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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Germany, specifically, was one of the worst offenders in this category. They do renewables at maximum capacity (like everyone else) but there's still a massive gap to fill, and with issues of strategic dependence around hydrocarbons, the obvious answer to fill in the missing capacity was coal. Most of the time you get a mix of coal and natural gas, whichever is easier, but in Germany's case that mix was almost entirely on the side of coal.
And without abundant hydro power, or an energy storage solution that could store a full night's worth of energy even if the current deployment of renewables was able to generate that (which it's pretty far from), there aren't a lot more options. Germany's strategy to shut off its nuclear plants out of fearmongering has been a heinous crime against the environment.
When oil companies love your green party you know you fucked up.
I'm assuming the 'gap' refers to the reduced nuclear capacity.
So you're saying that Germany replaced the power previously generated by nuclear power almost entirely with coal power?
Do you have ANY statistics to support that?
The only actual increase in coal energy I know of was an unplanned short time rise due to the war in Ukraine and the loss of gas imports.
Edit: Also the original argument was that coal and nuclear is a false dichotomy. Your own comment mentions a mix of coal and gas, mentions renewables, so clearly there are more than those two options, right?
There was a link in this very same thread (right here) that compares France to Germany. It's a very simple case study: a country that does use nuclear pollutes 10x less per kWh than a country that actively destroyed its nuclear capability. It doesn't get any more simple than that.
Unless your argument is that if Germany didn't shut down nuclear it wouldn't have deployed renewables, which I hope it isn't because it would be a completely lunatic point to make, the situation is the same no matter how you twist the mental gymnastics. Germany's grid is one of the dirtiest in Europe largely because of the lack of nuclear baseline, which, if it was kept, would make it one of the cleanest.
If your argument is that the renewables deployed in Germany should be counted towards replacing nuclear, then you must also accept that Germany failed to significantly cut into its fossil plants with renewables, which other countries managed to do in the same timeframe, because its entire renewable capacity had to go towards filling a gap the shutdown of nuclear left. It's the same difference either way, and it suffers from the same fallacy that you're pretty clearly intentionally making at this point: that you are unwilling to consider nuclear in the context of its alternatives, and are only willing to talk about it either in a vacuum, or in an idealistic situation where renewable capacity and energy storage are high enough that shutting off nuclear will not lead to an increased demand for fossils.
I've addressed that idealistic future in this very same comment section by the way: as soon as we reach a point where we can eliminate fossils and any renewables deployed cuts into nuclear's share, as opposed to that of fossil plants, I'm against nuclear. But that's not the reality of the situation yet. The decommissioning of nuclear plants in Germany was extremely premature, and harmed the environment, both with increased radiation and with gargantuan amounts of CO2 output.
Renewables > Nuclear > Fossils. It's literally that simple. As long as we have fossils, replacing them with nuclear would be beneficial, and any decrease to nuclear capacity is a negative. If you can offset something with renewables, it should be fossils, not nuclear.
I'm saying that coal or nuclear is a false dichotomy, meaning there are other possible choices.
Comparing the carbon intensity of France to Germany does nothing to address this argument.
Your last comment then stated that Germany has replaced coal with nuclear.
Comparing the carbon intensity of France to Germany does not address this argument either.
If you want to show that Germany replaced nuclear with coal then you need to show the development of the energy mix in Germany and show where nuclear capacity decreases and coal increases.
Comparing Germany to France does not show the development in Germany.
And since both countries have a power mix with more than two energy sources, it certainly disproves that there are only two options.
Here is a map of carbon intensity of electricity generation:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity
France has 85g/kWh, Iceland has 29g without nuclear.
Does every country have the same potential as Iceland? No.
Is nuclear the only alternative to coal? No.
Your argument still boils down to the same logical fallacy that I've addressed already.
Germany could deploy X amount of renewables. They had a chance to replace something in the grid. They chose to replace nuclear and keep coal, which is the same difference as if nuclear was replaced with coal. You wasted your chance at shutting down coal plants and instead got rid of a far cleaner energy source, out of fear.
Also, France produces about 40-50 TWh more energy per year than Germany, which about accounts for their hydro advantage. The playing field is as even as it could be, which is why this example showcases the German energy policy's abject failure. And sure, maybe you'll only be pumping 10x as much CO2 to the atmosphere as the French for, say, 10-15 years -- that's a hypothetical compared to today's reality, and even then, how will you justify that decade of environmental damage to future generations?
Even on your own map, almost every country in Europe that's not already in a lighter category is trending clearly down. Germany is one of the very few outliers, joining the pack with Poland, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Is that really all that Germany is capable of? Or are your priorities just clearly misplaced?
No, my Argument since the first comment in this comment chain is that there are multiple sources of power other than coal and nuclear and no matter how often you point out that France has a lower CO2 footprint or how Germany could have prioritized phasing out coal, that very fact remains true and more importantly completely unaddressed.
Talking about logical fallacies then arguing with this. You have two cars, a Pickup and an SUV. You sell your Pickup and get a Prius.
Have you replaced your Pickup with an SUV?
No, but you could have sold the SUV instead to get the Prius. Your analogy fails beyond this point for the same reason your entire reasoning about nuclear fails: because you have chosen two cars that are the same level of harmful to the environment. Nuclear and fossils are not even close to the same level. So let's rephrase this, so that it can actually convey the point we're discussing:
You have two cars, a diesel pickup and an electric pickup. You need two cars and have the opportunity to get a Prius. You sell the electric pickup to get a Prius, instead of the obvious move of selling the diesel pickup.
Yes, technically you did not replace the electric pickup with a diesel truck. You just haven't touched the diesel truck.
Still, what you did is functionally equivalent of selling the diesel truck to get the Prius (which was the expected behavior), and then replacing the electric truck with a diesel truck because you hate electric trucks for some reason. And that is my point. I don't consider your actions in a vacuum, I consider it in the context of your potential. At the end of the day, your fleet still consists of a diesel truck and a Prius, while it could have been an electric pickup and a Prius, which would have been far cleaner.
In the meantime, your French friend sold their diesel pickup and now driving around with a BEV and a PHEV. And you complain that I point out that they did a much better job at reducing their environmental impact than you did. Which was my entire point from the beginning, not the technicality you insist on zeroing in on.
I've understood the point you are making from the beginning.
I just refuse to engage with it, because I'm not discussing enegy policy in the first place.
So you openly admit that you're just detracting from it, focusing on a technicality.
I'm not considering the surface-level meaning of your words here. I'm considering your actions, because it's a hell of a lot harder to lie with actions than with words. And your actions clearly show that you're just propping up Germany's policy of shutting off nuclear and therefore having to run coal where they wouldn't have had to -- and your claim here also confirms that you're willing to be disingenuous and borderline trollish to do that.
But thank you for confirming that you're out of arguments on that topic. I wish your country's leaders could also be this reasonable, because their policy pollutes the same planet the rest of us are also stuck on.