
Germany Is Burning Too Much Coal - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-14/germany-is-burning-too-much-coal
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pm90
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.

~~~
graeme
I have never understood why people fear nuclear _and_ don’t seem to fear
carbon as giscerally or more.

I can understand that nuclear has risks. But people seem to evaluate nuclear
in a vacuum, rather than against the carbon sources which currently replace
it.

“What do we do with the waste” is a better question when applied to coal.

~~~
pizzapill
The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986.
A life changing event for many Germans. Not beeing able to leave the house.
Cutting a lot of foods from your diet because they are contaminated for
decades (mushrooms, game meat, berries etc.).

East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption
and it ending up in GDR school kitchens.

Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs
in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you'd die first in a
new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would
probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human
surival.

Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for
transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the
profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has
figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years
(Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don't even know how they are build). Thats
why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in
the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.

~~~
vog
_> The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster
1986._

Tschernobyl was almost forgotten, at least by the politicians in power, but
then Fukushima happend.

~~~
Tomte
No, this fear is still very much alive, even in my generation who was alive
back then, but too young to really remember.

Chernobyl is the defining moment of the anti-nuclear movement (and I'm not
only talking about active protestors like in Lüchow-Dannenberg, most Germens
have some of it inside themselves, even if they don't actively march on the
streets).

It is really hard to overestimate the effect of the word "Chernobyl" in
Germany.

~~~
zmix
> Chernobyl is the defining moment of the anti-nuclear movement

The movement is much older. I remember, that the anti-nuclear movement was
already very active and in heat around 1980-82 (Biblis). The _broad public_ ,
the _mainstream_ , started accepting this threat with Chernobyl.

~~~
Tomte
That makes it the defining moment, IMO. I did not say the "starting moment" or
something similar. There is simply nothing that compares.

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_ph_
The good news is, that for this year so far, 38% of the electricity in Germany
comes from renewable sources. Solar and Wind generation capacity is still
growing. But the big energy companies like to use their paid-off coal plants,
as it is profitable, and politics isn't currently putting much pressure onto
them to stop it. As coal plants cannot be quickly switched on or off, Germany
is exporting a lot of electricity into the neighbor countries - whenever the
sum out of the renewable sources and the coal produces an electricity surplus.
From time to time we even have negative rates at the electricity exchanges.

There is a very quick way to reduce the carbon footprint: use more gas plant.
They exist, but they are mostly idle, as gas costs more than coal. Using them
rather than the coal plants would have several instant effects: gas produces
less pollution, and produces less CO2 than coal for the same amount of energy.
Also, much less electricity would be produced, as gas plants can be throttled
fast enough to avoid overproduction.

So the carbon could be down quickly, only requiring to be less protective to
the coal jobs and the energy companies revenues.

~~~
zmb_
About 40% of energy production in Germany is still coal, and 15% nuclear.
Nuclear will be shut down by 2022 and coal will be shut down more or less
quickly depending on politics. This means that Germany will be looking for a
replacement for over half of their energy production within the few next
decades.

There is not enough hydroelectric capacity in Germany, so the only viable
solution is gas -- in addition to lots of solar and wind. Hence Nord Stream 2.
Germany wants to have multiple options for gas providers in order to negotiate
good deals.

So yes, gas is definitely the future of German energy production, unless
something completely unexpected happens.

~~~
namlem
Maybe France will build more nuclear plants and sell the power to Germany.

~~~
_ph_
It currently looks rather that France is not going to build any more nuclear
power plants but rather wants to extend their use of renewable energies -
which are cheaper than new nuclear power plants.

~~~
selectodude
Climate change is wreaking havoc on existing plants, too. The rivers they use
to cool them are getting too warm and they're having to shut plants down over
the summer (when they actually need the power).

~~~
_ph_
It is rarely noted this downside of nuclear. Yes, they can produce electricity
24/7 at full power... until they don't. If there is a technical problem, they
have to shut down. As you said, there are environmental conditions forcing
them shut down. And if a nuclear power plant shuts down, typically a whole GW
or more is dropped from the grid. France has recurrently shortages in
electricity production, if too many nuclear power plants are off the grid. In
the last winter, in Germany about 50% of the nuclear power plants were off
grid for various reasons (mostly maintenance) too.

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VeejayRampay
As a French person, I can't help but think that this is but temporary. The
Germans are extremely smart when it comes to long-term vision, they've always
been. I don't doubt for a second that their transitioning away from nuclear
will pay dividends on the long run and they'll be on the forefront of that
green revolution eventually.

The fact that they have a very strong industry to back up any effort to steer
production to greener means of production and consumption is very encouraging
for everyone. I hope they succeed.

~~~
nickik
No it will not not 'pay dividends' in the long run because the coal they are
burning now instead of perfectly fine nuclear plants will already be in the
air.

No amount of future renewable energy justify this policy move.

~~~
matt4077
Coal power is about economics, not energy. Germany could easily cover its
energy demands. In a wurst case scenario (german pun intended), France and
Hungary are able and willing to sell nuclear power.

~~~
kaybe
I think a big thing is the demand of having 100% uptime of the grid for
everyone.

If there was a list where you could sign up and get paid for having something
like an hour of notice until a power cut of one or two hours I think it would
be doable to be less perfectionist about this requirement and actually save a
lot of peak demand resources and dirty back-up plants.

~~~
kuschku
That would be impossible to get through. Currently we’re trying to get
downtime to below 5 minutes per year for the average German (it’s at 17
minutes per year currently). That’s 4 nines of reliability, with a move to 5
nines. For every citizen. Many people will not even see any interruption for
many years.

This means that Google will be more often down for you than your power.

Going from that standard to the constant failures you suggest would be
impossible.

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renaudg
There's an interesting real time map of energy production across Europe that
illustrates the problem quite well :

[https://www.electricitymap.org/](https://www.electricitymap.org/)

Nordic countries and France stand out (because of hydro and nuclear power,
respectively), while the bad apples are in Eastern Europe (especially Poland
and Estonia).

Germany does badly given its relative wealth, though.

~~~
fiala__
what an amazing resource, thanks!

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crdoconnor
The fact that coal usage _is_ actually declining was mentioned obliquely in
paragraph 7.

Virtually the entire article is cheerleading hard for nuclear.

Not mentioned is also the fact that the UK _is_ building a new nuclear plant
and it's very expensive. Significantly more expensive than the equivalent in
wind/solar would have been even if you assume that they do not continue to
decline in price (which they probably will).

~~~
lispm
The UK needs to keep nuclear skills for their military.

Germany does not need that technology, it has neither nuclear weapons, no
nuclear weapon production, nor nuclear powered submarines.

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Harvey-Specter
I visited Germany last summer and was amazed by how many windmills there were.
Everywhere I looked there was a windmill. Obviously this was a country on the
forefront of clean energy.

Imagine my surprise when my father-in-law took us to see the open pit mines
and drive through the towns, entire towns, that had been moved to make way for
coal excavation.

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xxgreg
Interesting fact - USA despite its cheap natural gas burns more coal per
capita than Germany.

See chart:

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-
capi...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-capita)

Germany should also do better however.

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paulgdp
I think this map is relevant to the discussion.

[https://www.electricitymap.org](https://www.electricitymap.org)

Check it out at different time of the day and night to see the changes in
energy sources.

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k__
They should have subsidised the renewable engeries much longer.

Now we went from nuclear back to coal, which doesn't help anybody.

When they started to subsidise solar and wind, I hoped in the next decades we
would have a clean country, but then they stopped it and now we are stuck with
coal for much longer than needed :\

~~~
Lev1a
One of the problems with renewables is that they require extensive (aka
costly) maintenance before they've actually offset their own construction
cost. I read an article a few years back where one of the examples was that
most wind power plants are only profitable after ~15-20 years but require
costly maintenance at the 5-10 year mark and from there onward.

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eric-hu
Can anyone comment about how liquefied coal is currently used or could be
used? As I understand, the resulting products burn much cleaner.

I'm not sure if this would reduce their CO2 emissions, but it should at least
reduce other pollutants.

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Tomte
The current coalition negotiations between the four parties expected to form a
government also include shutting down more coal power stations.

The Greens demand twenty to be shut down, the others want to go slower.

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petre
Well they just had to close all those nuclear reactors. By contrast France is
doing just fine with ~70% nuclear power.

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Boothroid
Let's also not forget German car makers forcing the EU to dilute emissions
limits. All very well having recycling bins all over the place, but when push
comes to shove, the attitude is apparently !!!! the environment.

