> France didn't decarbonize deliberately and they did it 50 years ago decades before anybody paid any attention to global warming.
Whether or not France did or did not decarbonize deliberatly is secondary to the fact that they DID decarbonize.
On the other hand, when Germany set out to decarbonize, they SHOULD look have looked at historical data for what actually produced the desired outcome. But instead they chose to replace their nuclear power with wind power, while keeping fossil power the same.
In 1990, Nuclear power contributed to about 1800PJ/15000PJ of primary energy consumption, or about 12%.
Last year, solar+wind was 6%, or half that.
Then there is a large chunk from "biomass", which is all sorts of stuff, some good for the environment and some that are as dirty as most fossil fuels, but labeled "biomass" to greenwash them. (One of the worst cases, at least globally, would be firewood, especially in terms of local polution.)
At best, "renewables" can be counted to 17.2% for 2022, at worst it's about 6%.
Also, in absolute terms, total energy consumption in Germany has gone down, for several different reasons, but that would have happened anyway, it's not due to wind and solar.
> By all measures
In other words, it really depends on what measures you look at whether or not my statement was true.
I suppose I could be been more concise, though. What I meant, was that new clean energy (meaning primarily wind + solar) has AT BEST only replaced the clean nuclear energy that was available in 1990.
So in terms of available clean energy, simply maintaining those plants (or replace them when they could no longer be maintained) would have provided the same benefit as the massive investments in wind and solar (and those biomass types that are clean).
Still, a reduction in gross consumption is also a good thing, and _some_ of this may be connected to the increase in prices.
Then again, simply enforcing a carbon tax would achive the same.
Whether or not France did or did not decarbonize deliberatly is secondary to the fact that they DID decarbonize.
On the other hand, when Germany set out to decarbonize, they SHOULD look have looked at historical data for what actually produced the desired outcome. But instead they chose to replace their nuclear power with wind power, while keeping fossil power the same.