Comment by tuukkah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuukkah | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We are not choosing between nuclear and fossils - we have chosen renewables.

Clarification: I'm not German. I'm talking globally and long term. What's happening right now in Germany is just a blip. The big picture:

> Clean power growth is likely to exceed electricity demand growth in 2023; this would be the first year for this to happen outside of a recession. With average growth in electricity demand and clean power, we forecast that 2023 will see a small fall in fossil generation (-47 TWh, -0.3%), with bigger falls in subsequent years as wind and solar grow further. That would mean 2022 hit “peak” emissions. A new era of falling power sector emissions is close.

https://ember-climate.org/insights/research/global-electrici...

You chose to shut down perfectly working nuclear reactors and keep burning coal. You COULD and SHOULD have replaced coal with nuclear.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2022/10/28/the-iron...

You thought you chose renewables. You actually chose coal, LNG, and buying power from France.

Germany exports more power than it imports. And France is only a part of the imports, with 2022 being much lower due to their issues with the nuclear power plants.

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/03...

Large power exports come necessarily from using non-dispatchable forms of power generation like solar and wind. Other people who can turn off their power plants will buy yours rather than burning their own resources. In other words, the amount of power a nation exports means very little about how you keep the lights on.

So you can import it at winter for much more $$$ than you sold it at summer.

We have not chosen renewables: if you compute how much oil for transport, coal for Chinese electricity, etc. you need to produce solar panels, as well as massive mining impacts, you realise that the new renewables (solar and wind, not hydro) are a complete dead end with current technology. A renewables world made only with renewable end-to-end production looks more like the year 1800 than any Green knows or would be prepared to admit.

Still coal fired plants are supposed to run until 2038

Reply on news.ycombinator.com