> Also they've made some pretty unique political decisions, such as the nuclear phase-out.
They shot themselves in the foot in knee-jerk reaction to what happened in Fukushima. Nuclear is clean energy. All the scare mongering is done by hippies who think that somehow wind turbines and solar panels are made out of thin air and don't pollute.
It was the Social Democrats and the Greens back in 1998 who decided to stop all nuclear development and close all the existing plants over the next 10-20 years.
Nuclear was already long doomed by the time Fukushima happened
And it is now being enforced by the green party at the worst time since Fukushima – a period of very expensive and scarce energy – for idealogical reasons.
Yes, would have, but let's not pretend it's now entirely the green's fault that we now don't have nuclear power, which the comment I replied to did. They could have prolonged the life of only three power plants for a limited amount of time. Going back to nuclear now is a decision that should have been made decades ago, when CDU was ruling.
Nope. The Greens are the first to give up their ideology to come to an agreement with other parties. It's called "Realpolitik". They were also the ones who warned against increasing dependency to Russia, but were ignored when CDU was in power. You know, the conservative party, that sat on their asses for 16 years doing almost nothing in terms of renewable...
Doing Realpolitik? Fine. Decreasing dependencies to Russia? Fine. Expanding renewable energies? Fine. Shutting down nuclear power while in an energy crisis? Not-so-fine.
And when they blow up, half of Germany can not be inhabited anymore. Germany is small and extremely densely populated. You can not compare it to the US where nuclear plants are in the middle of nowhere.
One of the problems is that solar and wind are being billed as a drop in replacement for gigawatt-scale electricity production, when in reality it’s likely going to find it place at the micro level to help alleviate the load and cost in smaller settings.
The problem with energy is rarely the source (we can derive energy out of most anything that moves, heats, or shines), but the storage. Coal, natural gas, and nuclear are gigawatt-scale producers of energy because we can ramp up production at any time by simply shoveling more of our stockpile of fuel into the proverbial furnace. We can predict when solar or wind will give us power, but this is cold comfort if we need it now and it’s not windy or dark.
This is why I’m bullish with hydrogen because it offers a way to store energy chemically that does not wear out like a battery and operates at 40-60% efficiency vs sub-25% for combination-driven power generation.
They shot themselves in the foot in knee-jerk reaction to what happened in Fukushima. Nuclear is clean energy. All the scare mongering is done by hippies who think that somehow wind turbines and solar panels are made out of thin air and don't pollute.