- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
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The Energiewende seems to be progressing okay as far as I can tell: Solar rollout is exceeding expectations; wind is lagging but still proceeding.
They seem to be struggling more in a couple of other Wende: The Wärmewende hasn’t even gotten to the point where they ban fossil heating in new construction (we banned oil furnaces in existing buildings back in 2020 here in Norway).
And as for the Verkehrswende, the rule seems to be don’t mention the Verbrenner. They seem to be pretty good at pulling out any excuse not to drive less, or at the very least drive electric. Meanwhile with some tax breaks on EVs and high taxes on fossil cars Norway almost has no new fossil car sales; even the buses here in Oslo are almost all electric now.
I guess at least they’re paying us well for the fossil fuels we sell them. It’s starting to feel a bit like being a sober drug dealer.
6th highest emissions per kWh of electricity produced in EU (1): 380g per kWh.
US: 370g per kWh.
France: 56g per kWh.
Sweden: 40g per kWh.
Which shows how far along the EU is in terms of clean tech rollout. Also your numbers are from 2023. With more renewables, less coal and more gas German emissions should have fallen rather quickly.
Not great indeed. At least it’s getting better. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/38897/umfrage/co2-emissionsfaktor-fuer-den-strommix-in-deutschland-seit-1990/
Pro tip: These numbers are probably from Electricity Maps. That site is apparently run by nuclear fanboys who apply the very lowest gCO2e/kWh for nuclear that they could find. Otherwise, France (and Sweden) would have higher numbers somewhere in the 100-200 gCO2e/kWh range
2nd source (Eurostat and European Environment Agency) corroborates the first: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-intensity-of-1
This is really nice but Germany can’t sustain itself with just solar during most of the year without storage capacity.
They have plenty of wind energy too.
Yes I know. My point is just that we need to diversify. And most of Germany is still heated up during winter with oil, coal and gas, so no amount of electricity generation will change that until we upgrade heating systems.
We need a thousand solutions to fight climate change, so I always try to remind people that there’s no silver bullet. Solar, wind, nuclear, none of them will save the day by itself.
Waiting for the nuclear gang to drop in and tell us that all windmills and solar panels should be dismantled in favor of clean nuclear power plants and that Germany should never have abandoned the atom.
What if they advocate for nuclear power and say leave the solar panels up?
