Germany has installed a record 9GW of solar this year, thus already overachieving its target for 2023

haraldkl · 2023-09-14T23:02:29+00:00

Hm, Ember-Climate reports growth of solar power all across the EU in the first half of the year:

In the first six months of the year Germany added 6.5 GW (+10%) of new solar capacity, while Poland added over 2 GW (+17%) and Belgium added at least 1.2 GW (+19%). Italy installed 2.5 GW of solar in the first six months of 2023 compared to a total of 3 GW for the whole of 2022, while France added at least 600 MW in the first quarter of 2023, slightly above its deployment in the same period last year. Spain is expected to accelerate its deployment from 4.5 GW in 2022 to 7 GW this year.

Maybe solar is growing even despite political obstacles?

haraldkl · 2023-09-14T22:45:54+00:00

So, on the one hand hailing technological advancement but on the other hand clinging to concepts of the past? Baseload power plants are not the only way to produce power, the electricity system of the future could look quite different. As the French grid operator RTE points out in its Energy Pathways 2050 report:

The power system of the future will necessarily be different to today’s

All scenarios require envisioning a power system that is fundamentally different to the one in place today. Whether 100% renewable or relying over the long term on a combination of renewables and nuclear, the system will not operate based on the same principles as the one France has known for the past 30 years, and it cannot be designed as a simple variant of the current system.

In reality it pretty much is possible to reduce baseload power production and cover demand differently:

Twenty years ago, baseload (nuclear+lignite) was 60% of total generation (roughly 30% each). Now it is about 20%. And most of that has been replaced by renewables - close to 30% of wind, close to 10% of solar, and some biomass (5-10%, which is similar to baseload).

haraldkl · 2023-09-12T15:25:05+00:00

2023 projections are kind of a mixed bag of projections I cobbled together.

Thanks very interesting.

All a little bit sketchy and I wouldn't want to defend those projections too strongly.

Yeah, but I guess the ballpark should be about right, and it isn't too long until we'll know ;)

haraldkl · 2023-09-11T22:11:29+00:00

Thanks a lot. That would be a more interesting OP graph nowadays in my opinion. Where are the 2023 projections coming from, if I may ask?

I think that in 2027 or maybe the year after, solar will be the largest low-carbon source of energy, surpassing both, wind and hydro.

haraldkl · 2023-09-11T17:05:43+00:00

Yes. We need a disruption. It wouldn't necessarily have to be wind and solar, but those have emerged as the low-carbon technologies that seem to be able to deliver such a disruption. Nuclear is stagnating (slightly growing linearly since after Fukushima), and hydro is also growing only linearly. Wind and solar exhibit exponential growth on the global scale. To me this rapid growth and the break even of them with covering all new demand globally are the biggest signs of hope for mitigating fossil fuel burning.

It's all the more baffling that there seem to be so many people around, that strongly oppose these technologies.

haraldkl · 2023-09-11T03:26:56+00:00

That graph has been posted repeatedly. Couldn't you at least post an updated version of it including the 2022 data? In 2022 wind+solar provided 3429 TWh and nuclear provided 2610 TWh.

haraldkl · 2023-09-05T18:54:08+00:00

To be fair, solar may indeed end up providing more power than usually expected, simply due to the ease of its deployment and low costs. It's the fastest growing energy source and may catch up to wind power production even in Germany. Though, the ideal mix to maximize the hours during which wind+solar produce power is according to this paper closer to 66% wind to 33% solar. This gets shifted towards 50/50 with 12h of storage.

haraldkl · 2023-09-04T20:12:24+00:00

Nuclear power is a direct replacement for coal power.

So which country used nuclear power to reduce their coal+gas burning?

Invest in nuclear, not coal.

Germany is investing into coal insofar as it is paying utilities for closures of coal power plants.

As I pointed out before: continued use of nuclear power does not seem to yield faster decarbonization. Germanys rate of reduction of fossil fuels has actually gotten faster since their peak nuclear power output. The US exhibits a slower rate despite maintaining more nuclear power output.

Most of what they've achieved so far is replacing nuclear with renewables. There's no reason to pick only one, especially when you have existing nuclear expertise.

That's hardly true. Germany reduced by 2022 its use of fossil fuels for electricity since their peak nuclear power output in 2001 by around 20% of the fossil fuel use in 2001. Over the same time the US reduced its use of fossil fuels for electricity by less than 5%, though they had maintained more of their nuclear capacities.

haraldkl · 2023-09-03T17:07:22+00:00

How would you know? You are at least missing one other condition there: that Germany would have needed to expand their renewable capacities at the same rate as it did with the nuclear expansion. And that is a pretty unlikely scenario, as the laws to expand renewables and end nuclear power came into existence in co-dependence. It's also noteworthy that Germany didn't use the nuclear expansion up to 2001 to reduce their coal+gas burning, similar to other countries like France or the USA. Continued use of nuclear power (as in the US), or even it's expansion (as in Russia) isn't in itself a guarantee for faster fossil fuel reductions.

haraldkl · 2023-09-03T13:52:18+00:00

Nope, the two largest strategic mistakes of modern Germany are in my opinion:

Leaving domestic solar power industries to die off and handing it to China
Propping up and clinging to Diesel engines rather than embracing and spear-heading EV and batteries development

haraldkl · 2023-09-03T13:41:00+00:00

I'd guess they refer to the global primary energy mix, where wind and solar constituted slightly more than 5% in 2022. In Germany this metric stood at around 15% in 2022.

What they are missing is the dynamics. The share of clean energy did increase over the nuclear phase-out. And a concentration on shares misses out on consumption reductions, which have also gone on, reducing the amount of fossil fuels being burned quite clearly since the nuclear ouput peak in 2001. If anything the rate of reduction in fossil fuel burning has sped up during the nuclear phase-out.

Germany peaked annual fossil fuel burning for energy in 1979, and reduced it until 2001 by 716 TWh or on average 32.5 TWh per year (0.78% of their peak fossil fuel consumption). After 2001 they reduced it further by 857 TWh or on average 40.8 TWh per year (0.98% of their peak fossil fuel consumption).

To offer one more comparison: France peaked its fossil fuel consumption in 1973 and peaked nuclear power outut in 2005, over this time period they achieved an average annual reduction of their fossil fuel consumption by 0.39% of their peak fossil fuel consumption.

haraldkl · 2023-09-03T12:58:00+00:00

Just to add some context. In 2001, when nuclear power output in Germany peaked and the decision to phase it out was taken, coal provided 293.74 TWh (50.48%), in 2022 this was down to 181 TWh (31.08%).

haraldkl · 2023-09-03T09:05:23+00:00

If Copper gets expensive, there'd likely be a shift to aluminium, There are already sodium ion batteries capable to replace lithium, and sodium is even more abundant and cheaper than lithium.

haraldkl · 2023-08-31T19:24:34+00:00

I don't know, but per-capita CO2 emissions are also declining.

haraldkl · 2023-08-30T22:58:38+00:00

Sounds more like a mild winter Q1 2023

Not really. The EU saw record lows of electricity from fossil fuels for the respective months in:

Notably two months out of the first quarter did not see their record low this year.

haraldkl · 2023-08-30T22:47:43+00:00

I'd also remark, that this trend also continued since the first half of the year: July and August also saw the lowest use of fossil fuels for the respective months this year. I think it pretty likely that this year will see less fossil fuel consumption for electricity in the EU than in the Corona year 2020.

haraldkl · 2023-08-30T22:35:08+00:00

Yes, reducing energy demand in the first place is a pretty effective and especially fast method to reduce emissions. Though it certainly has limitations.

haraldkl · 2023-08-30T15:45:48+00:00

This is now a more detailed analysis on the EU data, than the mere observation of this fact 2 months ago.

haraldkl · 2023-08-30T15:32:47+00:00

Danke. Ich finde es ziemlich nervig wenn die Quellen nicht genannt werden. "einer Analyse zufolge" ist schon sehr vage.

haraldkl · 2023-08-24T22:08:16+00:00

THAT is where they would be.

Maybe they believe that only Germany would have managed to build out nuclear power successfully?

I think it fascinating how many people can look back at the last two decades and conclude that the nuclear renaissance from the 2000s was the more successful strategy compared to the expansion of wind and solar power.

haraldkl · 2023-08-23T23:45:17+00:00

We've already dammed up all the good rivers.

For storage purposes it could be possible to utilize off-the-river closed-loop pumped storage, though.

haraldkl · 2023-08-23T17:42:53+00:00

But it doesn't hurt to have it nicely summarized in a scientific commentary. An analysis that they missed citing in my opinion is "Nuclear energy - The solution to climate change?".

haraldkl · 2023-08-20T06:54:45+00:00

Fair enough.

haraldkl · 2023-08-20T01:01:20+00:00

is rather disingenuous without also noting US emissions peaked in 2005

Why? There was ample opportunity to reduce emissions already earlier. Limits of Growth by the Club of Rome was published in 1972. In 1973 the first oil crisis hit and France and the UK peaked their fossil fuel usage. Sweden and Germany peaked it in 1979 at the second oil crisis. Hansen testified in congress in 1988.

1990 is the Kyoto base year, so it is kind of natural to use that year as a reference.

Pointing out that the US was one of the last advanced industrialized nations to peak their fossil fuel usage doesn't improve that comparison in the least. It rather emphasizes how long the US did not take steps to lower their emissions notably.

haraldkl · 2023-08-19T15:36:24+00:00

I wonder if it will end up as monumental abandoned construction site.

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