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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.
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.
They're burning too much to meet their emissions goal....
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.
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
25-year supply if nuclear provided all electricity on Earth -- If we continue the once-through throw most of the fuel away non-cycle. Simply adding fuel reprocessing multiplies that number by a few times. Going to breeder reactors multiplies that by several more times.
Then there's the seawater extraction mentioned elsewhere.
Beyond that, there's thorium. According to my CRC Handbook, thorium is "about as common as lead", and "there is probably more available energy in the earth's crust from thorium than from uranium and all fossil fuels combined."