I do agree though, that even just having 'normal' energy prices for a developed nation makes it very hard to be an industrial powerhouse.
IMO the only way forward is for Germany to build more energy infrastructure. Most importantly, we need more solar wind and batteries, but we also need upgrades to gas peaker plants, and more long-distance HVDC connections to neighbouring countries to better smooth out variations in weather that are inherent to intermittent renewables.
Doubling down on fossil fuels won't bring down Germany's energy costs.
Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
It'd be even worse if the nukes would be shut down due to lack of cooling water.
> Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet.
Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and has continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out.
I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal.
> Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world.
Germany's grid is on average cleaner than the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia's grids. It's only dirty by western european standards, not by the standards of developed countries. Certainly not by world standards.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly
Germany is also on a better decarbonization trajectory than any of those countries other than Australia.
> And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.
Those 15 NPPs were not putting out anywhere near your claimed number.
July 2017: 5.3 TWh
July 2018: 6.1 TWh
Julu 2019: 5.4 TWh
July 2020: 4.2 TWh
July 2021: 5.5 TWh
July 2022: 2.9 TWh
Calculated using API data from https://www.energy-charts.info which gives the electricity mix on any given time or day as it evolves every 15 minute interval.
> Also, your claims about the German grid are non-sense. Germany produces several times as much CO2 per watt generated as the US and about 7x more CO2 per watt as France.
I never said anything about France. It does indeed have way cleaner electricity than Germany. The USA does not have cleaner electricity than Germany anymore though according to the source I linked you. Do you have another source you'd like to share?
Some of them are worth keeping but also some of them actually should go. Close to where I used to live in Düsseldorf there was a plastic bottle factory that employed 500 some people and it only continued to be open because it was apparently impossible to let anyone go, the entire thing was long uneconomic.
Mind you even here in Germany our economy is 70% services, the bulk of the employment happens in the Mittelstand. The number of highly energy intensive companies is quite small. Reducing energy prices is good for consumers but more important are structural reforms. We have to good an education and too high a wage level to keep people working in plastic bottle factories. It actually made sense that some of those jobs left the US 30 years ago.