensive to use for home heating in Germany at nearly 30 Eu cents/kWh. ... why would anyone rebuild his house and remove the perfect working gas heating with electric heat
Idiots idiots idiots everywhere
Re:Way too late (Score:5, Informative)
Emissions-wise, natural gas (0.20 g CO2 per Wh) is a much better energy source than coal (0.34 to 0.41 g CO2 per Wh). Also, gas power plants can be adjusted very quickly, making them particularly suitable to balance the varying output from wind and solar energy (both of which Germany has a lot of).
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Yeah, yawn ... and what is your message?
The balancing plants we already have ...
Changing relatively quick load adjusting coal plants to gas plants makes no sense. Building a new gas plant takes 10 years. An existing coal plant can not be converted easily (easy as in quick and cheap).
As coal is only about 30% - 40% of Germany's energy production, changing that to gas, or even combined cycle gas has only a minimal effect.
Just Coincidence? (Score:2)
Just in time for 32 bit Unix time to fail!
Meh (Score:2)
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Nope.
Germany phases out nuclear. Coal is next.
Renewables are at 40% now, growing every year.
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Reality is different from the delusional German fanboys.
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Considering that both nuclear and oil have lower carbon-dioxide emissions per given amount of energy produced than coal, how would that do "nothing to solve the underlying issues"?
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Germany exports more energy, than it imports. In 2018 the difference was about 50 Terawatthours.
In 2018 Germany exported a total of 70 TWh (mainly to the Netherlands: 19 TWh), while France exported about 68 TWh (in near equal parts to all neighbouring countries, 15 TWh to Spain)
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Germany is a mess.
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It is a myth that Germany relies on nuclear power from French. In 2018, Germany net-exported 50 TWh of electricity. In fact, is quite the opposite as France regularly has to import electricity when nuclear plants are offline for various reasons.
Three card monte with public money (Score:2)
So $90B is going to be spent here, with a good portion of that subsidizing renewable electricity prices.
So Germans won't be paying more in electricity, but they will in taxes.
That's just hiding the costs somewhere else.
Don't want dirty coal? OK. Unfortunately, renewable energy is expensive. Solar also works poorly in snowy, rainy, and cold Germany.
So do nuclear -- which is clean -- but they won't do it because they're phobic. Or hydro, but nobody seems to like hydro anymore.
So, yes, time to just buy it
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Or hydro, but nobody seems to like hydro anymore.
Unfortunately, further potential for hydroelectric energy in Germany is small. Places suitable for large-scale generation are already in use. Many places suitable for small-scale generation, such as former mills have already been reactivated (hydro power in Germany went from 17.4 GWh in 1990 to 19.3 in 2015). There is a little bit of further potential, which can and should be used, but looking at the big picture further hydroelectric power can only be a tiny part of the German energy supply.
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Pumped hydro does not produce power. ...
It costs power
It is only used for load balancing ... and could be used as large scale storage.
And no: the easy to dam regions are not all in use. There are thousands left. But as you see above: pumped storage traditionally only is used for load balancing ... and you do not need much of that.
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When the water flows back down from the dam power is produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
ie the "stored water is released through turbines to produce electric power" part.
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Solar also works poorly in snowy, rainy, and cold Germany.
I took the liberty to highlight, aka mark, two of your mistakes.
Ever heard about global warming?
Germany is not snowy since minimum 30 years, and not cold either ... idiot.
Only part of the costs have been calculated (Score:2)
The determination of the real costs is delayed till 2023. In the mean time they pretend to believe in fairy tales, they don't really ... but politics.
The market will not put down the necessary amount of new gas plant without either guaranteed consumption or being paid to keep it mothballed until the next dunkelflaute. Germany needs a massive expansion of its subsidized reserve capacity and they are unwilling to commit to doing so for now.
Report is here by the way :
http://docs.dpaq.de/14440-1901... [docs.dpaq.de]
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You are an idiot.
The actually existing reserve capacity in Germany is FAR OVER 100% of what er produce. And if you did not get it so far, we export 50% of all power we produce.
How dumb are you after getting corrected 100 times during the last 5 years about your misconceptions?
expansion of its subsidized reserve capacity
Why the fuck would reserve power be subsidized by anyone/anything? The cost of every fucking kW/h people are buying already includes the cost for reserve power.
You have no fucking clue how t
Intentions for now. (Score:2)
Whether this plan will come into effect remains to be seen.
But if they displace coal generated electricity by gas plants, i won't be impressed. Especially if they choose faster plants over combined cycle (they pollute less than a combination of classical gas + wind turbines but i do not expect the greens to accept that easily). They will still emit much more greenhouse gases per capita than the French.
If i was a betting person i would put money on gas greenwashed by subsidized wind and solar.
The Germans (An
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Changes to power prices every day and night put pressure on the ability to export and keep jobs in Germany.
Gas plants beed imported gas, a product Germany has to pay for to be imported.
Subsidized wind and solar that works when the sun is out and wind is blowing don't give that low 24/7 power price needed.
As new power prices go up in Germany, Germany will have to move well paid jobs to other nations that have low cost power.
Who wants to
Germany didn't commit to this plan (Score:3)
More fake news on Slashdot
Germany didn't commit to this plan, the article says it's a recommendation.
"BERLIN - Germany SHOULD stop using coal for electricity production by 2038, a government-appointed commission said Saturday, laying out an 80-billion euro roadmap to phase out the polluting fuel."
"Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier said the government would "carefully and constructively examine" the recommendations, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported in its Sunday edition."
Elephants in the room: Steel and cement (Score:3)
Huge amounts of coal are used in Germany for making steel and cement. Not entirely sure how much - hard to google the numbers - but the steel companies in particular aren't going to like it. They rely on cheap electrical power to run arc furnaces as well as using roughly a quarter of the coal directly.
Oh Gee (Score:2)
Re:2038 lol (Score:5, Insightful)
The people making the decisions will be long gone by then, anything can happen.
If this was the US I'd agree with you since in the US you have a culture of electing Republicans who then tear down everything the Democrats did, them you elect the Democrats who tear down everything the Republicans did, then you elect the Republicans who tear down everything the Democrats did .... and repeat this ad infinitum in the expectation that eventually something will change for the better. However, this is German and here Liberals and conservatives can actually agree and work together on sensible policies. If the CDU (the conservatives) are willing to do this, the Social Democrats and Greens (aka. the evil liberals) will be even more willing to do it. Coal is a dead and uneconomical way of producing energy and it looks to me like the Germans have accepted that and moved on to technologies that have a future.
Europe rejects technology, uses more coal (Score:2, Interesting)
Coal is a dead and uneconomical way of producing energy and it looks to me like the Germans have accepted that and moved on to technologies that have a future.
Europe is forced to use more coal due to the *rejection* of technology. The hysterical and premature shutdown of nuclear power has forced the increased the use of coal. The US coal industry has been throw a lifeline not by Trump but by European greens. US coal exports to Europe have nearly doubled in recent years.
Another poster is correct. Europe is about talk, about virtue signaling gestures. The reality of their actions quite different.
Re:Europe rejects technology, uses more coal (Score:5, Informative)
Actual numbers on coal use for electricity production in Germany in TWh from 2008-2018
lignite: 150.6 145.6 145.9 150.1 160.7 160.9 155.8 154.5 149.5 148.4 146.0
coal: 124.6 107.9 117.0 112.4 116.4 127.3 118.6 117.7 112.2 93.6 83.0
I know it is an annoying inconvenience to look at actual data before having an opinion, for those who want to learn, the source is here:https://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/ (PDF below "STROMMIX")
Re:Europe rejects technology, uses more coal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Europe rejects technology, uses more coal (Score:4, Insightful)
It may not be a huge reduction, but a reduction of 46 TWh is in no way a little change.
Re:2038 lol (Score:5, Informative)
Nonsense. Germany closed it's last hard coal mine in 2015 and electricity production from hard coal declined from 127 TWh in 2013 to 83 TWth in 2018. Lignite is still surface-mined and power production is more stable but also on decline (161 TWh in 2015 to 146 TWh in 2018).Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen... [ag-energiebilanzen.de] With this just announced plan, it is clear it is on it's way out.
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Insults is all you have when confronted with actual numbers?
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Except Germany has already closed a lot of coal plants and they now have an agreement to close the rest.
The USA (we're number 1), OTOH, has promised to make coal great again (although they are running into a few economic barriers... it's just too expensive, and dirty.)
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If they ever open, they will be closed soon.
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BS. Germany is expanding coal mines and opening new ones.
Err you misspelled "Germany has just closed its last coal mine". I know man it's an easy mistake to make. The keys are right next to each other.
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The unix timestamp will roll over in 2038, too. The world ends anyway.
I'm using a Mac. Timestamps are seconds in double precision. That will last for a few million years.
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You may repeat that another thousand times - but it' not true.
Germany already had two days, where energy was totally renewable: in the morning of 1. January 2018 (a day full of wind with low energy demand) and from 13 to 15 o'clock on 1. May 2018 (a sunny day with lots of solar and wind-power). in those hours the full demand in Germany was totally covered by eco-friendly power. On average renewables cover about 40% of the demand.
What Germany has to do now, is to invest in supply lines, as most offshore win
Re:unpossible! (Score:4, Informative)
Expanding coal mines: https://qz.com/1389135/germany... [qz.com]
Complete idiot.
Re:unpossible! (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting: that article mentions the coal plant Datteln: in Datteln 3 blocks were already shutoff in 2014. Construction of the fourth block began in 2007 but was haltet by court in 2013. Since then block 4 in Datteln is the only coal-plant "under construction" in whole western Europe! Uniper (the owner of the plant) is fighting to complete it, and maybe will be able to complete that plant - but it will be the only one.
Meanwhile Uniper shut off other plants in Shamrock (2013), Knepper (2014), Veltheim (2015) and Irsching (2016). New plants are not in sight!
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Are you dislexic? I'm sorry for you.
Construction of the plant in Datteln started in 2007. In 2010 Germany decided to increase the amount of renewable energy to 80% till 2050, and for that goal the coal plants had to be gradually decomissioned. No new coal plants were build or planned since then. For the one plant "under construction", the owner Uniper had to fight a lot to be allowed to finish it. But it's not yet clear, if it will ever be finished.
So, don't spread fake news!
Re:unpossible! (Score:5, Informative)
So for "New Coal Stations" you cite an article that talks about (as the first example) a coal plant that's been in planning and construction for over a decade, and as of now (nearly 8 months after that article was written) still isn't commissioned and won't be for at least another year [sourcewatch.org]. Meanwhile, that project is to build a 4th unit to replace the three that were decommissioned years ago. Three out, one new. That's a net decrease innit?
The other examples are even dumber; A plant that was completed in 2013, one that was completed in 2015, and a plant that's been in construction since 2008 with no completion date yet.
I suppose the time travelers didn't succeed in telling the planners not to bother.
The article closes with a few paragraphs about a plant commissioned in 1996 that is nearing end of contract and presents it as an opportunity to replace it with something other than coal power.
So instead of "Germany is building new coal plants" your article just demonstrates that Germany has built coal plants - past tense - and that even some of those may never see operation. Forgive me if I'm not as convinced as you are on this point.
=Smidge=
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and don't forget that France's nuclear power also contributes to powering Germany.
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Nah. The plan is to burn Russian natural gas and use that to load-level wind or solar.
Which is going to be stupendously inefficient because gas turbines lose efficiency if you constantly spool them up and down like that.
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Seriously, it is like you guys live on a different planet.
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The agreement reached by the comission on phasing out coal yesterday mandates a gradual reduction in the use of coal. This might or might not save those forests that have become a symbol of the opposition to open-pit lignite mining: "Die Kommission hält es für wünschenswert, dass der Hambacher Forst erhalten bleibt."
While the compromise makes it likely that the coal under the forests won't be mined (the compromise mandates a gradual closing of plants and mines, but doesn't mandate, which mine
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Much like Germany's "clean diesel" claims, it is all a lie.
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Germany is a complete joke.
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This is Germany. I'm sure they can find something else to burn.
. . . that would cause a Soylent Green shortage.
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No matter the we have to use MORE fuel to produce the power for my car as long as it is not consumed where my car is.
It depends where you live [climatecentral.org]. In many places in the USA, you'd probably be "greener" by skipping the EV, buying the cheapest (ICE powered) economy car instead, and putting the money you saved towards photovoltaics on the roof of your home. The photovoltaics will also yield a better ROI than the EV.
Sad fact is, we've still got a way to go before EVs are anything more than a way for the rich (and rich-ish) to feel smug about their vehicle choice.
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Nope. Germany is opening new mines and power plants: http://airclim.org/acidnews/ge... [airclim.org]
However, the temperatures at which these power plants will operate make them unsuitable for use as pizza ovens.