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Germany wants to be climate neutral by 2045. But a panel of government climate advisers says it’s already in danger of missing a key target to cut planet-heating emissions by the end of the decade.
Germany’s climate advisory body has called for new policy measures to slash greenhouse gas emissions, warning that the country looks set to miss its 2030 climate change targets.
In a report published on Monday, the Council of Experts on Climate Change said Germany was unlikely to reach its goal of cutting 65% of emissions by the end of the decade compared to 1990 levels.
The panel, which is appointed by the government and has independent authority to assess the country’s climate performance, said sectors such as transport and construction in particular were struggling to decarbonize.
The findings contradict statements from German Climate Protection Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who said in March that projections from the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) showed emissions were falling and Germany would meet its goal.
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I’m shocked! Shocked!
Well, not that shocked.
Our Minister of transportation has been a disaster for our most climate minded government yet.
He continuously refuses to present any plans on how to reduce emissions in his sector. His emission reduction targets for the past few years were missed, but instead our climate bill was changed so it doesn’t have immediate consequences as long as other sectors meet their targets. Investments in communal and private rail were cut by 20 million €, while 150 Million were given to Volocopter, a start up for personal-use passenger drones. “State-owned” rail did see minor increases in investments, but most of that money is locked for now until the government and “Die Bahn” company agree on financing it.
The only good new thing in transportation right now is the 49€ a month ticket for all public transport in Germany, and even that fails to make commuters switch to public transport as public transport remains unreliable and inconvenient outside of cities.
Climate resolutions are like new years resolutions. It’s the thought that matters
Who won’t?
Well yeah… ya’ll dumb dumbs turned off nuclear and turned on coal/oil…
turned on coal/oil…
Despite the internet’s insistence to the contrary, Germany has not increased its power production from fossil fuels.
It is in fact at the lowest level of the past 30 years
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-chartsDeactivating a clean energy source means that you have to get energy from somewhere else. If they hadn’t taken the nuclear plants offline, they could have taken coal plants offline instead. So the fact that there are still coal plants operating means that they did, in fact replace nuclear with coal, even if they don’t add more capacity to do it.
Yes, one can argue that more fossil energy could have been shut down if the nuclear plants had continued operating.
That said, Nuclear was replaced by renewables. Coal was also replaced by renewables.
Maybe more coal could have been replaced but claiming that nuclear was replaced with coal is a rhetoric trick but it is literally not true.Also these assumptions about replacing coal always seem to come from people who have no idea about the power of the German coal lobby.
Coal is just about the only natural resource Germany has and is a massive industry.
The coal exit movement is decades old as well. But as the graphs show it is also glacially slow due to massive lobbying.
Looking at the second image. That’s factually wrong. Natural gas generators increased in capacity while nuclear is being killed. The whole process of killing nuclear has been over time period considerably greater than apologists like you tend to look at.
But you do you. If nuclear was allowed to stay active they could have killed off ALL hard coal and some natural gas at this point.
You mean “Installed net power generation capacity”?
Because that measures how much could theoretically be produced, not how much is actually produced.For actual production, you might want to look at the two graphs below.
Particularly the 4th one shows that gas peaked in 2000 and has not gone up during the nuclear phase-out.So capacity went up… But somehow that’s not building more? So almost like my original statement isn’t incorrect by any means then. Why so much nonsense arguments against me? Regardless of your argument. Nuclear should have been the LAST source turned off.
Those are peaker plants. They run seldomly but when they’re needed they need to be able to produce a lot.
Nuclear power btw is not suitable as peakers, they react too slowly.
You original comment was that someone “turned on coal/oil…”
That statement is factually and demonstrably incorrect.
Gas was not even part of that original claim but whatever.Building capacity as a reserve for peak times is not the same as the plants actually running and producing emissions.
As the graphs show, the actual production and therefore emissions from fossil sources have gone down. This is what matters in he climate change debate.
The mere existence of buildings has little to do with the topic at hand.
No, not really.
- What was the gap left by nuclear power filled with?
Nuclear power had a total output of just under 30 terawatt hours (TWh) in the year before the last three plants went offline and output dropped to zero. On the other hand, the output of renewables was 237 TWh in the period between April 2022 and the final phase-out step. In the year after 15 April 2023, renewables had surpassed the previous year’s output, reaching nearly 270 TWh by early April, according to Fraunhofer ISE researcher Burger. With a net increase of more than 30 TWh, the additional output of renewables alone thus more than compensated for the loss of nuclear capacity in net public electricity generation.
Fossil power sources contributed 210 TWh to electricity production in the final year of nuclear power use, when Germany had deployed additional coal power capacity as a safety measure in the energy crisis. However, the fossil fuel-fired power plants’ output dropped markedly in the following year and stood at about 160 TWh by 15 April 2024. In fact, the use of coal power dropped to its lowest level in more than half a century in the same year Germany went nuclear-free, meaning fossil fuel did not see a revival to fill the gap. According to an analysis by the anti-nuclear NGO Greenpeace, energy sector emissions in Germany dropped by 24 percent.
Source: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/qa-germanys-nuclear-exit-one-year-after#three
So they turned off 30TWh of nuclear… Where they already spent all the carbon that it’s going to spend. And instead kept oil/coal running.
Can you tell me where I have it wrong? How would it not have been infinitely better to keep the nuclear going and cutting an additional 30TWh of coal/oil? Maybe they would have been on track to beat their emissions goals.
Phasing out nuclear was a decade long process, no last minute decision that could have been reverted, at least not in an (price-) efficient manner
The fact that they had 10+ years to revert the decision and didn’t is that much more damning.
I would know, my country (Belgium) did the same. I will forever hold a grudge against those reality-denying environmentalists who recklessly misrepresented the drawbacks of nuclear to the public and killed any dream of energy independence well before I was old enough to vote.
You were the chosen ones, Greens. You were supposed to fight the oil lobby, not join them.
I would know, my country (Belgium) did the same
Didn’t various of your nuclear reactors need huge maintenance? As nuclear reactors get older the maintenance cost get crazy high. I remember seeing reports that said electrical grid problems could likely happen due to the age.
Though it seems you mean more nuclear had to be built a few decades ago? That likely would be good at that time.
But in this age, nuclear is costly if built now. Resulting in high electricity prices. That’ll make a country uncompetitive.
- Greenfield (new) nuclear’s LCOE is higher than renewables. This does not account for the additional GHG emissions from the fossil fuels that supplement renewables’ intermittency issues, and if we put a carbon tax on those then the maths would surely change (whether it justifies greenfield nuclear over things like energy storage or just paying the carbon tax I do not know, I haven’t seen a study on that).
- Existing nuclear is cost-competitive with renewables. Yes, as with any 50 year-old infrastructure it will require maintenance. Refurbishing is still cheaper than shutting everything down and replacing that capacity with gas+renewables. The decision to shut down existing NPPs was political; so political in fact that the government had to put the nuclear shutdown into law (otherwise the energy operator would have done the economically sensible thing and refurbished the NPPs for an additional 10-30 years.
Since the energy crisis we are planning to refurbish the NPPs that were shut down anyways. Of course the cost analysis is much murkier now that we have years of delayed maintenance to catch up on since the operator expected a complete phaseout in 2022.
The debate over new nuclear is one thing. It’s not happening in Belgium anyways as literally no political party supports that. But shutting down existing nuclear is a moronic strategy that was only undertaken due to intense lobbying from anti-nuclear (and therefore pro-oil, whether they realize it or not) activists that cannot even remotely pretend that in the early '00s they correctly predicted that existing-nuclear-vs-new-renewables would reach a rough economic equilibrium twenty years later. They were killing the planet and they knew it, and didn’t care because it meant less nuclear (whatever relative intrinsic benefits that supposedly entails from an environmental perspective).
Ahh, the good ol’ sunk cost fallacy.
in 2010 they produced ~150twh with nuclear btw
turned on coal/oil
Like others already said and you can read in my response or the link provided, they turned off coal.
ofc in the last year that the nuclear plants were operating they would’ve generated way less than when nuclear was a main source lol, this says that nuclear in 2010 produced 5x that of 2023 (150twh in reference to your source)
And then compare it to the output gains of renewables here:
who cares? 150twh of free production is free production
It’s not free. Those plants were old and had to undergo massive maintenance measures. And to build new ones costs absurd amounts of time and money. Renewables are cheaper and faster.
Coal usage is going down constantly. Coal is being phased out completely until 2035.
And? I said Coal/Oil. Notice that Natural gas is gasp Increasing!
Electricity production from coal and oil combined shrank from 55.6 GW in 2010 (before the phasing out of nuclear power plants began) to 42.2 GW in 2023. No one “turned on coal/oil” to compensate nuclear energy.
Ya’ll have issues with logic it seems.
You know what you could have done? Shrank coal and oil combined EVEN MORE! And by your own sources production capabilities were increasing. Why would they be doing that if the goal is to get rid of it all together? There is a cost to building that production capability you know. But at this point I’m talking to brick walls. None of you can actually string together a valid reason why nuclear was killed in FAVOR of the shit polluting the air.
I don’t know who you’re talking to. I didn’t make any of these politics.
I heavily dislike that countries energy policy, they should build more nuclear and turn off coal.
Building nuclear takes on average something like 15 years, so I don’t see how this is going to help. Germany’s coal will be shut off by 2035 anyways.
Besides, Germany already has a huge problem because no one can figure out where to put the nuclear waste they already have (one of the supposed “secure storages” is now leaking water and will likely poison the groundwater in a huge area, and will need to be reopened and cleared, costing untold billions).
At this point, even the major energy companies say it’s not realistic nor beneficial to change course to reenter nuclear.
Building nuclear takes on average something like 15 years
Building EPRs, yes. Not Gen II reactors, which could be built and running only 4-5 years after the beginning of the construction.
Germany’s coal will be shut off by 2035 anyways.
Only to be replaced by gas, which is still far from being carbon free.
Besides, Germany already has a huge problem because no one can figure out where to put the nuclear waste they already have
No one can agree on where to put nuclear waste. This is not some unsolvable problem, it’s just anti-nuclear that opposes every solution given by scientists.
Not Gen II reactors, which could be [built and running only 4-5 years after the beginning of the construction
Pretty much every nuclear reactor that’s recently been built has been crazily over budget and significantly late. It seems it is usually a decade later than planned.
Anyway, the beginning of construction is a highly misleading timeframe. There’s a long process before construction even starts. Not unique to nuclear reactors.
I dislike nuclear reactor discussions because of similar arguments. E.g. “new technology” fixes some problem, while ignoring the drawbacks. Or when it is pointed out that the approval process can take ages there’s often the “just force it through”. For years I’ve seen people advocate for SMRs. Which turn out to be to have loads of drawbacks, yet again.
If someone says that it’ll take 15 years then the person didn’t solely mean the actual construction. They mean from wanting it to having it working.
If a city decides on a new area for homes the actual construction of those homes is just a tiny part of the whole process. If you buy such a new home there can be a huge difference to when you signed for it and when construction starts. The contract is about start until end of construction, the mortgage around it is not, at least in Netherlands.
Pretty much every nuclear reactor that’s recently been built has been crazily over budget and significantly late. It seems it is usually a decade later than planned.
If you look at the EPRs, well, we can thank the Germans who co-developed the project, and pushed for excessive requirements making the design complex, such as the double containment and the system to make maintenance possible without shutting down the reactor. Requirements that the French didn’t need or want, but which were accepted as a concession to keep the Germans in the project, before they slammed the door anyway.
Even Okiluoto and Hinkley Point can be regarded as serial entries, so different are they from Flamanville, and so much work had to be done to simplify them.
Let’s scrap the EPR design, go back to Gen IIs for now, since we know they’re reliable, safe, cheap and easy to build, and move straight on to Gen IV when it’s ready.
Anyway, the beginning of construction is a highly misleading timeframe. There’s a long process before construction even starts. Not unique to nuclear reactors.
You still have nuclear power plants, you don’t even have to start from scratch. But yes, NIMBYS are a significant problem, but renewables are already facing this problem too, and it’s going to intensify greatly with the amount of space it takes to build wind turbines, solar panels, and the colossal amount of storage it takes to make them viable without fossil, hydro or nuclear power.
I dislike nuclear reactor discussions because of similar arguments. E.g. “new technology” fixes some problem, while ignoring the drawbacks
I’m talking about Gen II reactors like the 56 that make up France’s nuclear power fleet, which are tried and tested, safe, inexpensive, efficient, and have enabled France to decarbonize almost all its electricity in two decades. I’m not into technosolutionism, I’m into empiricism.
If someone says that it’ll take 15 years then the person didn’t solely mean the actual construction. They mean from wanting it to having it working.
Okay, so the 4 Blayais reactors, totalling 3.64GWe (equivalent to almost 11GW of wind power, but without the need for storage or redundancy) were connected to the grid 6.5 to 8.5 years after the first public survey, made before the project was started.
I’m not claiming that every reactor project will be built so quickly, but we have to stop pretending that nuclear power is inherently slow to build. It’s the lack of political will that makes nuclear power slow to build, and it’s not an unsolvable problem.
Yeah, that thing with the SMRs/ Gen II reactors turns out to be not so much a thing: https://ieefa.org/articles/small-modular-reactors-are-still-too-expensive-too-slow-and-too-risky
Gen II reactors are the reactors design which has been built between the 70’s up to 2000, it has nothing to do with SMRs.
My point was that there’s no reason to insist on a ridiculously complex reactor design such as the EPR (which is a Gen III reactor), and that we can simply go back to the proven designs of the second generation for two or three decades, until we finish developing the fourth generation, which has real arguments.
interesting idea, though Chernobyl and Fukushima were both gen2s 💀
I guess it could be made more safe cheaply with modern electronics and software (seeing IoT/“AI”/boeing software engineers in a nuclear facility would freak me the fuck out though)
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima could’ve been avoided/reduced in effect with good failsafe software imo.
I kinda doubt we’d be able to make gen2s cheaper than gen3s (at least in small capacities) though, because their production lines and designs would’ve been long shut down/forgotten
interesting idea, though Chernobyl and Fukushima were both gen2s 💀
The reactor that exploded at Chernobyl was an RBMK model, not a PWR. This implies major design differences from French PWRs, including:
- A positive temperature coefficient, which means that an increase in core temperature leads to an increase in reactivity, which in turn leads to an increase in core temperature, and so on, implying instability and the possibility of a runaway. French PWRs are designed with a negative temperature coefficient, so an increase in core temperature leads to a decrease in reactivity, and vice-versa, physically preventing the runaway that caused Chernobyl.
- A flaw in the shutdown system: graphite rods were used to reduce reactivity during reactor shutdown. On the one hand, these graphite rods descended too slowly into the reactor core, and on the other, they physically increased the reactor’s reactivity when they were first inserted, before reducing it. In fact, it was irradiated graphite that burned and radioactively contaminated the whole area around Chernobyl, not uranium or anything else. On french ones, there is simply no graphite, nothing inflammable nor any rods of any sort, it’s water that’s used to stop the reactors.
- There was also no containment vessel.
Two things to note: the USSR knew about these defects years before the Chernobyl disaster, but the scientists who raised the alarm were neutralized. The other is that the explosion and fire in the reactor were caused by the failure of inexperienced technicians to follow procedures, under pressure from senior management, because the plant was to be visited by a high-ranking official the following day, and therefore the tests they were running at the moment had to be completed at all costs.
Chernobyl exploded because of the USSR’s cult of secrecy and appearance, causing incompetence and corruption.
For Fukushima, it should be noted that Fukushima Daini, although closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, but with better safety standards, was only slightly damaged and even served as a refuge for tsunami survivors.
For Daichii, same thing as Chernobyl, we have a very long list of failures and even falsifications by TEPCO dating from 2002, and even more in 2007, with alarms sounded on all sides by seismologists and scientists of all sides, and the government did not react.
We must understand that these are not disasters that happened out of nowhere, that we could never have predicted, and even less that we could never have avoided. It was a very long succession of bad choices by the incompetent and corrupt.
But despite all this, the Fukushima nuclear disaster caused no deaths, and Chernobyl only killed a few thousand people at most. Nuclear power, in its entire history, has killed only a fraction of what coal kills each year.
I guess it could be made more safe cheaply with modern electronics and software (seeing IoT/“AI”/boeing software engineers in a nuclear facility would freak me the fuck out though)
It has already been done, and without AI/IOT or anything of that kind. For the French REPs, this resulted in the implementation of additional testing protocols (I know that they tested accelerated aging over 10-20-30 years of parts like cables, for example), addition of generators, renovation and improvement of industrial parts, etc.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima could’ve been avoided/reduced in effect with good failsafe software imo.
No. Fukushima Daichi’s walls were just not meant to handle more than a 5 meters wave. It took a 14 meters high wave right in the face.
I kinda doubt we’d be able to make gen2s cheaper than gen3s (at least in small capacities) though, because their production lines and designs would’ve been long shut down/forgotten
The industrial fabric has been crumbling for a long time, that’s for sure, but at least the designs are much simpler, and we have thousands of engineers working on gen IIs and can contribute their expertise. We don’t have any of that on the gen IIIs.
I agree with your points anyway but I still believe better electronics/software would’ve at least reduced the extent of the Fukushima disaster, because iirc one of the big problems was the inability to operate even low power electronics because of the backup power failure.
I’d think that the giant environmental consequences of the disaster could’ve been mitigated if things like pressure sensors from the reactors were visible by operators after the power loss and depressurization vents and the emergency core cooling system could’ve been activated.
imo the software shouldn’t have let the backup batteries to die running the cooling pumps when it would’ve been very important for reducing the overall extent of the damage
Right, lets be pissed about a country that tries to go co2 neutral in a way you dont like, instead of all the ones not moving a finger.
As a German, I am pissed about the way we try to get carbon neutral. Shutting off the nuclear plants before the coal plants was just plain stupid and primarily motivated by unjustified fear and that sweet sweet coal lobby money. And now our energy is still expensive af and still dirty and will be for a while.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that there’s more and more focus on renewables and that they make up a sizeable and growing percentage of our energy supply but it’s pretty clear that that’s not enough or at least not fast enough.
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My country tries to go carbon neutral in a way that’s physically possible to do so, but sadly our efforts here are way meaningless if a much bigger and more contaminating country like Germany goes and opens up coal plants.
We’re a tiny country, we hardly have an impact, Germany is not.
Same. Feels like the older generations just hijacked the discourse on how to decarbonize. “Oh you want to reduce carbon emissions? Fine. But we’ll do it in a way that makes us feel good.”
Boomers had plenty of time to adjust their lifestyle. They failed. Now they want us to take drastic measures to make up for it (or they will want to in the coming decades).
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We haven’t opened up any coal plants in the last 10 years. Only have been closing them down consistently. Go somewhere else with your populist misinformation please.
Edit: also, I’ve been to Chile. 20 million inhabitants (1/4 of Germany) Is hardly “tiny”. And on all those endless bus rides through the Andes and vast windy places, I’ve maybe seen 10 wind turbines total. Similar for solar. Electric vehicles and corresponding infrastructure basically don’t exist. So kindly don’t shit on a country that actually conducts meaningful changes while elevating your own, which evidently does much less.
Total 2022 Co2 emissions:
Germany: 673,6 Mt Source
Chile: 93 Mt Source
2022 % of green energy of total installed electrical capacity:
Germany : 46% source
Chile: 56,5% source
I saw, like everyone else all the news of Germany expanding coal mines, reactivating coal power plants while having the means to not do that (keep using nuclear a while longer), I’m 19, climate change is scary A.F., what can I say, It’s a terrible news to hear that a western country reopens that kind of plant just because reasonably irrational fear of the alternative to it, here in Chile there is a big compromise to do something about it, but like the figures I show above, we don’t matter that much, is hearth breaking to know that my whole country depends on the collective action of countries like you, I feel I can do nothing but to watch while still having to face the consequences.
The reason for not reopening nuclear power plants is not “irrational fear”, although that might be the reason for closing them in the first place, depending on your point of view. Reopening them is plain impossible in a realistic timeframe. Since the closure was something that had been decided many years ago, all of the plants that have been closed already are past their service limit and would have to be renovated / serviced before reactivating them, which is a lengthy process (5+ years). Additionally, some plants that were still open actually were used past their safety limits solely because Russia started a war and reduced our access to natural gas, which was meant to be a kind of intermediary (I know, far from ideal), but there is no feasible way of extending their use any further.
In any case, we are not building more fossil capacity. The only kind of power generation that is being built up is renewable. Nuclear is no renewable source, the fuel is finite. Also, I wonder: what is Chile planning to do with their spent fuel rods? They are proving to be quite the problem for us, Google “Endlager Asse” for some sobering information.
The expansion of coal mines is heavily contested here, we had lengthy and sometimes violent protests at the sites which were unfortunately quelled by police. Again, though - no coal plants were opened or even reopened. All of our coal plants have their end of life decided already and will be closed within the next few years.
I don’t know your linked sources (never heard of the site) and am not in the mood for checking their correctness or comparability, so I’m not going to argue about them.
But, pretending that my country matters that much more regarding our emissions is a little dishonest. As a country, we make up less than 2% of Global emissions, with that figure shrinking rapidly (as your sources confirm, we are reducing per-capita and also total emissions year by year). I agree that saving the world from climate change depends on collective action, but kindly shit on countries that don’t take said action and have a much larger impact on the planet (especially per capita), like, say, China, which has been building quite the amount of coal plants in the last few years or the US, which has insane per capita emissions and heavy opposition to any green technology.
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I can agree to that; ½👓
What do you dislike?
Coal is used less in Germany every year since 20 years and being shut down until 2035.
Other fossil energy sources like oil and nuclear energy are also vanishing.
Wind, solar, water and biomass are rising constantly. That’s sustainable.
Quick question, how is nuclear a “fossil” energy source? You know what that word means right?
The latin term ‘fossilis’ means “dug up”. You might think about by yourself what that means in regard to Uranium.
Nuclear energy is not as clean or cheap as it is portrayed.
One possible meaning of fossil is “any rock or mineral dug out of the earth”, which very much applies to uranium. If you want to police people’s choice of words at least make sure that you know the actual meaning of words. Another meaning, very much applicable here, is “something outmoded”. Something like a lathe can be a fossil without having spent a single second buried.
The more important meaning in this context, imo, is the first one. Unlike solar, wind, hydroelectric power etc., nuclear energy is fossil in the sense that it uses a finite resource which cannot be replenished.
fossil fuel
noun
- A hydrocarbon-based fuel, such as petroleum, coal, or natural gas, derived from living matter of a previous geologic time.
- Any fuel derived from hydrocarbon depositssuch as coal, petroleum, natural gas and, to some extent, peat; these fuels are irreplaceable, and their burning generates the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
- Fuel consisting of the remains of organisms preserved in rocks in the earth’s crust with high carbon and hydrogen content.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
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Still better than pulling bullshit out of your ass.
I am not beholden to colonial language “authorities”.
Also OP said “energy sources”, not “fossile fuels”. Yes that’s unconscionably nit-picky but so was criticising
Other fossil energy sources like oil and nuclear energy
in the first place: It’s perfectly clear what OP means. There’s no possible ambiguity. You attacking that kind of thing contributes to nothing but your own smugness.
