
Germany May Offer Model for Reining in Fossil Fuel Use - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/world/europe/germany-may-offer-model-for-reining-in-fossil-fuel-use.html?_r=0
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iwwr
Germany _may_ offer a model.

France has had a working model for the last few decades. It's called nuclear.
France gets less than 10% of their power from fossil fuel and could easily
move the rest of the way to either gas (half as bad as coal) or completely
renewable.

Without nuclear, Germany will have a tough time and reduced outputs + high
taxes.

~~~
vlehto
Checked these two charts:
[http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/top2011.tot](http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/top2011.tot)
and [https://www.imf.org/](https://www.imf.org/)

France is making 30 400$/tonne of CO2 while Germany is making 18 200$/tonne of
CO2.

Edit: Here is pretty informative chart about energy production in Germany:
[https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm](https://www.energy-
charts.de/power.htm)

~~~
merb
that doesn't look like a fair comparsion:

Germany in Square Metres: 357.340,08 km² France in Square Metres: 632.834 km²
(without sea: 543.965)

So now you see we are only slightly ahead of france when you compare the
square metres which you should.

Germany isn't as good as it seems when we look at CO2.

Also these values are sanitized which means somebody traded CO2 and that makes
our actual CO2 Emission system broken. As soon as Countries could trade
Emission.

And you need to compare where the CO2 comes from. I would argue that France /
Spain have lot's of CO2 even comming from their agriculture. agriculture is
pretty strong in these countries. While germany makes a lot of CO2 from car
manufacturing.

~~~
ant6n
Square meters don't produce CO2, people do. And Frances population is about
2/3 of Germany.

~~~
merb
animals produce as much co2 as cars. so..

~~~
vlehto
So we don't need to worry about climate change then?

[http://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11543/F2.large....](http://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11543/F2.large.jpg)

Cows produce methane. Here is methane breakdown of U.S.
[http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.htm...](http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html)

Cars produce mostly CO2, here's breakdown:
[http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.htm...](http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html)

That "Cow farts cause climate change as much as cars" stuff is PETA
propaganda. I've seen as high as "52% of all carbon emissions result from meat
consumption". Then I read the actual paper and "We are double counting all
these numbers because of moral hazard of eating meat. Lying is OK if you do it
for good cause."

The 18% share was calculated by combining the direct effect of methane, then
counting in some estimation of deforestation. It is true that Amazon rain
forests end up as pasture, but that's not necessarily the biggest reason why
they cut down the forest. They first try to grow some plants on it, but as the
fertility goes down it's only good as pasture anymore. If you want to go from
18% to 8% you only need to stop _increasing_ meat consumption. But that
doesn't necessarily work if the driver of deforestation turns out to be
something else.

~~~
merb
I'm not lying the whole point of CO2 emission is so false, since higher tiered
countries always sell their emission and tell others that they are the best.

But that is simply not true. Also mostly our world will always change his
clima, that's natural, we soon will see a ice age. however people always think
that the mostly we are the reason for that. however that's simply not true,
the world is really really good when it comes to compensate such things. she
did that million years before, even before there were any human.

------
adrianN
I don't think that economy growth vs energy consumption is a very useful
metric for a country like Germany. We outsource a lot of our pollution to
China where all the stuff we sell is actually made.

~~~
legulere
Actually Germany is one of the few western countries that still produces very
much. In fact it has a positive trade balance with China.

When you're in China and you see something that isn't made in China it often
says Made in Germany.

~~~
adrianN
A positive trade balance does not imply that we don't outsource the dirty part
of the production. If you for example import steel or Aluminium from China and
turn it into cars and airplanes and sell them back, a lot of the energy is
used in China, but most of the value was added in Germany.

~~~
lispm
I'm from a small town near Hamburg. The town has an aluminum plant and a plant
from DOW Chemical. Hamburg even has steel production:

[http://hamburg.arcelormittal.com](http://hamburg.arcelormittal.com)

There is lots of dirty industry in Germany. Still. Coal production. Lots of
chemical plants and products. Cars are painted in Germany.

Higher standards make some products expensive.

------
lunchTime42
Assembled in Germany Metall forged in china

Real problem with energywende is that you have a point to point infrastructure
(powerplant to city) and have to convert it to a n-to n infrastructure.

Every consumer can now be producer. This results in partially absurd rewards
for powering off your mini-plant to stabilize the network.

Also the lack of storage, at the moment. Currently some companys consider,
forging giant conrete containers, sink them out in the ocean, and pump them
dry when there is a energy surplus. When there is higher demand, the undersea
storage seas, can be flooded and energy released on a controlled basis.

~~~
adrianN
_Also the lack of storage, at the moment. Currently some companys consider,
forging giant conrete containers, sink them out in the ocean, and pump them
dry when there is a energy surplus. When there is higher demand, the undersea
storage seas, can be flooded and energy released on a controlled basis._

That actually sounds like a really clever solution to the energy storage
problem.

~~~
mattlutze
It's a neat extension to the concept of using water towers or higher-altitude
reservoirs for similar effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

------
jbi
> China and India, which rank among the top greenhouse gas emitters globally

Gosh.

They rank top in absolute numbers. Germany ranks top per citizen. The western
model is not a model for the world.

Source: Matthews et. al, national contributions to observed global warming
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/1/014...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/1/014010;jsessionid=B758988B30CB17051E25CA782E96BB9C.c3.iopscience.cld.iop.org)

~~~
amai
The complete table is

Warming per billion people: 1\. United Kingdom 0.54, 2\. United States 0.51,
3\. Canada 0.41, 4\. Russia 0.41, 5\. Germany 0.40, 6\. Netherlands 0.34, 7\.
Australia 0.30, 8\. Brazil 0.26, 9\. France 0.26, 10\. Venezuela 0.25, 11\.
Argentina 0.23, 12\. Colombia 0.21, 13\. Poland 0.19, 14\. Thailand 0.14, 15\.
Japan 0.10, 16\. Mexico 0.09, 17\. Indonesia 0.07, 18\. Nigeria 0.05, 19\.
China 0.05, 20\. India 0.04

------
Grue3
The country that is shutting down nuclear power stations to burn more coal
instead? Yeah, it's a great model...

~~~
legulere
They try to shut down nuclear and coal at the same time, with an emphasis on
nuclear. This actually means that coal mostly stays the same.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiem...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg)
(Black and brown are coal)

The nuclear exit also isn't really an exit. The reactors are already over
their lifetime they were first built. It's just that nobody replaces old
reactors because building new ones is prohibitly expensive.

~~~
johansch
The latter is not true.

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/swedish-e...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/swedish-
energy-giant-vattenfall-nets-billions-for-nuclear-phaseout)

"Japan's Fukushima disaster in 2011 precipitated Germany’s "Atomausstieg"
(nuclear exit), a program to close down all German nuclear plants by 2021. The
eight oldest nuclear power stations were closed down immediately. Two of these
power plants are owned by the Swedish state-owned energy giant Vattenfall,
which also operates power plants in several other European countries.

In 2012 Vattenfall filed suit at the Washington-based International Center for
Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), demanding $6 billion in
compensation."

~~~
kaybe
Not quite. It was decided in 2000 to stop building new plants and phase out
the existing ones. In 2010, the phase-out period was increased by 8-14 years.
Then, in 2011, this increase was undone again. So it was mainly about how long
the remaining plants are being kept online.

(see here (German)
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomausstieg#Deutschland](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomausstieg#Deutschland)
)

------
ilaksh
[http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage](http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage)

