Growing plants just to use them for energy production is absolutely stupid and incredibly harmful, agreed. But there are types of biomass that are basically waste from food production or forestry. It’s not a ton of energy, but it may play a part somewhere.
The fact that Scholz didn’t even come to my mind when I thought about the German government says it all. I had no expectations and I was still disappointed.
Demand response just means making use of energy surplus. And we’ll have lots of that during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere. Running carbon capture machines only when there’s a surplus is a perfect example of demand response.
Oh yes, no argument there. We’re already using absolutely huge amounts of hydrogen that are mostly made from fossil fuels right now. Worldwide hydrogen production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire country of Germany. We’ll have to turn that into green hydrogen and use a ton of renewable energy for that. If we make use of surplus wind and solar, it will help a lot with stabilizing the grid.
What I was thinking of was the idea of producing hydrogen through electrolysis, storing it and later turning it back into electricity through fuel cells. And I’m not sure if that will ever be cheaper and more efficient than newer and cheaper battery technologies like sodium ion or redox flow batteries.
First of all, nuclear is anything but reliable. Germany had to supply huge amounts of electricity to France last year because half of their nuclear plants had to be shut down. They would have had major blackouts without support from their European neighbors.
But my main point is that baseload power does not mix with renewable sources at all. Using batteries and other solutions to store renewable energy during times of little wind or sunlight is actually the goal. But that also eliminates the need for baseload.
Baseload was never really a feature anyway, it was a necessity. Nuclear and certain types of coal power plants were unable to follow demand, they had to be run at close to full load all the time, either for technical or for economic reasons. To compensate for that, other more expensive plants had to be used to cover times of higher demand.
They were extended specifically because of natural gas supply issues, caused by the war in Ukraine. Not because of nuclear shutdowns.
I just remember a sandwich covered in melted cheese with an egg on top and some kind of sauce. And a lot of delicious fried food. Both usually with fries as a side dish. Never any salad unless I specifically ordered it. I’m sure I could have gone to lots of restaurants where they would have had lighter meals, but I was on holiday so greasy was perfect.
In my example, ‘Rotterdam’ is supposed to be the ultimate destination, so it would be equivalent to ‘carbon neutrality’. Changing the destination to ‘Africa’ would be the equivalent to just building nuclear power plants for the sake of it, regardless of whether they help us reach carbon neutrality.
Your second paragraph could be summed up as: we chose the destination years ago, so there’s no point changing course.
Which makes perfect sense when you consider that there’s a deadline, we’ve gone a very long way in one direction and going all the way back to take another route would guarantee missing that deadline.
It’s like you’re taking your ship from China to Rotterdam, you’re past the Suez canal, in the Mediterranean and now you decide to turn around and go around Africa after all. It really would be idiotic.
That’s not how renewables work. They don’t produce electricity on demand (at least not solar and wind), their energy output is dependent on the weather. If there’s no wind and no sun, they won’t cover any demand spikes. Which is why baseload power like nuclear is pretty much useless in combination with renewables.
What is actually needed is flexible power that can be quickly adapted to the varying output from solar and wind. This is currently mostly done with natural gas, which we’re trying to get away from. In the future, biomass, water and storage will cover that part, while demand response strategies will help reduce demand peaks during times of low energy production.
I had high hopes for the current government, but I never imagined the FDP would be able to do so much damage with so few votes. The way it is now, I’m pretty disappointed. A lot of great ideas that were just shut down in their infancy.
cork oaks
Portugal! What a wonderful country full of wonderful people. We do care about you and your delicious but slightly greasy food.
That is just blatant misinformation. Name one single coal plant that has been restarted since nuclear power was phased out.
That is just misinformation. First of all, nuclear power never contributed that much anyway. If all nuclear power plants ever built in Germany were running at full load 24/7 for 365 days of the year, they would produce 231 TWh, which is less than 10% of our total energy demand. So there was never that big of a hole to fill in the first place. Especially in the last ten years, when only a handful of power plants were still in service.
In reality, renewables have managed to replace both nuclear power and a large chunk of fossil fuels (source). Last year we had to export enormous amounts of energy to France, because their nuclear plants had proven so unreliable (source). This has admittedly led to an increased use of fossil fuels, which we could have avoided by building more renewables here (or in France).
We are trying to get more heat pumps installed, but people are still proud of getting a new gas furnace installed in 2023, thus avoiding a potential ban and betting on guaranteed dirt-cheap natural gas for another 20 years.
But either way, nuclear power is history in Germany and it makes absolutely no sense to bring it back. We never had a lot of nuclear power to begin with and the few power plants that could maybe be reactivated with a ton of money and labor are just a drop in the bucket. Building new reactors takes decades from initial planning to going live and nuclear construction projects are notorious for immense cost overruns. Plus, there are only a few construction companies in the world that have the capabilities to build a nuclear reactor and they’re already tied up in other projects. We would need dozens of new reactors built simultaneously and they would still be finished too late to contribute anything meaningful to a carbon-free electrical grid.
At the same time, wind energy is a dirt cheap, proven technology that is much more easily deployed, scales really well, is decentralized and reliable. Yes, it can be intermittent but it’s predictable (weather forecasts exist). And if we had invested a fraction of the R&D budget for nuclear fission and fusion into energy storage technology, it would be a complete non-issue. We have some work to do in that regard, but sodium ion batteries are pretty far in development and should be much cheaper. Iron redox flow and liquid metal batteries also have potential, maybe hydrogen. Demand response will also be a big factor. With flexible pricing during the day, both households and businesses can save a lot of money by using more energy whenever there’s a lot of it and less when it’s scarce.
We do in Germany, every two years. It’s not helping and I don’t know why. Maybe people are aligning their headlights correctly just for the test. Or the test is garbage. Next time my car is due, I’ll ask the guy.