Comment on rollin' coal
woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 months agoreplacing them with coal
That’s not what agora-energiewende.de/…/ein-jahr-kernkraftausstie… is saying. Lignite (“Braunkohle”) -29TWh, hard coal (“Steinkohle”) -26TWh. A big factor of dealing with the evolved situation are much fewer energy exports (-23TWh).
realitista@lemm.ee 4 months ago
If you close a nuclear power plant before closing a coal one, you are effectively replacing the nuclear with coal. It makes no sense to shut down nuclear plants before all the coal ones are shut down first.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 4 months ago
That’s not how words work.
Your data source is outdated. You’re looking at data up to 2022, whilst his data shows 2023-2024, which is more recent.
2022 also saw problems like the Ukraine war frustrating gas supply, forcing the use of more coal. And there was covid throwing a wrench into things as well.
Nuclear powerplants in Germany were beyond their lifespan and fixing and modernizing them was not economically feasible. Just too expensive compared to other forms of energy.
Germany certainly hasn’t been “replacing nuclear with coal”.
realitista@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Closing a nuclear plant means you keep a coal plant open. So you are in effect replacing nuclear with coal. If you kept the nuclear plant open you could close the coal plants instead. Idiotic move.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 4 months ago
The nuclear plants in Germany were too old and too expensive to maintain. At some point a reactor is just end-of-life. They get operational issues causing semi-frequent shutdowns. The reliability issues become a problem that skyrockets the costs further.
Closing a nuclear plant like that puts enough money back in the budget to afford a faster transition to renewables, which ultimately closes down the coal plants faster too. It’s about the big picture, it’s not as simple as simply saying “we’ll do less coal” or “we’ll do less nuclear”.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I got this idea from reading (and linking) a recent 2024 source that you clearly didn’t read or ran through a translator. Your 2022 source is outdated.
Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 4 months ago
Mate, they closed the power plants because they have long surpassed their design operating hours. The upkeep alone costs so ridiculously much, no one can pay that kind of shit. Germany has even postponed the closing date due to the immediate crisis the Russians have created.
realitista@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I’d like to believe that this is true, but after the revelations of how much Merkel and Schroeder were in bed with the oil industry as well as the green party’s role in this, I’m skeptical to say the least.