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Comment by miguelazo | Hacker News Reader

As much as I support renewables, this is a very naive statement. Germany has been especially good at investing in renewables. They're not enough, especially not in the short or even medium term.

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Yes and no. Germany was on a great track until the early 10s. There solar and wind installations peaked and then steeply declined, as a consequence of the actions of the same government which had hastened the exit from nuclear. So yes, on the one side, Germany has a quite high quota in renewables in electricity production (>50%), but we fell quite behind what would have been possible and at the same time became more dependent on Russian gas. But there is hope for things to speed up again and make good progress in the next years.

> There solar and wind installations peaked and then steeply declined, as a consequence of the actions of the same government which had hastened the exit from nuclear.

The decline hasn't much to do with nuclear, but instead with the conservative government shafting the previous infrastructure projects and subsidies for wind and pv. It was so clearly visible in the stats that it got named after the politian responsible ("Altmaier-Knick").

https://www.spektrum.de/news/erneuerbare-energien-der-energi...

Yes, I didn't want to say it had something to do with nuclear, you are right about the Altmaier-Knick :). I just found it especially odd that the same government which had set the final end date for nuclear would slow down the one real replacement for it.

why is efficiency never discussed in public?

ref: Nega-Watts

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