Slashdot Mirror
Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal (bloomberg.com)
Several readers share a report: Germany is widely seen as a world leader in the fight against climate change. Thanks to its investments in renewable power, wind and solar energy provide a third of its electricity, more than double the U.S. share. Germany's goal to lower carbon-dioxide emissions 40 percent by 2020 is significantly more ambitious than that of Europe as a whole or the U.S. After the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed even greater determination. "We can't wait for the last man on Earth to be convinced by the scientific evidence for climate change," she explained. But there's another, troubling side to the German story: The country still gets 40 percent of its energy from coal, a bigger share than most other European countries. And much of it is lignite, the dirtiest kind of coal. As a result, Germany is set to fall well short of its 2020 goal. This dependence on coal is partly a side effect of Germany's abandonment of emissions-free nuclear power and partly foot-dragging on the part of a government wary of alienating voters in German coal country. During the summer election campaign, Merkel largely avoided the subject.
The emergency move away from nuclear has been incredibly short sighted. I understand not wanting to build new reactors, but shutting down running reactors, with all the capital investment involved, just doesn't make any sense. Especially when there is little risk of natural disasters in Germany.
If people are serious about maintaining the same quality of lifestyle that we have today without burning as much coal, the current solution is Nuclear Energy. Yes it does pose many risks but so does burning coal, and the latter seems to be destroying our environment.
That 40% sounds like a required need for base load. I doubt they will be able to eliminate it without much wailing and gnashing of teeth from their utility engineers.
They could have accomplished their goals by keeping those nuclear plants going. Shame they let feelings get in the way of good energy policy.
But but but.. they SAID all the right things and virtue signaled in the prescribed manner!
It's great they completely dumped nuclear power though, because OMG RADEYAYSHUNS!!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The only country not part of the Paris accord is set to meet their goal. Odd.
Germany has spent 100s of billions on renewables without much to show for it. Their electricity rates are among the highest in Europe, yet they still pollute 10x as much as France" If they spent that money on next generation nuclear their emissions would have dropped. As it currently stands nuclear power is the only viable option to mitigate climate change.
Correction to your headline: They're not burning too much coal, which makes it sound like they're wasting coal by burning too much. In fact, this is just the opposite. The amount of coal they're burning is the amount necessary to provide 40% of the electricity to their country. A more accurate headline would be "Despite their reputation as a leader in renewable energy, Germany is actually burning more coal than most other European countries".
Germany is running out of reliable sources of power generation: If not coal or nuclear, then natural gas would be a good choice. But do they have the political capital to switch from one fossil fuel to another?
Anyone considered just throwing it off planet?
Turn it into glassy lumps and simply throw it off planet with a linear accelerator. Take some gravitational influences into account and you could even aim it at the sun. The sun wouldn't notice the whole planet falling into and we're just talking about a few thousand tons of radioactive waste. (wait until we hear the arguments about polluting the sun. :-)
France seems to be doing fine. Germany would not have to lower their industrial base if they opted to use nuclear.
More likely the Envirowackos.
Nuclear is expensive due to incessant lawsuits and an uncertain regulatory environment. How many other 5 year, billion dollar construction projects are subject to the rules being change on a whim?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The funny thing is that many continue to rip on America and then compare to Germany and China.
Yet, both Germany and China have high % of their electricity from coal. Germany is 45% and rising, and CHina's is around 80% (they refuse to allow external monitoring and their numbers change constantly). In fact, Germany has 45% coal, and 10% nat gas/mineral oil.
Germany's electricity is not only more CO2 / KWh than is America's, but is much dirtier since the majority of theirs comes from Coal and NOT nat gas.
America's electricity is about 28% coal, and 30% nat gas. BUT, America's coal continues to drop while Germany continues to build new coal plants. To be fair though, Germany's new coal is mostly about replacing old coal and nukes. By replacing their old coal plants, they are cleaning up the air, while getting more electricty.
And while America is slowly building up renewables compared to Germany and CHina, our electricity remains much cleaner due to heavy use of nat gas as well as nuclear.
In terms of Germany, they need a base-load system and solar/wind, even with storage, will NOT do the trick. So, if not nuclear, then what? Geo-thermal? Hydro? Nope to both.
China continues to build out coal, but they are also building up nuclear, along with hydro, both of which are base-load powers. Germany has some HARD choices to make.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Germany's heavy dependence on fossil fuels is an _major_ problem now that Russia's shown their true their colours, and is attacking and undermining the West on all fronts. Further abuse and humiliation from the Russian side is now more likely, since Putin did his (plagiarised) PhD on how to wield the oil weapon.
Far from understanding all this, Merkel then decided it would be a good idea to transition away from nuclear. Guess what fills the gap? Fossil fuels -- controlled by the strong adversary (Russia) and the weak adversary (the Muslim countries).
And these people are purportedly the strong centre of Europe. With clowns like these, Putin has nothing to fear. Well done guys!
exactly.
In fact, ALL of the cleanest nations have some major form of a clean base-load power.
For sweden, it is nuclear and hydro. For Costa Rica, it is geothermal, and hydro. For nations like Indonesia, geo-thermal will allow them to become clean.
BUT for large nations, that will not work.
Take China. Many ppl rave about their building wind and solar. Of course, in America, our wind and solar has an efficiency above 30%, with new tall towers going up around 60%. The reason is that we build these in smart places. In China, their average in wind/solar is less than 18%. The reason is that they have a lot more clouds/pollution and do not have the winds that America has. Oddly for the massive amount of wind/solar that CHina has over America, America produces more wind based electricity and about the same in solar (IIRC, that is).
France has the ONLY right idea for large nations. Nuclear, combined with AE, so that fossil fuels are gone.
Viva la France.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
More likely the Envirowackos.
Follow the money... and don't be stupid.
With Merkel letting in all those Afri- oh wait, you didn't mean THAT kind of "burning coal".
Circumcision is child abuse.
Meanwhile in France they realized that they are not doing fine and plan to decrease the use of nuclear substantially.
Someone has not been following the news. Macron backpedals on pledge to cut reliance on nuclear power.
These slashdot idiots can't comprehend that nuclear power plants emit nuclear waste, because it is a solid. And they're just that painfully stupid.
"According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total.
Yow-- that little??? Nuclear power plants provide about 11 percent of the world's electricity production now, so multiply that 230 years by 0.11, and it says we have a twenty-five year supply of uranium fuel if all of the world's electricity were nuclear.
I retract whatever I may have said earlier-- according to this, nuclear (at least, uranium-based fission nuclear reactors) is not a viable long-term solution.
In spite of the riff everybody is doing on germany not doing enough, they are a western country which has a high standard of living and have about half the emission per capita of CO2 than the US has... https://data.worldbank.org/ind... for those not wanting to click : per capita USA 16.5 metric ton per person, Germany 8.9 metric tons per capita. And that is in spite of all that lignite burning.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's true, coal burners and mud sharks are destroying Europe.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
France has the ONLY right idea for large nations. Nuclear, combined with AE, so that fossil fuels are gone.
You seem not to be aware that France is following Germanys lead and is exiting nuclear power, too, and building mainly wind and solar plants.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They signed the Paris Accord, after all... Doesn't matter what actually happens, it's just the pledge that matters!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
More likely the Envirowackos.
Movie stars and hippies are not as good at nuclear physics as media columnists think they are. We need to look more closely at who benefits from their hysteria.
Not without a massive re-engineering of the entire Nuclear Industry, this comment is essentially a strawman and I doubt you have considered it deeply.
Luckily we have companies developing 4th generation reactors. The integral fast reactor is one type of reactor. Terrapower has a traveling wave reactor. We are re engineering the entire nuclear industry. I understand what it would take to decarbonize our planet better then you do. A strawman is a logical fallacy of "an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument." We have had the technology to build 4th generation rectors (See experimental breeder reactor 2) for decades. These new reactors can power our civilization for millenniums. It is not a strawman.
It's a lot easier to blame greenies and NIMBYS than Oil and Coal interests that control energy production in the world, so it is unlikely we will see any advancement in nuclear power, battery technology or anything else to produce the outcome you describe that threatens their dominance of those industries.
I do blame the greenies, yet I blame the fossil fuel industry more. The entire anti-nuclear movement was founded and funded by the fossil fuel industry. See Friends of the Earth.