What a fucking joke. It's amazing how all these countries set weak goals for themselves and then fail anyway.
We're all going to die lol
The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.
That's basically what Germany did. They recently shut down their nuclear plants and restarted their coal plants.
And yet coal power production is practically at the lowest level ever (except for corona months 03/20 and 04/20)
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&chartColumnSorting=default&year=-1&month=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute×lider=1&legendItems=000001010000000000000
Wow... Where have I read that lie before? Oh, yeah. 20 times in this thread already, because you all get your alternative reality sppon-fed by the same lobbyists.
Actual reality:
The "massive" amount of nuclear shut down
That is just blatant misinformation. Name one single coal plant that has been restarted since nuclear power was phased out.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-reactivates-coal-fired-power-plant-to-save-gas/a-62893497
The Mehrum plant in Hohenhameln and the Heyden plant in Petershagen (whose operation has been extended).
Unless your nitpick is that these were started before the final nuclear shutdown, but I never said otherwise, only that both things happened recently.
Yes, but the goals in germany are written into a law, and the highest council actually blaming the government for failed goals.
Still not gonna change a damn thing. The (federal) government(s) don’t care, they are busy framing harmless protesters as potential terrorists and jailing them accordingly. Or they simply change the law again so that they do not have to be held accountable for their missed goals (see the ministry for transport).
The goal is complete decarbonization until 2045 and a lot of sectors in Germany are already on track with that goal, energy being one of them. That with a minister of finance, that does not want to spend money and a minister of transportation, that is more a puppet of the automobile industry and does not care about decarbonization. Imagine the US without the huge subsidies into clean energy. That's what Germany is trying to do under their current minister of finance.
I'm much more optimistic, though I do think it will get worse before it gets better. I think we'll end up with a few mass killer enviromental events before humans start to save themselves properly. It'll never be too late as Earth is always going to better than anywhere else for us.
Quick list of things hopeful in my feeds of the top of my head.
There is a lot of movement. It's all about aligning economics with fighting climate change. Which is natural as using less to do the same thing is better for both.
One thing that is a very good sign is oil companies are scared. They are spending a lot of money pumping out FUD. Doom peddling to slow climate action, but economics is against them. Even without climate damage being costed in. Which governments will do when oil is less powerful.
Fight the doom!
German here.
Even back under Merkel, elected parties had a habit of defining good goals and then rendering them impossible to hit through policy. This meant that no one could fault them for trying, and no one could fault them for not being able to hit them.
Nowadays my countrymen aren't as stupid anymore. That doesn't mean we can do anything about it, but especially since Merkel we don't believe any of these leaks anymore.
Not german but I'm in the same continent and in a country that nobody really cares about and we are nearing the threshold where renewables produce more than we require to run the country.
Funny thing is, private citizens are doing more for that effort alone than government in real terms because saving money is high on the priorities list here and free, renewable energy is a good thing, even more if you can produce it yourself.
Meanwhile, we've been fighting the government to cancel the authorization to log nearly 2000 old growth cork oaks for installing a solar panel farm when we have a lot of room to plant off shore wind farms.
Nobody really understands what is going on.
This is the German plan:
The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic. "Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme," Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday
The plan for transportation emissions, 2/3 of the target to be cut, is WFH. Yikes!
If only there was some means of replacing all that coal with a non-carbon intensive source of energy that isn't dependant on the weather...
Has anyone heard of such a technology?
Sarcasm aside, that Germany shut down their last two nuclear reactors so recently and carried through is astounding. The excuses are mind-boggling. They're old? Refurbishing is cheaper and faster than new built. They need re-certification? Then do it.
It's more efficient to use the money required for
And spend it on renewables than to do the above.
Also a big factor noone seems to care about: staff. The people who worked there have other jobs now. You can't just plop a reactor plant somewhere and expect it to make electricity you need highly specialised staff for that. We also did not invest into training new staff because why would we, with the stop for nuclear power being decided 10 years ago.
How about you guys stop this bullshit about the nuclear plants stuff? They were scheduled to be shut down for a VERY long time, the biggest mistake was selling out nearly all the renewable energy manufacturing to China. Nuclear power is only making a profit, if it's subsidized like crazy.
Not only that - A LOT of Germans are actively against putting up more wind power, let alone photovoltaics. Which is what over 50% voted "against" as well. Those that didn't go voting, have lost all say in it, so yeah. That's not a political issue, we Germans are the issue.
You forgot to add that we were once leader in solar tech, but that industry got destroyed willingly by the then ruling CDU and Peter Altmeyer.
If all the subsidiaries that went into nuclear power the last few decades went to renewables instead Germany would have no issues at all, but hey... giving tax payer money to some very few giant energy companies is more important than creating a Europe leading renewables energy sector that does not rely on russian fossils or nuclear material.
You should know that nuclear power is very expensive while renewables are absurd crazy cheap. I've been to a German Endlager and it takes years and BILLIONS of Euros just to seal this thing off. Guess who is paying? Mostly tax payers.
There's be no company in Germany which would be willing to run a nuclear power plant if they were responsible for the permanent disposal of their waste on their own instead of letting the tax payer pay (most of) for it.
@Grimpen@lemmy.ca You are misinformed there. The energy sector reaches its goal and offshore wind farms and solar panels are actually over-performing, meaning more are built than was planned for this year. The sectors largely missing their goals are the transport and the building sector.
Wow what a surprise, guess brown coal isn’t good for the climate. Bunch of idiots those German politicians. They even tried to weaken that EU bill that bans the sale of new fossil fuel cars.
You'd think the shock of the gas shortage from Russia would of been a wake up call and they'd be ahead of a timeline like this....
getting rid of nuclear power for russian gas was always a bad idea and this is why
Except that never happened. Gas is mostly used for heating in Germany, not for electricity like nuclear power. I don't know where this rumour started (probably somewhere on reddit) but it's just not true.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying that relying so much on Russian gas was a good move or that we couldn't (and shouldn't) have done a lot more to move away from coal. But that particular argument is misinformation.
Shit I had hoped we could leave the nuclear stans over at reddit.
What’s wrong with nuclear?
Nothing in general. Well the build times are rediculous in Europe and planning right not to build nuclear soon is too late already for any agreed upon climate goal. But that's another matter...
The problem is the brain-washed nuclear cult on social media briganding everything. In the last year on Reddit you couldn't even post any report about any new opening of wind or solar power without it degenerating into always the same story: "bUt ReNeWaBlEs DoN't WoRk! StOrAgE DoEs'Nt ExIsT! tHeY aRe A sCaM tO bUrN mOrE FoSsIl FuElS! gErMaNy KiLlEd ThEir NuClEaR To BuRn MoRe CoAl BeCaUsE ThEy ArE InSanE!!"
Mentioning the fact that Germany in reality shut down reactors not even contributing 5% of their electricity production that were scheduled for shutdown for 30 years and in a state you would expect with that plan and already more than replaced by renewables got you donwvoted into oblivion every single time.
No matter the platform worldnews comments contain mainly ignorant, overconfident bullshit. Glad to know that there are some things in life one can depend upon.
I wonder if they would ever reconsider what they did for the deactivation of nuclear power plants.
Because uranium appears out of thin air and it's not being extracted in politically volatile areas. Every Euro that's spent on a nuclear reactor is an euro that would be better spent on renewable energies.
And of course, the materials that go into solar panels and other renewable tech (lithium ion batteries) also appear out of thin air and isn't extracted in environmentally degrading ways...
Depends. Renewables are faster at decarbonising than nuclear. Only if we're starting from scratch. They're also cheaper, and at scale, more reliable. Difference here was, Germany shut down existing nuclear before they could ramp up renewables. I will add that this is the most generous argument to maintain nuclear.
I wonder if any of the nuclear bros on here ever consider, that jerking a fuel rod isn't always the best approach?
Seriously, every fucking time this comes up and every fucking time you guys show nothing but arrogance and ignorance, both usually weapons grade.
I don't understand the hostility. Germany made a conscious decision to turn off their nuclear power plants.
Facts are facts. Nuclear power is the 2nd safest power generation method per terawatt hour. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
Additionally there are ways to recycle nuclear fuel. Most often the arguments against nuclear are fueled by emotion and not fact based.
Germany isn't failing its climate goals because of getting rid of nuclear power. In 2018 6,3% of our energy (not just electricity) came from nuclear power. May all the nuclear chills please kindly stfu?
Letting those few remaining nuclear power plants stay active for another few years would've done jack shit. We're failing because of shortcomings in many sectors. The worst offenders currently are housing (~25% of total CO2 emissions) and transportation (19%).
Perhaps the timetable for them could've been extended, but when literally one of the largest nuclear power companies in the world prefers renewables, and balks at the cost of opening a nuclear powerplant without significant government guarantees and subsidies, that should tell you something. The nuclear argument is usually fuelled by the mining lobby. Even China, who does not care for public opinion, and has an active nuclear stake for military purposes, prefers renewables. The only argument for Germany was the when was the appropriate time to shut down the reactors, not that it shouldn't have been done.
I don’t understand the hostility
Possibly a German Green. They are hostile like that towards nuclear. Ironically that made the German Green Party effectively a coal party (they don't like to hear that).
Well duh? Are they nationalizing all carbon emitting industries to begin a managed decline of the industry or are they hoping economic magic and wishful thinking will work?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BERLIN, Aug 22 (Reuters) - German goals to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030 are likely to be missed, meaning a longer-term net zero by a 2045 target is also in doubt, reports by government climate advisers and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) show.
"According to the current status, Germany would still emit 229 million tonnes of climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions in the target year 2045," the UBA report found.
Under pressure from the pro-business FDP party, the ruling coalition in June agreed to dilute a bill to phase out oil and gas heating systems from 2024.
Building minister Klara Geywitz said the sector was making progress but needs improvements in some areas to close the emissions gap, adding that climate protection measures should be practical and doable to avoid overtaxing people.
The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic.
And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme," Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday.
The original article contains 679 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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