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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Bowing to public pressure on climate change, Germany on Thursday promised to speed up its exit from coal power generation and to pay operators compensation in a strategy instantly rejected by environmental campaigners. With the announcement that coals could be history by 2035, instead of 2038 as previously planned, "the exit from coal begins now, and it's binding," Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told reporters in Berlin.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and premiers from the states of Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg agreed overnight a "shutdown plan" for the country's power plants using the highly polluting fossil fuel. The scheme will be written into a draft law set to be presented later this month and ratified by mid-2019. Meanwhile the government will compensate coal plant operators to the tune of 4.35 billion euros ($4.9 billion) for plants set to fall off the grid in the 2020s alone, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said.
The payouts "will be spread out over the 15 years following the shutdown" and represent an "affordable and in my view good result," Scholz added.
Giant RWE, with its power stations in North Rhine-Westphalia, will take the lion's share at 2.6 billion euros. But the group complained that was "well below" the 3.5 billion of losses it expects.
Some 3,000 jobs are set to go at the energy firm "in the short term" and 6,000 by 2030, mostly via early retirement, RWE added. That represents around 60 percent of RWE workers in the especially dirty brown-coal sector and one-quarter of the company's total workforce.
[...] A plan agreed in December under pressure from demonstrators calls for Germany to reduce output of greenhouse gases by 55 percent compared with 1990's levels.
The country has already admitted it will miss an intermediate target for 2020.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:01AM (17 children)
With nuclear being phased out [dw.com] and now coal, what are they going to get power from? Natural gas is cleaner but it's not renewable and it emits CO2. Buying electricity from neighboring countries only sweeps the problem under the rug (not to mention it's a national security vulnerability). And there isn't enough wind or solar to supply the entire country reliably.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:31PM (16 children)
France obtains 71% of its energy from nuclear and is a net exporter of energy [wikipedia.org]
The target Germany set for itself is 60% of energy from renewable resources in 2050 [wikipedia.org]
A big "reserve" that sie Germans can tap on is increasing energy efficiency [cleanenergywire.org] - lagging at 1.6%/yearwhen the estimate of the "possible" shows 2.1%/year. Perhaps if they focus more on this, the percentage of renewables can increase without new capacity being needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:41PM (11 children)
Reminds me of the Scandinavian idea to reduce car fatalities by eliminating the car. It's all fine until you need the work that "inefficient" energy or car was providing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:49PM (2 children)
So you're saying I should return to my old 486 with CRT screen, because all that energy efficiency of the new technology does not do me any good?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:07PM
Because those sorts of easy wins are how Germany will get a future 2.1% reduction in energy usage per year, right? But having said that, what was worse? The slightly higher energy consumption you experienced in your life as a result, or the huge, massive boxes sitting on or near your desk?
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday January 19 2020, @07:44PM
Questionable analogy. My 486DX4-100 with 24MB RAM, 1MB VLB SVGA, Sound Blaster 16, ethernet, and 2.5GB Quantum Fireball only uses 30W. The desktop system I'm on now uses 48W when it's in *standby*. The old 16" CRT used 5W more than the 20" LCD.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:16PM (7 children)
Good. Then it will remind you that your opinion is irrelevant for sie Germans.
Their choice how they want to live and their responsibility of solving their problems and getting there.
Your choice if you want to learn something from them or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @03:43PM (6 children)
Until their illness arrives in my country. Sales of the incandescent light bulb have already been banned because of the thoughtless do-gooders. It's not a stretch to observe that those same dumb people will figure that cutting valuable activity is a great way to reduce the all-important energy demand.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @08:51PM (5 children)
Righto. Would you be pleased with preemptive nuclear strikes against countries that make progress ahead of your country?
You know, just to keep you sheltered in 20th century conditions so that you don't have to learn or adapt to anything new.
Yes, yes, the incandescent bulb was the peak technology in illumination. A great American invention, no less, it's actually unpatriotic to change them with something more than an order of magnitude more efficient.
How dare they ask khallow to use anything else.
Valuable how? Like in "continue to produce the great American incandescent bulbs"/"buggy whips"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @11:45PM (4 children)
Would advanced, 21st Century, preemptive nuclear strikes qualify as being progressive enough for you?
I also find it interesting how Orwellian your rhetoric is. We make "progress" by holding ourselves back.
Or we could simply just not care and let the users decide what bulbs are best for themselves. In addition, efficiency depends on context - such as rarely used bulbs that need to come on instantly.
Like less activity altogether: less people fed, less goods shipped, less work done, less things made.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:47AM (3 children)
Yes, using led lamps in one's entire home is a proof that one is holding back, and using incandescent lights like our forefathers did for millennia is progressive. Very bad that Australians ditched the use of incandescent lights on govt recommendations targeting energy efficiency - bag government, bad.
And we could continue and do the same for some or all the other sectors.
Like we could continue to burn coal and forget about those particulate filters and sulfur oxides scrubbers and whatnot.
How dare government to say that a simple honest businessmen must not make their neighbors spit their lungs in shreds! How dare they impose the extra cost of basic environmental care onto the businesses! That tyranny, you hear?!?
Absofuckinlutely! Those LED lights, they may be cheap and emit a spectrum one has troubles to distinguish it from the warm day light of a day [bunnings.com.au], they may consume 1/5 or less of an incandescent bulb with the same intensity; but gosh, are they slow to light up or what? At least half an hour from switching them on until one can see something, right? Right?
How backwards, retarded and non-progressive of those Australians, oppressed by their government which dictates them to use less energy and reduce their power bills [vic.gov.au]; probably under the pain of death or being deported in... ummm... where?... the Brexiting UK? (sorry, I still can't figure out how your Universe is organized)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:12AM (2 children)
You know it's not going to stop at light bulbs. It's one thing to educate people on the relative energy consumption of various items and processes. It's another to target energy reductions while ignoring what people use energy for. The solution here is to charge people for the energy they use, including possible externalities, and just not care past that.
As to your complaint about LED lightbulbs, how much again do they cost relative to the cheap incandescents of the past? What happens when the bulb doesn't save enough energy over its lifetime to pay for itself?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:35AM (1 child)
As long as you accept CO2 emissions as an externality, I don't have a beef with that.
(I have no complaint about LED lightbulbs)
I have no idea and I consider it of so little importance that's close to irrelevant to me.
1. the bulk of the money the buyer was charged for one was not in the production cost but all the cost and profits for all involved in the distribution chain. So, very likely a comparable price, in the same order of magnitude
2. in terms of "cost of bulbs as percent of the cost of living" - the value is so small it doesn't worth the effort to ponder over the issue
True, there are people that will be interested in those, but I'm not running a company that produces LED lights. Can you fault me for this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @08:44AM
I do too. I just disagree on how much.
I don't recall caring about your opinion on light bulbs either. It's just an example of how things go wrong. Surely, our governments have better things to do with their time?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 20 2020, @12:45AM (2 children)
Problem is that renewable is either solar, in a country that gets next to no sun between about November and March (either because of limited daylight hours or because the sky is end-to-end dull leaden grey), and wind, which is mostly on or near the north sea and in the Bundestag. It'll be interesting so see how they dig themselves out of this one.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 20 2020, @01:08AM (1 child)
I hear the North Sea sports some yuuge waves [energyvoice.com] most of the year 'round.
Maybe by negotiating with their union co-member, Portugal? I hear those have quite a good experience [wikipedia.org] with renewables. Likely sie Germans will need to give something in return to the Portuguese, but it doesn't seem to me as a preposterous and impossible idea.
Hint: as weird as it may sound (to americans?), humanity have more means to evolve than only competition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @03:46PM
Should you ever run across these means, please tell us. In the meantime, we have several large countries with different competing methods of power generation and such. I think it'll be more educational than everyone stumbling along the same track.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:28PM
Under the agreement, the target will be 65% renewable energy by 2030, not by 2050.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by esperto123 on Sunday January 19 2020, @12:14PM (2 children)
oh wait, they panicked after Fukushima and decided to close all nuclear plants instead of revising the safety of the existing ones or replacing by newer more modern ones.
In the end most will be replaced by natural gas, which is better than nothing, but still emits CO2 and makes them even more dependent on russia and other gas producing countries.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @02:30AM (1 child)
The pre-Merkel government had done a "binding" nuclear exit, then Mommy Merkel's government threw that over when she gained power (15 years ago, thank god for term limits in the US).
When Fukushima blew up, they reinstated the nuclear exit because nuclear power was no longer tenable in society.
I'll believe the nuclear exit and coal exit when they actually happens. Completing anything would be a miracle for the German government.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday January 20 2020, @03:48PM
Indeed, both steps were driven by political opportunism. Nuclear is still going strong but the phase-out will happen as laws have been passed and it would be political suicide to turn again. Enough coal will be kept on "stand-by" for sure to prevent any shortages. After the nuclear phase-out (within the next decade) Germany will see an increase in carbon footprint no matter other initiatives. Moreover there is no plan (and no plan for a plan) to deal with the nuclear waste. All in all a typical political clusterf*ck without internal consistency. However, the chaos has mixed up large parts of German industry (electricity producers, car industry). VW has committed huge amount towards development and production of e-cars and is now pushing hard for renewables to be expanded. Germany has positioned itself in a make-or-break position going for electricity but said electricity will most likely be more fossil than intended for some time.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Sunday January 19 2020, @12:21PM (19 children)
You know that the atmosphere is the perfect playground for a world order. Because it inherently has no borders.
Now, Germany decides to pollute less. Laudable and a step in the right direction. But, makes you less competitive with countries that don't or pretend not to care. This would not be a problem if Germany could offset its disadvantage by imposing tariffs. Being part of the EU prevents that. So what's their plan? As of now this seems just a piece of a puzzle, makes little sense by itself.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:17PM (1 child)
Can't Germany just build a wall?
Oh wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @07:57PM
I thought they built the "Atlantic Wall"?
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @01:34PM (11 children)
With the cost of renewables on par with fossil nowadays and predicted to fall further, I'd say [Citation needed] in regards with "makes you less competitive".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:44PM (10 children)
If that is true, then there's no problem that needs to be solved at the national level simply because running fossil would be a money loser.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:12PM (7 children)
Says a out-of-this-world statistician.
E.g. balancing grid load would be one problem to tackle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @11:50PM (6 children)
My take is that balancing and such would already be solved and priced in to the cost of renewables. Because otherwise, you aren't on par.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:01AM (5 children)
Let me try to understand the rules of your parallel Universe. In there:
- It's unheard off to be able to cost your product before you actually put in place the facilities to produce them, right?
- as such, the investment sector of finance is a pure gamble, one is absolutely clueless on the viability of a business until the business runs and not even then - gamble and statistics all the time.
- even more, the monetary cost, the time required to build the infrastructure and the technical details of operational configuration are indistinguishable as concepts, they are interchangeable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:49AM (4 children)
You claimed that renewable energy was at par with the other sorts. Then like a silky haired member of the Mustela family [wikipedia.org], you then admitted that maybe it wouldn't cost so little due to grid load balancing issues.
That's two different prices no matter what sort of future planning and forecasting one does for renewable energy sources. One doesn't need to belong to the KAU to see that you've backtracked considerably on the original claim.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:09AM (3 children)
I claimed that the cost of of renewable energy was at par. Will you care to check?
I admitted nothing at this sort. I said "other problems need to be solved too", without saying that the solutions to these problems will make the monetary cost of the renewable to go over the one of the fossil fuels.
Then I said that even if the renewables are cheaper in cost, it doesn't mean the large availability is immediate.
This in response to your "there's no problem that needs to be solved at the national level simply because running fossil would be a money loser." . One can still profitable in the transition period what on long-term will be a money loser because the cheaper one is not ubiquitous available yet, so the people will pay more for your costly product until everybody have enough of the cheaper cost one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:04AM (2 children)
I already said that and I already quoted your very statement. Seriously. Just because I shortened the phrase once doesn't mean I've forgotten what this is about.
There you go again. After all, why say it in the first place? Let's review what you wrote:
This is a cost of renewables you continue to gloss over and no, it doesn't need to be addressed at the national level.
Which is irrelevant to our thread except, of course, you then proceed to claim that immediacy is important.
Checkmate. You already indicated that near future thinking is allowed so why are we supposed to be hung up on this transition period when there is a post-transition period? And here, if renewables really are, after the "problems" like grid load balancing are paid for, cheaper than fossil fuels and such, they will take over without any need for government huffing and puffing. It doesn't matter if there is a transition period or not.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:14AM (1 child)
Mate, don't take my non-answer the wrong way but I ran out of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:48AM
Here's my fundamental problem with this sort of argument. Poster advocates for some economic intervention policy that involves spending a bunch of money. In support of that argument, they claim economic inevitability of the situation that the policy will enable. Thus, this allows for the counterargument of cheaply sitting on our ass and allowing the inevitability to inevitably happen without spending on the intervention.
In your case, we have the supposed superior economics of renewables which we supposedly want due to the externalities of fossil fuel burning. Ok, then why not allow the inevitable to inevitably happen without spending a bunch of money?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @01:29PM (1 child)
I think this is designed to handle the problem on installed capacity.
That is, it is easier/cheaper to run a plant that exists than to build a new one.
Trouble is the existing plants are doing their best to kill us all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:50AM
Even so, existing plants won't run forever.
If only the rest of the universe, including our own bodies, were trying as hard. We could be nigh immortal!
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday January 19 2020, @07:50PM
Germany doesn't need tariffs, they have the ECB.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 20 2020, @12:48AM (2 children)
Germany competes on quality and reliability, not cost. When people see "Made in Germany" the first thing that comes to mind certainly isn't "well that's going to be a really cheap buy".
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday January 20 2020, @02:35AM (1 child)
First thing I think is, "It better last, cuz you can't get parts."
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 20 2020, @02:56AM
Well that's certainly the case [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday January 21 2020, @07:32PM
Under the EU's Green Deal, tariffs are considered for imported goods based on the carbon pollution associated with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:01PM (4 children)
not sure about this, but my gut tells me that something in global financial book keeping is "off".
if the germans (and anyone else trying to follow in their renewable foot steps) really want to become "energy self reliant" they have
to take a very close look at how the numbers are added and tabulated.
as it is, fossil fuels "belong to no one" and have "no value".
a artificial toll station is inserted to count the extracted amount and a value is assigned. then it gets destroyed (used) and in the global economics books a "gain" is recorded.
if germany stops "destroying" lots of "no-value" energy/fossile fuels then they will not be able to add this number to their financial books?
the other problem is that renewable are ... well infinite.
so even tho it is a stretch to assign a value to fossil fuels because they are limited, we cannot because we can only estimate the size of the limitation.
with renewables being infinite the value also becomes infinitely ... small or zero.
so a country destro... err ... producing fossil fuels, they can add this "value" as something they "made" but how does a (fictional) country using 100% renewable energy tabulate their production?
it becomes even more "strange" once the means of producing "renewable energy devices" are produced from renewable energy?
obviously someone is gonna want to change the way they do their book keeping (value generated) which might lead to some real(!) trade war!
as it is the benchmark, or unit of energy-value in money is tied to fossil fuel sources, once thru then destroyed and assumed limited but unknown to what degree ...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:14PM (2 children)
Well, on a long enough time scale, fossil fuels are renewable too. The problem with infinite quantities spread out over an infinite future, is that they aren't valuable to us now. The typical way to deal with them is to discount future product exponentially based on how far it is in the future. A watt-hour tomorrow is vastly more valuable to us than a watt-hour a thousand years from now which is vastly more valuable than a watt-hour two thousand years from now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:41PM (1 child)
thank you for reply. nevermind the ongoing tos or whatever the problem is with weighting the threads.
i hope they can find a satifactory solution.
anywyas, it is true your arrgument. fossil fuels are still a safe usb power bank, a go to in emergencies so to speak.
i agree totally. but my totally looks totally pale in the bright daily sunburn i am getting and you are banking on.
we cannot and should not rely and it. just because what you say is true (it IS): fossile is renewable.
but we have to change it on it's head. if we fail in powering humankind on daily sun (and wind and geothermal etc) THEN we will fall back on nuclear to turn us into fossil fuel that can be used in ... a renewable time scale.l?
anyways, it amazes even myself that i cannot grasp the implications of having a two dimensional plane supllying a locomotif force ... for free (at least half of the day).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @04:36PM
Not sure what you're saying about nuclear power (it's not particularly dangerous, let us note), but even today reliance on the grid is limited. Any customer that needs 100% uptime has its own backup. Renewable doesn't need to be perfect any more than the fossil fuel-dominated grids of the past did. Sure, I think there's still big reliability issues, but the standards they're shooting for aren't that far out of reach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @10:59AM
No, the problem with renewables is that they can´t provide base load. Night or a cloudy day?-no solar. no wind?- no eolic. Drought?-no hidroelectric.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:11PM (5 children)
Why do we refuse? Who knows? I think it's an antipathy thing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by NickM on Sunday January 19 2020, @08:07PM (1 child)
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:45PM
no, the documents were destroyed.
nukes makes time turn backwards ...
nobody wants a inexhaustable power supply they canjot survive AND makes everthing "start new gaame".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:00PM (2 children)
More likely because we seem to be in a world where the choice between "safety" and "cutting corners for a buck/yen/rouble/pound/yuan etc" always goes the wrong way.
Or, to put it another way, the difficulty with safe nukes lies in people, not technology.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 20 2020, @12:28AM
Well, yeah, antipathy is a people problem. We no longer have any technological issues. We can produce anything we need.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @04:02PM
And yet, I find the people most hostile to nuclear technology are the ones causing those problems - not the profit motive. For example, most of the nuclear sites in the world store fuel rods at the plant rather than some safer depository. Nobody recycles nuclear fuel at present. And there are enormous obstacles to constructing new reactors throughout the developed world. I believe the underlying idea is that if you resist making nuclear power safer, then it'll eventually get discontinued. There's a long history of innovations in unpopular energy choices getting obstructed by environmentalists and NIMBYs.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 19 2020, @07:41PM
Ach, where did we put that list of Jews?