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posted by janrinok on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the black-gold-or-bad-lungs dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @11:50PM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 20 2020, @11:50PM (#946075) Journal
    You said the cost of renewables were on par with fossil fuels. Now, you're saying otherwise via these "problems". Which is correct?

    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)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:01AM (#946098) Journal

    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)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @02:49AM (#946131) Journal
      Note that these alleged rules of the khallow alternate universe (KAU) are completely irrelevant to the thread.

      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)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:09AM (#946139) Journal

        You claimed that renewable energy was at par with the other sorts.

        I claimed that the cost of of renewable energy was at par. Will you care to check?

        you then admitted that maybe it wouldn't cost so little due to grid load balancing issues.

        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)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:04AM (#946250) Journal

          I claimed that the cost of of renewable energy was at par. Will you care to check?

          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.

          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.

          There you go again. After all, why say it in the first place? Let's review what you wrote:

          then there's no problem that needs to be solved at the national level

          Says a out-of-this-world statistician.
          E.g. balancing grid load would be one problem to tackle.

          This is a cost of renewables you continue to gloss over and no, it doesn't need to be addressed at the national level.

          Then I said that even if the renewables are cheaper in cost, it doesn't mean the large availability is immediate.

          Which is irrelevant to our thread except, of course, you then proceed to claim that immediacy is important.

          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.

          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)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:14AM (#946255) Journal

            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

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:48AM (#946272) Journal
              Since we're waiting on the real world to recognize your genius and allow the time for that answer to happen, let me elaborate on why I'm posting.

              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?