"Thus, this paper poses the simple question – what if Germany had spent their money on nuclear power and not followed their policy from 2002 through 2022 (20 years); would Germany have achieved more emission reductions and lower expenses? To answer this research question requires first an assessment of the results of the German policy covering the period of 2002 through 2022 to establish a baseline. Then, two choices occur that could have been dealt with independently given Germany’s long nuclear history and competence – (1) to keep existing NPPs running, and/or (2) to invest in new NPPs. As noted, Germany has opted out of both these choices and invested in VREs, which makes the case particularly interesting.
The relevance of the research is not only given by the difference in policy choices observed, but also that the German Federal Accounting Office (Bundesrechnungshof) writes about the German policy dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ in German, and it concludes: ‘The Bundesrechnungshof warns that the energy transition in its current form [based on the Energiewende] poses a threat to the German economy and overburdens the financial capacity of electricity-consuming companies and households’ (Bundesrechnungshof Citation2021a). Thus, understanding these policy choices is vital for Germany but also for other countries considering various energy transition paths."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642#d1e128"The 137.5 TWh of electricity that Germany’s “renewable” facilities produced in the first half of 2023 is a pitiful percentage of their supposed theoretical capacity
. A chart at Clean Energy Wire here gives Germany’s generation capacity of solar, plus onshore and offshore wind as 130.8 GW as of 2022. (In a country with only about 85 GW of peak usage!). Add the new 8 GW of capacity added in the first half of 2023, and you would have 138.8 GW of wind and solar capacity, or 602.9 TWh hours of capacity (138.8 x 24 x 181) for the 181 days in January to June 2023. That would mean that the wind and solar facilities combined produced at a rate of only 22.8% of capacity over that period."
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/30/congratulations-to-germany-on-achieving-m...Wow 85 GW Peak, and 138GW of renewables. And it is not enough.
Forum
Pages: 
