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This is a myth. Germany exports a lot of power during all times of the year and never relies power from France. For example in 2018: Power exports: 81 TWh, Imports: 31 TWh. (source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...)

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... With this just announced plan, it is clear it is on it's way out.

CO2 is on a downward trend in Germany (at a much smaller per capita level than the US):
https://knoema.com/atlas/Germa...

For 2017 to 2018 CO2 emissions decreased by 6%. https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Electricity prices also didn't really increase it seems:
https://www.energy-charts.de/t...

Of course, residential electricity price are rather high.
https://www.statista.com/stati...

But the renewable surchagre is onlyl part of this:
https://1-stromvergleich.com/p...

It will go down in the future as it is mainly for old installations whose garantueed feed-in tariff will run out sooner or later while the cost of new wind and solar is much lower now. It is also important to understand that is was an intentional political decision to support renewables by a feed-in tariff which is paid directly from electricity prices. Coal and nuclear also got (and still get) a substantial amount subsidies but those are hidden in general taxes. Still, the high electricity price is a problem because it hits the poor, but one has to keep in mind that German households also consume much less electricity (due to better efficiency) than US households, so the overall energy bill is not as high as one might expect. Also the percentage of households who have trouble paying their electricity bills is still smaller than most of the rest of europe and certainly much smaller than in the US.

Finally, the exit from nuclear power had wide support in the German population:
https://www.unendlich-viel-ene...

Having said all this, shutting down nuclear plants first instead of coal plans was clearly a mistake.

No. Official numbers are here: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...
Germany has net exports of 55 TWh of electricity in 2017. It produced 216 TWh of electricity from renewables which is 33% of total production. Energiewende works fine. It is France which once in a while has to import from Germany because nuclear is not too reliable (e.g. in sommer when it gets to hot) or because they have to shut down a large part of the fleet for maintance.

You know you are speading nonsense because I corrected you many times. The official numbers can be found here: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Power production in Germany in TWh 1990,1995,2000-2017 (German source, replace , with .)
lignite: 170,9 142,6 148,3 154,8 158,0 158,2 158,0 154,1 151,1 155,1 150,6 145,6 145,9 150,1 160,7 160,9 155,8 154,5 149,5 147,5
coal: 140,8 147,1 143,1 138,4 134,6 146,5 140,8 134,1 137,9 142,0 124,6 107,9 117,0 112,4 116,4 127,3 118,6 117,7 112,2 92,6
nuclear 152,5 154,1 169,6 171,3 164,8 165,1 167,1 163,0 167,4 140,5 148,8 134,9 140,6 108,0 99,5 97,3 97,1 91,8 84,6 76,3
gas 35,9 41,1 49,2 55,5 56,3 62,9 63,0 72,7 75,3 78,1 89,1 80,9 89,3 86,1 76,4 67,5 61,1 62,0 81,3 86,5
renewables 19,7 25,1 37,9 38,9 46,1 46,1 57,2 63,1 72,4 89,1 94,1 95,7 105,2 123,6 143,3 152,5 162,5 188,6 189,8 218,3

So yes, nuclear has partially been replaced by renewables. Coals starts to be replaced and gas doesn't play the role you claim.

This wrong. Official numbers are here: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Power production from coal and lignite in Germany 1990,1995,2000-2017 in TWh:
lignite: 170.9 142.6 148.3 154.8 158.0 158.2 158.0 154.1 151.1 155.1 150.6 145.6 145.9 150.1 160.7 160.9 155.8 154.5 149.5 147.5
coal: 140.8 147.1 143.1 138.4 134.6 146.5 140.8 134.1 137.9 142.0 124.6 107.9 117.0 112.4 116.4 127.3 118.6 117.7 112.2 92.6

Electricity generation has steadily reduced CO2 emissions in Germany. This has been offset by an increase in other sectors (transportation mostly). Making an argument against wind/solar is completely misleading.

This is power generation from coal and lignite from 1990-2018 in TWh.
coal 140,8 147,1 143,1 138,4 134,6 146,5 140,8 134,1 137,9 142,0 124,6 107,9 117,0 112,4 116,4 127,3 118,6 117,7 112,2 92,6
lignite 170,9 142,6 148,3 154,8 158,0 158,2 158,0 154,1 151,1 155,1 150,6 145,6 145,9 150,1 160,7 160,9 155,8 154,5 149,5 147,5

Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

offshore wind produce 2.7% of all electricity in Germany in 2017. Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Offshore wind generated 2.7% of the power in Germany in 2017, but offshore wind is just starting now. All renewables were at 33.3%. Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Coal use is a historical low in Germany (electricity production from coal 2017: 92.6 TWh lignite 2017: 147.5 TWh, vs. ten years ago: coal 2007: 142.0 TWh, lignite 2007: 155.1 WTh, source https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...).

Also the grid is pretty advanced and stable in the world while 33% of electricity is already produced by renewables and there is no indication of severe problems (certainly there are challenges, but no challenges which seem too hard to solve).

It helps to look at actual numbers (energy production in TWh / per year):

coal: 143.1 (2000) -> 117.0 (2010) -> 92.6 (2017)
lignite: 148.3 (2000) -> 145.9 (2010) -> 147.5 (2017)

So coal is dropping and lignite is stable (there was some brief increase after Fukushima though). I agree it could be better, but the overall idea that Germany is using more coal is clearly nonsense.

Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Sorry, wrong link. Look at the one below that one. Here's the direct link to the underlying data: https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/...

2009: 145.6 TWh - lignite, 107.9 TWh - hard coal.
2016: 149.5 TWh - lignite, 112.2 TWh - hard coal.


Yep, Germany's coal use is growing.

Instead, look at actual numbers (2007->2017):
coal: 142.0 TWh -> 94.2 TWh
lignite: 155.1 TWh -> 148.0 TWh

So a substantial reduction of coal and a small reduction of lignite.

Source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

True, but you should compare to 10 years ago:
coal 142.0 TWh -> 94.2 TWh
lignite 155.1 TWh -> 148.0 TWh
nuclear 140.0 TWh -> 75.9 TWh
renewables 88.3 TWh -> 216.6 TWh
(source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...)

This while at the same time reducing imports and increasing exports.
I agree that lignite and coal should have been reduced first and not nuclear, but it is clear that renewables are a success and that the trend for lignite and coal is still down and not up as many here incorrectly claim.

Nonsense. Germany imported 28,5 TWh and exported 82,4 TWh in 2017. At no time, Germany has to import power to keep the lights on. There are plenty of plants on stand-by. Also for comparison, ten years ago in 2007 (so long before Fukushima and will all nuclear plants still running) imports were rvrn higher at 44,3 TWh and exports lower at 63,4 TWh. Most of the imported power is actually transit as GP pointed out.

https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...
https://www.energy-charts.de/

You are right that Germany pollutes more than France (but don't judge too quickly: CO2 per capita is still far lower than for the US). It was a mistake to first shut down existing nuclear plants instead of coal. But this does not imply that the energy transition with its push towards renewables has failed. Only the effect on coal and CO2 has been delayed. But in 2017 you can already clearly see how renewables start to cut also into lignite and coal:

lignite 155.1 (2007) 148.0 (2017)
coal 142.0 (2007) 94.2 (2017)
nuclear 140.5 (2007) 75.9 (2017)
renewables 88.3 (2007) 216.6 (2017)
net exports 19.1 (2007) 54.0 (2017)
numbers in TWh, source: https://www.ag-energiebilanzen...

Just by looking at the actual numbers, one can easily see how many statements about the energy transition you can find in the internet a completely wrong. I can only recommend to look at actual numbers and build your own opinion.

It is completely irrelevant how much CO2 could be saved by using nuclear, as it is too expensive.
And it would be even more expensive, if it would be scaled up to have a global impact, because you would need to establish completely new fuel cycles.
For this reasons, it is not a solution for global warming.

And Germany's use of coal (coal + lignite) decreased substantially: 197 TWh (1996) to 189 TWh (2006) to 161.5 TWh (2016)
(source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....)

I know, not in your alternate reality where facts don't matter.

Germany foreign trade of electricity 2006-2016 (negative values are exports):
-5,3 -2,3 -0,6 +1,0 +3,1 -1,3 +0,7 -8,1 -7,3 -8,5 -19,8 -19,1 -22,5 -14,3 -17,7 -6,3 -23,1 -33,8 -35,6 -51,8 -53,7
Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....
But I know, nuclear fanboys do not care for facts.

I agree, looking at peak is nonsense. So is cherry-picking dates.
How about looking at full year actual production?
2016
lignite 150 TWh
nuclear 85 TWh
coal 112 TWh
gas 81 TWh
oil 6 TWh
renewables 188 TWh (77 TWh wind and 38 TWh solar)
others 28 TWh
exports -81 TWh
imports 27 TWh

188 TWh of actual produced electricity from renewables is an impressive number which clearly shows that the energy transition is highly successful. Especially if you consider that it was 72 TWh in 2006 and 23 TWh in 1996.

Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

CO2 in electricity production was decreasing by %3 in 2016. http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....
Total CO2 was increasing because overall economy increased and due to weather, but this in unrelated to electricity.

Also nuclear is not a solution because it is far too expensive. Of course, shutting down existing (paid for) plants which work fine was a bad decision. But shutting down coal instead would have put so many people out of jobs, that it was political impossible to do.

I guess you use a new definition of "real". In fact, Germany exported more than 50 TWh in 2016 - more than every before.
Numbers are here: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

Good data can be obtained from here http://www.ag-energiebilanzen..... Germany rapidly expanded the production of electricity from a very low level. In 2015 Germany produced 196 TWh of electricity from renewable sources (from a total of 652 TWh). This is huge and more than nuclear did at its best times. Two decades of aggressive government programs to support renewables were already much more successful than half a century of subsidies for the nuclear industry which still isn't able to deliver a modern plant at a competitive price.

A plant which goes online now has been planned at least a decade ago. And a lot of coal projects actually have been cancelled. So that some plants go online now does not imply that the use of coal is expanding. The new coal plants which will go online now will reduce the amount of CO2 from coal because they are more efficient. So you can put a completely different spin to this: http://reneweconomy.com.au/201... But to get an unbiased view I would recommend to look at actual numbers about electricity generation in Germany: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.... (if you want to argue that coal should have been replaced instead of nuclear - I would agree)

TL;DR

But my recommendation is to not just google for stuff which agrees with your opinion. You will always find some "arguments".

I cited WSJ, FT and Reuters articles not some crank websites.

Are you claiming that there is no German legislation that will keep some coal plants that should be "closed" as "reserves" due to the "intermittent" nature of wind and solar?

Numbers how electricity is produced in Germany can be found here: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

Are you claiming something is wrong with the wiki numbers? Note that the wiki numbers account for imports and therefore renewables are lower than the numbers for purely domestic production. Two thirds of Germany's energy is imported.

From that it is very clear that shutting down some nuclear plants did not cause any increase in coal consumption in Germany. I know a lot of pundits claim just that. They are wrong.

That is a simplistic analysis, poor actually. Coal is being used because nuclear is politically out of favor. These coal plants should be closed and never run again, but renewables are giving coal new life. Renewables are intermittent due to weather and need additional backup, nuclear needs no such weather related backup. If renewables are being backed up with coal then that is an increase in coal usage. Don't play political number games saying that coal usage is not up because of comparisons to an earlier decade where coal was a "normal" fuel for power generation. Intermittent renewables are giving coal additional life, there is no way to deny that, that is increased coal usage entirely due to renewables and the political policies that are make non-coal backups unavailable.

TL;DR

But my recommendation is to not just google for stuff which agrees with your opinion. You will always find some "arguments". Numbers how electricity is produced in Germany can be found here:
http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

From that it is very clear that shutting down some nuclear plants did not cause any increase in coal consumption in Germany. I know a lot of pundits claim just that. They are wrong.

Except that they aren't burning "record amounts" of brown coal, and total coal burning is down quite significantly.

http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.... (PDF)

=Smidge=

Stop spreading lies.

Maybe you should start with your own advice. The poster was referring to electrical generation here, not overall energy use. Your graph is for overall energy use (and I'm not sure about the proportions there either, they seem a bit off). You might have been clued into that by the units being petajoules (customarily used for overall energy production) not watthours (customarily used for electrical generation). Another thing that might have ticked you off is that mineral oil is a good 1/3 the energy share there. And natural gas about 1/4. In actual fact, when you look at the right graphs, in electrical generation, oil accounts for a meager 1% and gas about 11%. In relative proportions lignite has remained mostly stable since 1990, however in absolutes, 2013 (161 TWh) was indeed a record year since 1990 (171 TWh). Hard coal has also picked up in the last 5 years.

http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

It's in German, of course. The key things you're looking for are the second and third rows (Braunkohle and Steinkohle) which are Lignite and Anthracite, respectively. Upport portion of the table is in TWh (Billion KWh) and lower table is percent of total generation by fuel type.
=Smidge=

And while I am checking facts: More efficient new plants have replaced old plants for lignites last year so usage of it has actually decreased while electricity production has slightly increaded. Usage of lignites decreased from 166.3 mil. T (2012) 163.8 mil. T. Coal went up ofcourse while gas went down, but overall CO2 emission from electricity production was stable from 2012 to 2013 at 0,51 kg CO 2 /kWh.

Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

I find it funny that indeed coal went up instead a bit in the US with corresponding higher CO2 emission:
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

Numbers are publicly available and completely contradict your non-sense (or should I say lies?)

Here is the reality:
                    nuclear / renewables / gas / coil + ignites / export
2000: 169.6 TWh 37.9 TWh 49.2 TWh 291.4 TWh -3.1 TWh
2005: 163.0 TWh 62,5 TWh 72.7 TWh 288.2 TWh 8.5 TWh
2010: 140.6 TWh 104.8 TWh 89.3 TWh 262.9 TWh 17.7 TWh
2013: 97.3 TWh 152.0 TWh 66.7 TWh 283.2 TWh 33.8 TWh.
source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

There is no more energy production from coal than in the past. In fact, it is lower than before the Energiewede (although it was lower in 2010 than in 2013 because gas was usage was at an historical high). Similarly, CO2 from electricity production from Germany has not increased and ofcourse energy was never dire in Germany. In fact, exports increased a lot.

This is simply not true. There was a shift from gas to ignites due to a change in relative prices unrelated to the decision to end nuclear, while the missing nuclear power was compensated for by an increase in renewables. Actual numbers are:

2010 -- 2013
ignites 145.9 TWh 150.1 TWh 160.7 TWh 161.0 TWh
nuclear 140.6 TWh 108.0 TWh 99.5 TWh 97.3 TWh
coal 117.0 TWh 112.4 TWh 116.4 TWh 122.2 TWh
natural gas 89.3 TWh 86.1 TWh 76.4 TWh 66.7 TWh
renewables 104.8 TWh 123.8 TWh 143.5 TWh 152.0 TWh ....
(source: http://ag-energiebilanzen.de/)

8 of 17 nuclear plants have been shut down after Fukushima.
The rest will be untl 2020. Numbers can be found here (sorry in German): http://ag-energiebilanzen.de/

Energy production:
nuclear 140.6 (2010) -> 99.5 (2012) (in billion kWh)
renewables 104.8 (2010) -> 142.4 (2012)

Renewables almost completely replaced the missing nuclear power. Yes coal increased too, but only one kind and the usage
of natural gas decreased by about the same amount:
145.9 -> 161.1 (lignite)
117.0 -> 116.1 (black coal)
89.3 -> 75.7 (natural gas)
  If Germany would have had a desperate need to replace missing nuclear power, the use of all of those (lignite, black coal, and gas) would have gone up. This did not happen. The change from natural gas to coal reflects a shift in relative prices instead. (also the bad economy made CO2 licenses cheap which again makes coal cheaper relative to gas).

You also misrepresent the building of new coal plants. Those have been planned a long time ago. In Germany there are always plants being built and old ones are shut down. This is normal.
In summary: Get a fucking clue.

• lignite - 25,7 %
• nuclear - 15,8 %
• anthracite - 8,5 %
• natural gas - 12,0 %
• patrol products - 1,3 %
• hydro - 3,5 %
• wind - 8,1 %
• biomass - 6,2 %
• PV - 4,2 %
• trash - 0,8 %
• others - 4,1 %

source [PDF] - includes an interesting row for "percent renewables",
rising from 3% to 23% since 1990.

So yeah, still a long way to go (lignite? really?), but working hard on actually going it.

The official result for 2012 is 21.6% of energy generated from 'renewable' sources. Except that 25% of that was from the classic hydro, and without hydro it's 15% as I've said. Look it up: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/componenten/download.php?filedata=1357206124.pdf&filename=BRD_Stromerzeugung1990_2012.pdf&mimetype=application/pdf

And the goal for renewable energy use won't be met. It won't be even close. German government knows this just fine - so the official target for renewable electricity got lowered down to 35% by 2020. And it will be lowered down even more in future.

Do you see any protests from Greens? No? Yup, because these fucking hippies are the direct cause of this.

Please don't repeat that bullshit. It is FUD.

In 2010, Germany exported 17.7 TWh
In 2011, Germany exported 6.3 TWh
In 2012, Germany exported 23.1 TWh

You can find the numbers here (last pdf, sorry in German):
http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/viewpage.php?idpage=65

I just wonder why people feel the need to make stuff up if the reality does not fit their opinion.

The RWE numbers are actual production, not capacity. Capacity is the less reliable figure. Here are some more detailed energy production figures from 1990 to 2010: BRD_Stromerzeugung1990_2010_10Mai2011.pdf

This data shows that there is no massive net export or import. This data also shows that nuclear power is not instantly replaceable, but that renewable energies have already made substantial investments in nuclear power and coal fired power plants unnecessary. It also shows that there is still an immense growth potential.

Germany is in a position to make this happen. The decision has broad political support: The end of nuclear power had previously been put into law by the social democrats, a decision which has been reversed by the conservatives who now reversed that reversal. There isn't a party left which could torpedo this plan. Countless technology proponents have only been waiting for this decision. There's a wealth of technological solutions and examples of local energy independence. Not everything will work, but with that deadline finally looking to be set in earnest, the competition is going to make something work.

The data is from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen.

And get this: one of the largest importers (the largest?) offrench electric energy is Germany, who have outlawed and disbanded their nuclear plants due to Green misguided pressure, and are now

The last nuclear reactor is currently[1] scheduled to be shut down in about 27 years. Sorry, they're neither outlawed nor disbanded, there're just no new ones to be built (Apropos "disbanded": in 2003 nuclear energy accounted for 27% of germany's electricity production, while regenerative energies amount for about 9% compared to ~5% in 1991). At least we try.

Oh, and by the way: In 2003Germany had an export surplus of 8 billion MWh. High imports from France are mostly due to it being "routed" through Germany towards the Netherlands and Italy.

a) polluting themselves with coal plants, which actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear plants of same energy output (not to mention other pollutants).

Maybe. According to this site Germany has reduced its CO2-Emissions by 19% between 1990-2002 while France decreased theirs by 1.9%. This may or may not have anything to do with coal plants but was the first thing I found on google - so anyway ;).

b) paying for el. energy to France, which is produced by nuclear plants which are close enough to Germany, that if a meltdown happened, they would be just as affected!

Ever heard of something called "leading by example"? Also, do you think that you (wherever you live) would be unaffected by a major nuclear meltdown?

[1] currently meaning that after the next election these plans will probably be scrapped by the conservatives.