The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat.
A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2].
Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre.
Yeah, plus the ethical angle. It's a bit ridiculous that we have people researching the 'theoretical ethical treatment of LLMs' when we are doing such awful things to animals on a massive scale.
We have dogs and cats as pets and we eat cows and pigs (in Western countries). As if cows and pigs didn't also have personalities, memories, parental bonds, the ability to feel pain. It's a mass wilful ignorance.
What's the difference between us and animals? I would argue that it's our ability to take ethical decisions and not inflict suffering even if it goes against our base instincts.
It's not about being alive, it's about having emotions and the ability to feel pain.
Plants don't cry out for days when their children are taken away from them. Plants don't remember your face, come up to you and want attention. Plants don't scream when they are killed (no matter what some edgy research shows).
Or to put it more simply, would you feel bad pulling a plant out the ground? I would imagine probably not. Would you feel bad pulling the lever and watching as a pig is lowered into a gas chamber? Or while slitting a cow's throat? I would imagine probably yes (hence why slaughterhouse employees have so many mental health issues and there is such high turnover).
Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets. Even culturally, pork (and now chicken) were the proteins of choice.
>Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets.
Beef is too expensive for many Europeans because GDP per capita/standards of living are declining in many European countries. People in East Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and South America still eat plenty of beef too.
That is true, however beef was always somewhat of a luxury in many European regions, simpily due to geography and population density. We don't have a lot of cheap grazing land to raise cattle on. And if you have cattle it's typically more economical to use them for diary than meat.
Yeah, since COVID and then the Nord Stream terror act they raised beef prices to unsustainable levels. Döner (which is cheap ground sausage like beef in practice) between 7 and 10 EUR now (was between 3,50 and 4). Blockhouse steak (tiny) is 48 EUR.
>> Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate.
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>IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.
They said cheese not milk. Note that it takes more than 1 unit of milk to produce 1 unit of cheese. From this source I found, they estimate ~10 input units of milk per output unit of cheese [1].
Assuming both of these is true, and assuming that the cheese making process produces no carbon, then a chicken filet would have the same carbon impact as .8oz of cheese or roughly a single slice of cheese.
The cheese making process does produce carbon (e.g. heating the milk) but it also produces whey as a valuable byproduct.
I switched to fortified soy milk and haven't looked back. Milk is tasty but soy has less sugar as well and now I prefer it. Cheese is harder to make a substitute but eating it 1-2 per year satisfies my craving.
I don't think it is, I think it's the methane, which is by far the largest greenhouse gas contributor in the process. Besides, the other emissions go away once your energy production is renewables.
I question the methodology of that 100kg (per kg) figure for beef, for several reasons:
1. It's not the true Carbon or CO2 figure. It's weighted for other greenhouse gases. That's kind of an issue because methane naturally breaks down (into CO2 and water) over time. The methane issue comes up all the time in such estimates (eg leaks in natural gas pipelines) where methane is a worse greenhouse gas but temporary (7-12 years) and CO2 is essentially forever (until sequestration or photosynthesis);
2. Production method really matters here. American beef, for example, is primarily grain fed. That grain requires fertilizer (more natural gas) and distribution. Australian beef, for example, is largely fed on natural grasses and vegetation, typically until the last 60-120 days where it's transitioned to grain for marbling. American cattle is also heavily fed on corn, which really shouldn't exist in the quantities it does;
3. Ecosystems are complex. One of the big causes of the dust bowl, for example, was the destruction of the great bison herds. Replacing the natural grasses with crops like wheat was just the last straw. The point of the bison is that they're heavy, like up to 2000+ lb heavy, and they leave deep hoof prints on the plains. Water collects there when it rains and feeds cgrasses and the aquifers.
This has been backed up elsewhere too. China has had long projects to stop the desertification of the Gobi and spent a ton on planting trees with varied successes. You know what did work? Horses. They released horses and the same thing happened. Horse hoof prints allowed water to collect and grasses to grow and spread. Grasses, as it turned out, were key to stopping desertification, not trees.
So the point is that certain ecosystems need large herd herbivores to survive. So if you got rid of cattle entirely, what other second order effects would there be?
More practically, people just arne't going to give up meat. Sorry. Unless it become sprice prohibitve (as beef arguably is rapidly becoming now).
On the ecological point, the difference is whether the grassland would naturally support that number of bison. Or if bison (or cows) are continually being grown, killed, grown killed at industrial scale beyond the normal bison lifecycle. With many carbon inputs (fossil-fuel based fertilizer, etc) and production costs (slaughtering, transport, etc).
Wild bison live 15-20 years.
Cattle raised for beef ~18 months.
That's beyond the natural carbon cycle an existing ruminant population.
Also horses, in my reading of the data, actually have less of a methane impact. They have a different digestive system entirely.
On the methane point, methane, yes, is a greenhouse gas that breaks down over years (~12 years). But has far worse impact on climate while its in the atmosphere.
It’s completely made up. All meat is carbon neutral because animals don’t produce carbon atoms from nothing. They get them from the plants they eat which in turn get their carbon from the atmosphere.
The carbon cycle is basic scientific fact yet confidently ignored by people who hate things like logging and meat.
But the supply of herd animals is essentially fixed. There isn’t infinite growth. Eating meat therefore does not increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, no matter what vegans who want to ban meat for personal moral reasons assert.
If humans stopped eating meat, the only way to reduce the amount of carbon that animals “emit” would be to kill all of them and bury their carcasses underground where they can’t decompose (as that would turn them into CO2).
This is the most Euro commie thing I've heard in a long while.
Sure, get rid of factory farms and CAFO's, but I see nothing wrong with raising animals on family farms where they eat a nutritious diet in line with what they evolved to eat.
Grass for cows, pasture and bugs for poultry, silvopasture for pigs. Anyone who wants to go vegan for ethical or environmental reasons is fine, but I hate this idea that all of us have to fall in line with your crazy ideas.
The problem is, you have to choose. Do you really think people can continue to eat meat 2-3 times a day, purely supplied by family farms where animals are able to roam free?
The reality is that the only way to feed people's insatiable demand for meat is to use factory farms. You can't factory farm without causing suffering to animals, and you can't factory farm without use of antibiotics, etc.
Also you say, 'evolved to eat'. Do you really think people were eating meat every day throughout human history? This started after WWII with mass agriculture and factory farming. That's why so many cultures have beans and rice as their primary dish: it's a perfectly balanced protein.
If 'evolved to eat' is your primary concern then actually you should be eating meat like once or twice a month, max. Evolution doesn't happen in less than a century.
How many miles does the burger drive my car? Not to question your numbers but they lack context. Also, it would be good for nature if there were fewer or no humans on this planet. But then there would be no human here to enjoy nature.
Sorry but this is just such an ignorant comment. You really need to read up on how agriculture contributes to global warming and loss of land/deforestation. What do you think cows eat, air?
Nihilistic bullshit isn't the hot take you think it is. The problem isn't too many people. The planet couldn't handle billions more if we used resources correctly. Is your idea of "humans enjoying nature" extreme deforestation and water scarcety?
But you just read an argument, and then completely ignored it, instead started brining up other aspects of red meat.
That most red meat is very co2 expensive compared to getting the proteins from other sources is a relevant argument for many of us, and not a particularly 'strange obsession' for those of us caring about reducing our co2 footprint.
>Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.
Most of the people pushing it are doing so because they believe it's immoral to eat meat, so they'll latch onto whatever excuse they can to try to stop people.
In the spring I will get 3 cows with calf-a-foot who will graze the immense amount of herbal leys we have, as well as maintain our SSSI fields, and then in a few years some of them, the meanest, will go off to the abatoir to become the very finest and well fed beef that money can buy.
We'll expand the herd, and do mob grazing to maintain our species rich grasslands and our SSSI fields, while also providing the best beef to those that appreciate it, family first of course.
Grass fed and pasture fed, are not good enough. The cattle need a wide variety of food, which starts with more than grass or a monoculture pasture.
I have heard this news many times, technically not wrong, but each time with a different metric. This time it is production over a year.
It reminds me of the Voyager probes that left the solar system half a dozen times, each time taking a different definition of what marks the edge of the solar system.
Anyways, we are now getting to sensible metrics, which is good.
But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem.
The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those that don't.
Gas became expensive, energy for private houeholds became expensive, despite that electric energy for industries is currently on the same level as 2020. Even though there was a short spike in 2022.
See: https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...
Markets are now committed than a single pipeline. Germany was importing most gas through other channels - pipelines through Eastern and Southern Europe and shipping - as well as of course plenty of oil. While the NortStream cut had a significant short term impact it took much more effort to wean the country off all the other routes.
That is a half truth. A turbine was broken, repaired in Canada, which required a lot of bureaucracy. Then the turbine was shipped to Germany. Then the Russians started their own bureaucracy and came up with excuses why the turbine could not be installed.
During that time Nord Stream was blown up.
The point is moot, since Putin has offered multiple times to open the remaining intact pipe:
And the broken pipes can be repaired, as was determined in the LLoyds lawsuit recently.
I'm not saying that reopening would be reliable, but it would be one diversification away from US and Qatar dependencies. The US just cut the EU off from Qatar gas.
Political decisions that lead to that point and geopolitical situation. The russians cut the gas on their terms because it would have happened anyway and they were not stupid. Then somebody else blew the pipe up and the whole discussion conveniently ended. The divestment from russian economy and blocking imports was already established, but germany and others could not phase out the gas that fast.
Still, when did Germany cut off Russian gas back then? I don't think there is particular complexity in the sequence of events back then. Germany back then was not seeking an end to supplies then and there, if I recall correctly.
It doesn't matter what they wanted to do. What matters is what happened. As a result of their actions they got cut off. If Germany had invaded Ukraine (via Poland?) the gas might still be on. Of course we don't know that because other countries would likely take offense to that action and I'm not willing to predict how the world would change if they had. (I can't even imagine change would cause them to be willing to invade in the first place, much less how everyone else would respond.)
Politics often are about the unintended consequences. Often they are also unforeseen.
Germany joining the Russian invasion was never anything even remotely in the option space at all - utterly inconceivable in 2022. (Not aware of Russia seeking any such support there either.)
Probably not directly invading, but there was a strong possibility of Germany supporting the Russian invasion, just as they're doing with the invasion of Iran.
I think what grandparent is very very fucking poorly trying to say is, Germany/EU could've accepted the "annexation" of Ukraine like it did Crimea in 2014. "Bad Putin! But what can we do."
If you take a look at ng prices you will see that the prices went up more than half a year before Russias invasion of Ukraine: https://www.macrotrends.net/3235/eu-natural-gas-prices The reason for this was because Gazprom stopped supplying the spot market and also bought storage capacity and kept it empty. All of that only made sense after the invasion to better blackmail Europe. It was their bad luck that China allowed them to attack only after the Olympics which took most of the force out of that blow. Anyway there was no sane way to continue this business relationship.
And then Russia refused to install the turbine, proving it was a ploy all along. Like the maintenance in the first place. Which is why they acquired gas storage in Germany, then ran it low timed with their illegal war of aggression. This is a theme of course; Russia invented another gas crisis every few years with Ukraine. It should have been a warning sign when they settled them by taking payment in the form of Soviet-era cruise missiles.
The gas was never cheap, either; apart from the money spent now to restrain the military buildup and invasion it financed, even at the height of supplies it was much higher price than China is paying, a price sustained by Russia using military force and more to restrain other (Asian) countries from supplying to Europe.
(This was obvious to everyone, right? A single majority supplier nation state charging a cheap price out of the kindness of their heart? No, of course not; neither cheap nor kind. It was a monopoly, built on blood.)
They installed it and then they took the pipeline down for planned maintenance.
it's a little rich to accuse them of playing games with gas after the stunt Canada pulled and most especially after a western partner subsequently blew up the pipeline and blamed it on Russia.
Clearly certain western allies decided that Germany couldnt be trusted to make its own decisions about where Germany gets its energy.
They reopened the pipeline after the planned maintenance. Then they said there was another issue and suspended supply indefinitely, and then the pipeline got destroyed.
If you want to see their approach to maintenance while prices and needs are high, watch them put oil refineries back in operation days after drone hits.
I don't think the turbine that was serviced in Canada was causal there. The turbine thing was earlier, as far as I recall it. Gazprom announced its decision in early Sep 2022, btw.
You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
Arguably Sweden (and possibly the other Nordic countries too) are even better places to live (or at least equally good). Well, as long as you can stand the climate and the lack of sun in the winter.
We have right to roam in nature here, which is quite rare across the world (and even compared to the few other countries that have something similar, the Swedish variant is stronger). I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I don't think the comment above meant to say there's nothing better than Germany. Instead the claim was that 1) Germany's decline is not due to renewables and 2) despite the decline it's still a pretty good place to live.
>They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
Ten weeks more, if you average over workers. You get a smaller difference if you average over working-age people. Germans are more likely to choose a part-time job voluntarily, while Americans are more likely to be completely outside the workforce.
More often that not I think this is a cheap excuse. When you look at struggling companies (take the car industry for example), I think the issue is more about missing innovation and building things that people don't want or can't afford anymore in Germany.
It also takes time. You've doubtless seen headlines about the Contracts for Difference Allocation Rounds 7 and 7a, or perhaps even Round 8 taking place now.
But those headlines are about the step where you find out who won these auctions because that's when that magic price number is known, wind power for £68.35 per MWh or whatever.
Going from the fun headline to actual contract signing in which there's a legal promise to actually try to make electricity and get paid, takes several months. After they've signed they begin the actual work, which still includes planning not just the mechanical aspects.
Just building a solar farm might take 12 months, and wind farms are often slower.
AR6 took place in 2024, you'd have read headlines back then about some excellent solar farms, getting paid about £50 per MWh. First, those are 2012 prices, for comparison reasons they choose a base year and then calculate inflation adjusted pricing in reality but I bet that £50 figure was what you saw in a headline, of course the solar farm didn't exist in 2012, so £50 per MWh was never the real price.
More importantly though, those solar farms weren't built in 2024. The plan when the bids went in, said 2026/27 for some and 2027/28 for the majority. A few of those AR6 solar farms (by no means the majority) were live in time for the July sunshine, in 2026. But you've already read headlines about AR7, and like I said maybe even AR8.
A big boost in practice is home install. A big business can take six years to do contract paperwork, get something signed off, build it and then commission it. A home owner is angry after six weeks without work done. Where are my fucking panels? You were going to install solar panels, make it happen! So lots of individuals and small businesses which own a building with a roof installed a few panels, they might add up to only 5kW each but if a million people do that it's 5GW of nameplate electricity generation, a sizeable fraction of UK usage for several hours per day.
Hailing from Germany's eastern neighbor, where part of the industry went to and where energy is even more expensive, I call BS.
The main reason Germany was so hooked on gas wasn't because Hans Müller needed to run his Bosch washer-dryer and heat his home to a comfortable 24°C.
It was because natural gas is an great source of hydrogen, which in turn serves as feedstock for the production of all kinds of chemicals used in industry.
That was the engine of Germany's industry, not just energy. Energy has a whole spectrum of solutions - not the case with hydrogen.
> Energy has a whole spectrum of solutions - not the case with hydrogen.
Oh my, where ever else will we be able to find hydrogen, the (checks notes) tenth most common element on our planet ?
No, there's actually plenty of hydrogen, what people who say they "need" methane to make hydrogen actually mean is that they don't want to pay what this really costs.
Do you know of any major German industry for which energy costs amounts to even 10% of the labor costs? It's a rhetorical question intended to engage the common sense pathways of your cognitive system.
Realistically, without running the numbers, only few industries come to mind that may come close. Chemical manufacturing, steel production and maybe glass production as well.
For the remainder, the wage costs - more specifically - the overhead costs are the true killer. If you want to pay someone 80k a year in Germany, the actual costs are closer to 100k a year in purely salary overhead costs, not to mention the other bureaucratic overhead in Germany
it's less more around 94k - IMHO the overhead is the bureaucracy that basically forces you to employ a large amount of non-productive workforce in larger companies just for compliance topics.
Considering Germany wiffed on the tech boom, and still relies on the same industry as 50 years ago, I'm not sure if you are gesturing that 10% is way too small or way to large. Their three largest exports are all very energy intensive (cars, machinery, chemicals).
i am pretty sure its not energy that domaines the move. eg skoda is now way more profitable than rest of VW. The cost of employment is way higher in DE..
> But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation (which, when I was at school, was still called ‘structural change’), to a service-based society. It seems to be the price we pay for economic prosperity and cheap goods - and it is not the first time in Germany this happens.
People don't like factory work. Given options, they will choose to do some less physically wearing work that pays more, and pay somebody else to do it.
Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.
Producing nothing only works as long as there's someone else to produce things for you who wants to produce things for you. It's been China, but only by accident. China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.
> China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.
How? China is actively moving up the value chain, into EVs, batteries, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, etc. China is not abandoning industry.
> It's a political choice by our own politicians.
No, it's mostly how our economic system, how capitalism works. Production goes where production is cheap. You’ll never be able to produce goods in Germany at such low costs as in China or other third-world countries without eroding workers’ rights and thereby creating a new lower class.
Or you know, you could demand that the goods being imported are made to the same quality, environmental, health & safety standards as your home country.
But that would turn off the spigot of cheap goods.....
> Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation
Are you sure? Jobs are no longer in industrial companies, and that isn't where the growth is. However when I look at the numbers I see heavy industry output is still growing.
Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy sources. This includes nuclear because it allows thermal storage of excess heat from nuclear energy. This kind of setup is supposed to be more stable for the grid and more reliable for storing energy.
"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense." (Napoleon Bonapart ~1800)
That depends on what you need energy for. Converting heat energy stored during the day to heat my house at night is easy. Converting heat energy stored into light is much harder (as the other reply stated, it needs high heat and thus is a fire hazard)
Heat can't be converted losslessly to useful energy, but converting to heat to other forms of energy is extremely common. What do you think a steam turbine, boiler, internal combustion engine, etc. do?
But all the examples you give have a heat source of high temperature and dense energy, and a lot of energy is lost in it's transformation, as illustrated by the combustion engine. How can heat be a good energy storage if so much is lost when you want to use it?
It isn't just the cost to collect, it is also the cost to store. Heat is easy and safe to store at just above room temperature in rocks - but you need a lot of rocks. Just to heat my house for a few days would need tons of rock at temperatures I'd allow in my house (I have kids and so I worry they will open the rock container and get burnt). Rocks are not free. You can also use water for storage, but again you have the issue needing a tank (and water is a drowning hazard, plus the worry about leaks...)
"Low grade heat", less than the boiling point of water (often), can be stored in a sand system and recovered efficiently and distributed later.
But low grade heat cannot efficiently drive a heat engine to produce other, more useful and transferable versions of energy, like electricity. For that you need "high grade" heat.
The reason is, heat engines do not operate on heat. They operate on heat flow. You must have a high temperature side and a low temperature side, and you extract energy by taking heat out of the high side and injecting it to the low side, through various processes. By thermodynamics, this process has hard efficiency limits of around 35%, with that efficiency heavily affected by the delta between the hot and cold side.
The "low" heat side is often a great source of low grade heat, for industrial or communal purposes, but cannot be used to run an efficient heat engine. It's already "used up" essentially.
The "grade" you refer to is simply temperature. To efficiently extract energy from a heat flow you want a really hot hot side and a really cold cold side. On earth we can't get a cold side much colder than outside air temperature (not without wasting more energy than you gain) but luckily that is cold enough when the hot side is thousands of degrees. But you can't get much energy from roomtemp and roomtemp+10. A warm cup of coffee will run a Stirling engine for a party trick, but it's not going to charge your phone, much less your car.
The efficiency of any heat engine is bounded by the Carnot cycle. In simplified form, it depends on the temperature differential between the cold and the hot parts. So if your hot part is at 300C (572 Kelvin), and the cold part is at 30C (300 Kelvin) then the absolutely best possible efficiency is around (572-300)/572*100% = 47%.
You see that it quickly becomes inefficient as the differential goes down. E.g. if you use 90C to store the heat, then the maximum efficiency is just 17%.
so all such 'energy' storage are to be used as heat and no other form of energy? The name energy storage is somewhat confusing then, even if not incorrect? Heat storage would be more accurate iiuc.
I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe.
The amount of energy needed to test things is just intuitively huge. Boiling one liter of water takes the equivalent amount of energy as lifting 34 metric tons up a meter. Or to translate it to human scale: the same as walking a vertical climb of 1000m with a weight of 34kg.
Breaking news: "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in <insert_European_country> for the first time" for the 10th time this year.
Also on other unrelated news German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever. The signs of decline are not even signs anymore they are bright neon signs. But at least we are taxing cows farting. While china is steamrolling ahead and we are regulated to death by bureaucrats.
The continent is literally on fire due to global warming. Europe does not produce any fossil fuels and needs energy independence. It's because politicians dragged their feet for so long on net zero that we are even in this mess in the first place. Better now than never.
Effectively. Europe and the UK do, but there isn't much easily accessible left and besides they aren't in the EU. Netherlands has had to close their gas fields. Germany still mines some coal...there are probably a couple of other gas fields etc but the big picture is that Europe is highly dependent on imports.
I love renewables, but the problem with solar is the lack of inertia (literally). Big spinning masses like steam turbines have an easier time staying on network frequency. Wind turbines better than solar of course so I hope we continue to have diversity there.
Batteries paired with the right inverters solve this fully. Buys you enough time for powering up backup power in the form of a good old steam turbine (gas or coal powered). No need to keep spinning if they aren't needed.
The good news is that batteries are deployed at almost the same scale as solar now on grids world wide. They can respond in more or less real-time to huge fluctuations in supply and demand and smooth out peaks and dips in those.
The other thing that massive synchronous machines provide is fault current handling. A turbine hall can eat 10x rated current for several cycles. Semiconductor junctions cannot tolerate anything remotely close to this.
Thankfully this is one of the easiest limitations to get around technically. Grid forming inverters and inertia markets make this pretty straightforward to solve IMO. Storage is the key thing we need to solve
It's a good news and a milestone to celebrate but if we count all energy and not only electricity and not only developed world then the progress is not as fast unfortunately [1].
Not a long time ago I've seen a post arguing based on the data [1] that renewables are irrelevant and should not be taken seriously and fossils will the main source for the lifetime.
This is such a misleading comparison. The energy used that comes from a solar panel is already in an extremely low-entropy, highly usable form. The energy used from a fossil fuel is highly inefficient and hard to harness.
For instance, if you just go by the number of joules in an electric car's battery versus the number of joules in a gasoline car's tank with the same range, you'll see that a 'normal' electric car gets around 15 kWh/100km whereas even a rather efficient gas car needs something more like 50kWh/100km. That's because gas combusion loses gigantic amounts of energy to heat and sound.
If you want to talk about 'total energy consumption' and compare solar/wind against fossil fuels, you should count the amount of energy in the sunlight that hits the surface of the solar panel, or the amount of wind energy hitting the turbine blade, rather than the amount of energy they deliver to the grid.
When looking at hat kind of graphs, it's good to keep in mind that burning hydrocarbons is relatively inefficient: only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Still a long ways to go regardless, but much less bleak. And also, exponentially growing deployments of wind and solar are harder to spot on this 2-year old graph which goes only up to 2024.
That is very much a it depends. The best combined cycle power plants get around 60% efficient. The gas engine in your car is in the ideal case around 45% efficient - but the way you drive in the real world is only about 20-30% efficient.
Indeed. That exponential has renewables being ~100% of electricity in the early to mid 2030s, and approximately ~100% of all power in the late 2030s to early 2040s even without the efficiency improvement from direct electricity use.
(it's not a coincidence, it's the exact opposite formula. You can only get 20% out of a certain heat engine because running it in reverse would be a 500% efficient heat pump, and the closed loop can't be more than 100%. This still applies even if the engine isn't built to be able to act as a heat pump, because some other engine could.)
Maybe, but that other 70-80% is waste - we could turn it into useful heat, but instead we vent it to the environment.
I've seen plans to run an engine in your furnace, thus creating both electric (at 20-30%, and capturing the rest as heat to the house. I've never seen this in the real world and experts who have looked as those systems said they won't enter a building that has one using that design. (it is possible to make a design they would trust, but they haven't seen any)
Also interesting to look at the chart per country. [2] US fossil fuel is 4x entire Germany, while for China just coal is over 8x all of Germany. So good and relevant news at a local scale! But pretty irrelevant at a global one... A scale at which there is more talk than action in parts of the world, probably because it would be too economically painful if not unfeasible to e.g. limit or tax imports, outsourcing etc by emission source.
Thank goodness the energy policy of the US is being dictated by a single, highly intelligent man that isn't falling for the clean energy hoax, a man who consistently puts the interests of the people over his own interests. It's sad that the rest of the world is falling for this scam. </sarcasm; gosh, i hope it was obvious>
I'm confused by the US conservatives' full court press for fossil fuels and against wind/solar. I believe it's mostly about protecting existing money/power structures, but I don't really know. I mean, where does all Trump's energy on this topic come from? Is it owning the libs or courting donors or the Heritage Foundation/AEI?
If it's really about protecting fossil fuel wealth, is there a long-term plan or are they just juicing quarterly earnings as long as they can? Is there a serious belief that wind/solar is a fad?
This isn't the kind of thought that begets rational discussion, but if you can avoid cynicism and sarcasm, I am curious to hear what the smart people of HN think.
I think this is more about tribalism than conservatism. There's nothing inherently "conservative" about opposing renewable energy.
The political movement that's currently leading the Republican party shouldn't be understood as "conservative". At least, certainly not in terms of the conservative values of respect for the rule of law, traditional mores and institutions, or personal integrity. The populist energy that passes for "conservative" is reactionary and much more concerned with scoring points on social media than governing sensibly.
To be fair, the populist left is also ascendant with its own set of bad ideas.
I knew as soon as I read your comment that multiple people would object to your use of 'conservative' instead of focus on the point (as if the opposing political views lack integrity, values, respect for law, etc).
In any case I think the reason comes down to money/power structures and short-term thinking. We have two corporate controlled parties with one that is wholly owned and the other which allows a tiny sliver of dissent. Fossil fuels will never completely go away but anything that questions the entire infrastructure (worldwide, including the need for bases in producing countries), is seen as a threat to the status quo. In this way I don't see it as any different than teams protecting their turf in a large company which stifles innovation.
I'm confused too, and I often self-identify as conservative.
Part of the problem is you think there is unity in any large movement. There is not, only tiny movements with no political power have unity. There are multiple factions is always the right answer and you have to understand each. As a short cut, many (often the majority) are willing to live with those in their midst but don't actually care.
Fossil fuel companies have long supported conservative positions. This is their payback, they get support back.
Many do see renewables as the "left", and so they don't care to think, they just oppose anything the left does. (you often see the reverse)
I'm confused by the US conservatives' full court press for fossil fuels and against wind/solar.
It's almost all tribalism: the left is for it, so they're against it. They have a partially valid point that a lot of so-called environmentalists are anti-progress degrowthers, but the response should be to demonstrate that clean energy (including nuclear) is very good for growth. When conservatives do what they're supposed to and let market forces work, you see things like Texas producing more renewable energy than California.
I know what you mean. You'd think nationalists would want to put the citizens of their country first but nope they can all go and get cancer from coal power plants.
In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear.
So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear and coal was swapped, Germany could have reduced its emission generation capacity by an extra 66%. (Focusing mainly on coal, since that is (AIUI) the worst of the carbon emitters.)
(Meta: I understand some folks aren't a fan of nuclear. I disagree, but recognize people have different values and weighing of priorities. But I just find it fucking stupid that coal was left to keep running by people who claim that climate change is a priority. Certainly a discussion can be had about pros/cons of new nuclear, but why the fuck would you prioritize closing current nuclear over coal?)
Well first, coal went down, too, if we are still discussing Germany. In parallel with shrinking nuclear generation. See the cleanenergywire link upthread for the numbers. So the coal vs. nuclear discussion is baseless already (again, if we still talk about Germany).
Secondly, energy != electricity. Coal is mostly used for central heating (a plant heats water, water is then transported to a whole neighborhood). Electricity is sometimes also produced, but usually not the primary reason for the plant to exist in the first place. Nuclear plants are usually used for generating electricity (in Germany). Germanys carbon problem is the heating infrastructure being dependant on fossil fuels (mostly gas), but it has no lack of electricity sources.
Thanks for stating your openmindedness re/ nuclear discussion, BTW, IME statements like this can really lift the whole level of discourse.
Germany was shamed endlessly for not shutting down coal plants fast enough by the same nuclear fans who didn't make a peep about Poland making a decision to be 80% coal for ages.
It raised some interesting questions about priorities.
The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.
No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.
> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
See perhaps:
> […] Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
> Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
The only people causing conflict is Russia, and Germany had to be dragged kicking and screaming in shutting down Russian supply pipelines, so don't go talking about "security" when the actions from Berlin showed there was zero consideration for it:
> It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
Maybe you should take a closer look how those prices come to be.
Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
Last time they wanted to play the free market game, they had to bring the company back into the forgiving hands of the French taxpayer.
I have rather Germany invest into future tech then waste it on rotting reactors which are obviously unfit for the current state of global warming already.
Nuclear was clogging up the grid with it's expensive energy. It is gone now and the grid is diversifying while it follows the path of complete decarbonisation.
There is absolutely no reason to look back for Germany and only those whose ideology is "looking back" seriously do that currently.
Can coal plants buy insurance against global warming? Can a hydroelectric dam buy insurance against downstream flooding?
Very few things in the power grid has insurance against major accidents. It is even doubtful for example if a forest fires caused by transmission lines will be repaid in full by the insurance of the power company, and to the degree that will pay all costs to property and land owners
I agree with everything you say, but the initial "Atomausstieg" was decided in 2000/put into law in 2002, when the Greens were in office. The exit was delayed in 2010 (and then accelerated again in 2011) by the CDU/CSU/FDP, but the initial decision for the exit was very with involvement of the Green party
And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.
The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.
Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas.
Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, batteries reduce the need for regular gas backup. By 2030, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour over 80% of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period, up from about 20% in 2025.")
i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.
I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.
Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).
> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.
> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.
There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:
> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.
> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.
There's no physics reason of course, but not using the natural river source for cooling like this further hurts the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
Similarly, all industrial processes of heat rejection, including data centers, could use closed cycle cooling, but they don't, because it's more expensive to install and operate.
> the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
That affects ~0.5% of the yearly production in France, it's not a "primary weakness", it's the opposite, it's so low of a problem that the state simply doesn't care enough to fix it.
They are saying economics is the primary weakness i.e. nuclear costs more than renewables even if you don't have fancy cooling methods that would increase the cost further.
Well no it isn't, this problem is so small that it's not even worth installing any additional cooling method. It's also the lowest consumption period of the year, making the problem even more irrelevant as some plants are already offline for maintainance anyways.
And since the poster didn't knew that, I'm not sure the cost analysis holds up.
I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.
I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.
If the building costs for the nuclear plants are paid for, nuclear costs are comparable to the costs for utility solar today (and much less than solar 10 years ago).
Closing down nuclear plants while you keep burning coal is not a good decision, no matter how you look at it: deaths due to pollution (in Germany and downwind countries), deaths due to mining, economic costs, etc. We will also see in the future what affect all the extra CO2 that is being emitted. Even now, I just read that Germany ranks 8th globally for the amount of coal they burn. The people who made the decisions to close nuclear plants while they still burn coal are responsible for all that.
The next frontier will be meat consumption. Particularly red meat.
A single 1/4 beef hamburger emits 7-12 kg of carbon[1]. Compared to ~1.5kg of carbon driving your car 3 miles[2].
Not telling you to go full vegetarian, but I'm personally far less interested in a beef product unless you're going to guarantee its an extremely expert prepared steak. Most beef is mediocre.
1 - https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
2 - https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
There was a German article comparing different traveled distances between German cities with CO2 impact of meat production.
https://www.merkur.de/reise/reduzieren-sollte-besser-reisen-...
Yeah, plus the ethical angle. It's a bit ridiculous that we have people researching the 'theoretical ethical treatment of LLMs' when we are doing such awful things to animals on a massive scale.
We have dogs and cats as pets and we eat cows and pigs (in Western countries). As if cows and pigs didn't also have personalities, memories, parental bonds, the ability to feel pain. It's a mass wilful ignorance.
What's the difference between us and animals? I would argue that it's our ability to take ethical decisions and not inflict suffering even if it goes against our base instincts.
Where do you draw the line though? Because plants themselves (DNA-beings) are also alive.
Unless you decide to go on a full mineral diet.
It's not about being alive, it's about having emotions and the ability to feel pain.
Plants don't cry out for days when their children are taken away from them. Plants don't remember your face, come up to you and want attention. Plants don't scream when they are killed (no matter what some edgy research shows).
Or to put it more simply, would you feel bad pulling a plant out the ground? I would imagine probably not. Would you feel bad pulling the lever and watching as a pig is lowered into a gas chamber? Or while slitting a cow's throat? I would imagine probably yes (hence why slaughterhouse employees have so many mental health issues and there is such high turnover).
Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets. Even culturally, pork (and now chicken) were the proteins of choice.
'Europe' is a big place. Here in Ireland good quality beef is readily affordable, and not particularly more expensive than chicken or pork.
Sweden as well.
Yes, it's one of the few EU countries that is suitable for cattle.
I'm in the USA and I eat a lot less beef than I used to. The price has really jumped in the past few years, maybe since the pandemic?
Subbed pork, poultry, and eggs for the most part, some fish but that's not particularly cheap either.
It's still way, way, too cheap compared to its climate impact
>Beef is already too expensive for most people. Americans are probably the exception but I can assure you that most Europeans do not have beef heavy diets.
Beef is too expensive for many Europeans because GDP per capita/standards of living are declining in many European countries. People in East Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and South America still eat plenty of beef too.
That is true, however beef was always somewhat of a luxury in many European regions, simpily due to geography and population density. We don't have a lot of cheap grazing land to raise cattle on. And if you have cattle it's typically more economical to use them for diary than meat.
Yeah, since COVID and then the Nord Stream terror act they raised beef prices to unsustainable levels. Döner (which is cheap ground sausage like beef in practice) between 7 and 10 EUR now (was between 3,50 and 4). Blockhouse steak (tiny) is 48 EUR.
Going vegetarian would only cut it if you stayed clear of dairy. Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate.
My research seems to indicate its about on-par with chicken. IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.
And it seems here its about 1/4 carbon per kg of food as beef:
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
>> Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate. reply
>IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.
They said cheese not milk. Note that it takes more than 1 unit of milk to produce 1 unit of cheese. From this source I found, they estimate ~10 input units of milk per output unit of cheese [1].
Assuming both of these is true, and assuming that the cheese making process produces no carbon, then a chicken filet would have the same carbon impact as .8oz of cheese or roughly a single slice of cheese.
The cheese making process does produce carbon (e.g. heating the milk) but it also produces whey as a valuable byproduct.
[1] https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_e/E216/
I switched to fortified soy milk and haven't looked back. Milk is tasty but soy has less sugar as well and now I prefer it. Cheese is harder to make a substitute but eating it 1-2 per year satisfies my craving.
The next frontier should be preventing forest fires. This is just Canada, imagine if we could prevent them around the world.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-nasa-study-tallies-carbon-...
>Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon
Forests burn and grow back. Healthy forests (not poorly-managed monoculture) are carbon-neutral on human timescales.
Wait, how does beef emit carbon? I thought the main problem with beef was methane, not carbon emissions.
Ah, I see, your graph says CO2-equivalent, not CO2. It's the methane.
It's the infrastructure required to create a pound of beef, including the farmed grains.
I don't think it is, I think it's the methane, which is by far the largest greenhouse gas contributor in the process. Besides, the other emissions go away once your energy production is renewables.
Indeed. And also it's not healthy, compared to veggies, or even leaner meats like poultry
There's tens of millions of well-armed Americans who'd rather die fighting then let anyone take away their right to eat red meat, so good luck trying.
To state the obvious, it's not about taking away the right to eat red meat, right? It's about trying to convince people to adopt a diet that is:
- healthier
- tasty
- cheaper
- a small contribution to keeping the planet livable for their children
- as a sign of respect for $DEITY/the planet/...
Many people will see some sense in at least one of the above arguments at one point in life.
I question the methodology of that 100kg (per kg) figure for beef, for several reasons:
1. It's not the true Carbon or CO2 figure. It's weighted for other greenhouse gases. That's kind of an issue because methane naturally breaks down (into CO2 and water) over time. The methane issue comes up all the time in such estimates (eg leaks in natural gas pipelines) where methane is a worse greenhouse gas but temporary (7-12 years) and CO2 is essentially forever (until sequestration or photosynthesis);
2. Production method really matters here. American beef, for example, is primarily grain fed. That grain requires fertilizer (more natural gas) and distribution. Australian beef, for example, is largely fed on natural grasses and vegetation, typically until the last 60-120 days where it's transitioned to grain for marbling. American cattle is also heavily fed on corn, which really shouldn't exist in the quantities it does;
3. Ecosystems are complex. One of the big causes of the dust bowl, for example, was the destruction of the great bison herds. Replacing the natural grasses with crops like wheat was just the last straw. The point of the bison is that they're heavy, like up to 2000+ lb heavy, and they leave deep hoof prints on the plains. Water collects there when it rains and feeds cgrasses and the aquifers.
This has been backed up elsewhere too. China has had long projects to stop the desertification of the Gobi and spent a ton on planting trees with varied successes. You know what did work? Horses. They released horses and the same thing happened. Horse hoof prints allowed water to collect and grasses to grow and spread. Grasses, as it turned out, were key to stopping desertification, not trees.
So the point is that certain ecosystems need large herd herbivores to survive. So if you got rid of cattle entirely, what other second order effects would there be?
More practically, people just arne't going to give up meat. Sorry. Unless it become sprice prohibitve (as beef arguably is rapidly becoming now).
On the ecological point, the difference is whether the grassland would naturally support that number of bison. Or if bison (or cows) are continually being grown, killed, grown killed at industrial scale beyond the normal bison lifecycle. With many carbon inputs (fossil-fuel based fertilizer, etc) and production costs (slaughtering, transport, etc).
Wild bison live 15-20 years.
Cattle raised for beef ~18 months.
That's beyond the natural carbon cycle an existing ruminant population.
Also horses, in my reading of the data, actually have less of a methane impact. They have a different digestive system entirely.
On the methane point, methane, yes, is a greenhouse gas that breaks down over years (~12 years). But has far worse impact on climate while its in the atmosphere.
It’s completely made up. All meat is carbon neutral because animals don’t produce carbon atoms from nothing. They get them from the plants they eat which in turn get their carbon from the atmosphere.
The carbon cycle is basic scientific fact yet confidently ignored by people who hate things like logging and meat.
By that same logic, fossil fuels are carbon neutral because they come from living things.
The problem is we have too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not too much of various assorted carbon-based compounds on the planet.
But the supply of herd animals is essentially fixed. There isn’t infinite growth. Eating meat therefore does not increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, no matter what vegans who want to ban meat for personal moral reasons assert.
If humans stopped eating meat, the only way to reduce the amount of carbon that animals “emit” would be to kill all of them and bury their carcasses underground where they can’t decompose (as that would turn them into CO2).
This is the most Euro commie thing I've heard in a long while.
Sure, get rid of factory farms and CAFO's, but I see nothing wrong with raising animals on family farms where they eat a nutritious diet in line with what they evolved to eat.
Grass for cows, pasture and bugs for poultry, silvopasture for pigs. Anyone who wants to go vegan for ethical or environmental reasons is fine, but I hate this idea that all of us have to fall in line with your crazy ideas.
Do whatever you want.
I'm just sharing my personal choices based on what I've learned.
What could be more American than that? :)
The problem is, you have to choose. Do you really think people can continue to eat meat 2-3 times a day, purely supplied by family farms where animals are able to roam free?
The reality is that the only way to feed people's insatiable demand for meat is to use factory farms. You can't factory farm without causing suffering to animals, and you can't factory farm without use of antibiotics, etc.
Also you say, 'evolved to eat'. Do you really think people were eating meat every day throughout human history? This started after WWII with mass agriculture and factory farming. That's why so many cultures have beans and rice as their primary dish: it's a perfectly balanced protein.
If 'evolved to eat' is your primary concern then actually you should be eating meat like once or twice a month, max. Evolution doesn't happen in less than a century.
How many miles does the burger drive my car? Not to question your numbers but they lack context. Also, it would be good for nature if there were fewer or no humans on this planet. But then there would be no human here to enjoy nature.
Burgers don't drive cars.
People drive cars, and people eat burgers. Is that the context you were looking for?
We've identified two ways to reduce carbon production. 1) reduce production per human. 2) reduce humans.
Only the first one is being argued for here. Conflating it with the second is just a confusion.
Sorry but this is just such an ignorant comment. You really need to read up on how agriculture contributes to global warming and loss of land/deforestation. What do you think cows eat, air?
If only they ate the thing that is the intuitive answer to your question!
It would be bad enough with all the burping and farting but at least we would not destroy the rain forest so we could produce more soy for fodder
Nihilistic bullshit isn't the hot take you think it is. The problem isn't too many people. The planet couldn't handle billions more if we used resources correctly. Is your idea of "humans enjoying nature" extreme deforestation and water scarcety?
Meat, and red meat, is truly a miracle food. Dense in nutrients, satiating and of course tasty.
Nature needs animals as well. In fact it is essential.
Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.
But you just read an argument, and then completely ignored it, instead started brining up other aspects of red meat.
That most red meat is very co2 expensive compared to getting the proteins from other sources is a relevant argument for many of us, and not a particularly 'strange obsession' for those of us caring about reducing our co2 footprint.
>Agricultural reform or innovation is certainly an avenue to explore; but this strange obsession with "stop eating red meat" is a bit too much.
Most of the people pushing it are doing so because they believe it's immoral to eat meat, so they'll latch onto whatever excuse they can to try to stop people.
Many, yes, but I think you misjudge the less vocal but large majority of people saying less meat is better for the climate and environment.
In the spring I will get 3 cows with calf-a-foot who will graze the immense amount of herbal leys we have, as well as maintain our SSSI fields, and then in a few years some of them, the meanest, will go off to the abatoir to become the very finest and well fed beef that money can buy.
We'll expand the herd, and do mob grazing to maintain our species rich grasslands and our SSSI fields, while also providing the best beef to those that appreciate it, family first of course.
Grass fed and pasture fed, are not good enough. The cattle need a wide variety of food, which starts with more than grass or a monoculture pasture.
I have heard this news many times, technically not wrong, but each time with a different metric. This time it is production over a year.
It reminds me of the Voyager probes that left the solar system half a dozen times, each time taking a different definition of what marks the edge of the solar system.
Anyways, we are now getting to sensible metrics, which is good.
It's the sporadic good news item in a sea of bad?
Moving away from fossil fuels is a big task, these are the first signs that things are happening.
That's totally fine with me. Each time it's an opportunity to be happy and proud.
What is not on the title:
For an entire year, that year being 2025.
Also, yes, absolute generation from fossil fuels is declining quickly. The total generation is changing way more slowly than that share.
But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem.
The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those that don't.
Gas became expensive, energy for private houeholds became expensive, despite that electric energy for industries is currently on the same level as 2020. Even though there was a short spike in 2022. See: https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...
Germany cut off Russian gas? Gazprom suspended supply indefinitely via NS1 before it was destroyed.
Markets are now committed than a single pipeline. Germany was importing most gas through other channels - pipelines through Eastern and Southern Europe and shipping - as well as of course plenty of oil. While the NortStream cut had a significant short term impact it took much more effort to wean the country off all the other routes.
NS1 had like 30% of German gas imports (Russia in total around 50%).
That is a half truth. A turbine was broken, repaired in Canada, which required a lot of bureaucracy. Then the turbine was shipped to Germany. Then the Russians started their own bureaucracy and came up with excuses why the turbine could not be installed.
During that time Nord Stream was blown up.
The point is moot, since Putin has offered multiple times to open the remaining intact pipe:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-urges-germany-...
And the broken pipes can be repaired, as was determined in the LLoyds lawsuit recently.
I'm not saying that reopening would be reliable, but it would be one diversification away from US and Qatar dependencies. The US just cut the EU off from Qatar gas.
When we are talking about countries, what matters is the political decisions, not the technical details imo.
What German political decision back then do you mean that cut off supply via NS1?
Political decisions that lead to that point and geopolitical situation. The russians cut the gas on their terms because it would have happened anyway and they were not stupid. Then somebody else blew the pipe up and the whole discussion conveniently ended. The divestment from russian economy and blocking imports was already established, but germany and others could not phase out the gas that fast.
Still, when did Germany cut off Russian gas back then? I don't think there is particular complexity in the sequence of events back then. Germany back then was not seeking an end to supplies then and there, if I recall correctly.
But it did exactly this. The pipeline was not the only way to import Russian gas.
What exactly did Germany do when? You mean after a huge supply cut by Russia, Germany moved to reduce/end use of Russian gas?
The German political decision to not join with Russia and invade Ukraine (via Poland?).
Just because it was the right decision doesn't mean there are not downsides.
Accepting potential consequences is not the same as oneself cutting things off. Germany did not seek to end supplies then and there.
Edit: there was never any chance of Germany invading Ukraine then/joining Russia on any invasion.
It doesn't matter what they wanted to do. What matters is what happened. As a result of their actions they got cut off. If Germany had invaded Ukraine (via Poland?) the gas might still be on. Of course we don't know that because other countries would likely take offense to that action and I'm not willing to predict how the world would change if they had. (I can't even imagine change would cause them to be willing to invade in the first place, much less how everyone else would respond.)
Politics often are about the unintended consequences. Often they are also unforeseen.
Germany joining the Russian invasion was never anything even remotely in the option space at all - utterly inconceivable in 2022. (Not aware of Russia seeking any such support there either.)
Probably not directly invading, but there was a strong possibility of Germany supporting the Russian invasion, just as they're doing with the invasion of Iran.
There was absolutely no possibility for Germany supporting the Russian invasion.
Well I mean they already did support the invasion for a while by buying their gas.
A strong possibility? Where do you get your news from?
I think what grandparent is very very fucking poorly trying to say is, Germany/EU could've accepted the "annexation" of Ukraine like it did Crimea in 2014. "Bad Putin! But what can we do."
I think it is clear to everybody that wasn't an possible option.
There are consequences for it that though.
Sorry, but I think it is absurd to say there was a Russian reaction because Germany did not join their invasion of Ukraine,
The absurdity is intentional.
However it is still correct. If Germany had joined Russia (and got away with it!), there is every reason to think the pipeline would still be flowing.
Canada sanctioned the repaired gas turbines needed to operate NS1. They flip flopped on their decision some time later though.
This was spun as a Russian decision, but western countries were clearly trying to force Germany's hand.
If you take a look at ng prices you will see that the prices went up more than half a year before Russias invasion of Ukraine: https://www.macrotrends.net/3235/eu-natural-gas-prices The reason for this was because Gazprom stopped supplying the spot market and also bought storage capacity and kept it empty. All of that only made sense after the invasion to better blackmail Europe. It was their bad luck that China allowed them to attack only after the Olympics which took most of the force out of that blow. Anyway there was no sane way to continue this business relationship.
And then Russia refused to install the turbine, proving it was a ploy all along. Like the maintenance in the first place. Which is why they acquired gas storage in Germany, then ran it low timed with their illegal war of aggression. This is a theme of course; Russia invented another gas crisis every few years with Ukraine. It should have been a warning sign when they settled them by taking payment in the form of Soviet-era cruise missiles.
The gas was never cheap, either; apart from the money spent now to restrain the military buildup and invasion it financed, even at the height of supplies it was much higher price than China is paying, a price sustained by Russia using military force and more to restrain other (Asian) countries from supplying to Europe.
(This was obvious to everyone, right? A single majority supplier nation state charging a cheap price out of the kindness of their heart? No, of course not; neither cheap nor kind. It was a monopoly, built on blood.)
They installed it and then they took the pipeline down for planned maintenance.
it's a little rich to accuse them of playing games with gas after the stunt Canada pulled and most especially after a western partner subsequently blew up the pipeline and blamed it on Russia.
Clearly certain western allies decided that Germany couldnt be trusted to make its own decisions about where Germany gets its energy.
They reopened the pipeline after the planned maintenance. Then they said there was another issue and suspended supply indefinitely, and then the pipeline got destroyed.
Prices going up 1000%? Time for maintenance!
If you want to see their approach to maintenance while prices and needs are high, watch them put oil refineries back in operation days after drone hits.
"Our allies pushed our gas prices up 1000% how dare you not cancel your pre-scheduled maintenance!"
I don't think the turbine that was serviced in Canada was causal there. The turbine thing was earlier, as far as I recall it. Gazprom announced its decision in early Sep 2022, btw.
Germany had no good alternative because its politicians deliberately put it in the position of having no good alternative.
Something is wrong with Germany. Go to Our World InData's Electricity Production per Capita page and have a look at Germany, Vietnam, and say Israel.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge...
You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
Arguably Sweden (and possibly the other Nordic countries too) are even better places to live (or at least equally good). Well, as long as you can stand the climate and the lack of sun in the winter.
We have right to roam in nature here, which is quite rare across the world (and even compared to the few other countries that have something similar, the Swedish variant is stronger). I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I don't think the comment above meant to say there's nothing better than Germany. Instead the claim was that 1) Germany's decline is not due to renewables and 2) despite the decline it's still a pretty good place to live.
>They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
Ummm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
At least according to the list, Americans work ten weeks more a year than their German counterpart.
I would bet everything that life, at least right now, is comfy. But I don't see it as remotely sustainable.
Ten weeks more, if you average over workers. You get a smaller difference if you average over working-age people. Germans are more likely to choose a part-time job voluntarily, while Americans are more likely to be completely outside the workforce.
Looks stable:
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/industrial-production-m...
Of course, stable is probably bad here. But it's not declining.
also the raised energy prices are fake news regarding indutrial prices, which are differently taxed in Germany than consumer prices. https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...
More often that not I think this is a cheap excuse. When you look at struggling companies (take the car industry for example), I think the issue is more about missing innovation and building things that people don't want or can't afford anymore in Germany.
U.K. energy is expensive because it’s all based on the cost of gas.
Onshore wind and solar is about £40-50
Offshore wind about £60
Gas about £120
That’s generation cost, before subsidies and levees
But we still haven’t put in an emergency legislation to make it easier to build cheaper energy.
It also takes time. You've doubtless seen headlines about the Contracts for Difference Allocation Rounds 7 and 7a, or perhaps even Round 8 taking place now.
But those headlines are about the step where you find out who won these auctions because that's when that magic price number is known, wind power for £68.35 per MWh or whatever.
Going from the fun headline to actual contract signing in which there's a legal promise to actually try to make electricity and get paid, takes several months. After they've signed they begin the actual work, which still includes planning not just the mechanical aspects.
Just building a solar farm might take 12 months, and wind farms are often slower.
AR6 took place in 2024, you'd have read headlines back then about some excellent solar farms, getting paid about £50 per MWh. First, those are 2012 prices, for comparison reasons they choose a base year and then calculate inflation adjusted pricing in reality but I bet that £50 figure was what you saw in a headline, of course the solar farm didn't exist in 2012, so £50 per MWh was never the real price.
More importantly though, those solar farms weren't built in 2024. The plan when the bids went in, said 2026/27 for some and 2027/28 for the majority. A few of those AR6 solar farms (by no means the majority) were live in time for the July sunshine, in 2026. But you've already read headlines about AR7, and like I said maybe even AR8.
A big boost in practice is home install. A big business can take six years to do contract paperwork, get something signed off, build it and then commission it. A home owner is angry after six weeks without work done. Where are my fucking panels? You were going to install solar panels, make it happen! So lots of individuals and small businesses which own a building with a roof installed a few panels, they might add up to only 5kW each but if a million people do that it's 5GW of nameplate electricity generation, a sizeable fraction of UK usage for several hours per day.
Hailing from Germany's eastern neighbor, where part of the industry went to and where energy is even more expensive, I call BS.
The main reason Germany was so hooked on gas wasn't because Hans Müller needed to run his Bosch washer-dryer and heat his home to a comfortable 24°C.
It was because natural gas is an great source of hydrogen, which in turn serves as feedstock for the production of all kinds of chemicals used in industry.
That was the engine of Germany's industry, not just energy. Energy has a whole spectrum of solutions - not the case with hydrogen.
> Energy has a whole spectrum of solutions - not the case with hydrogen.
Oh my, where ever else will we be able to find hydrogen, the (checks notes) tenth most common element on our planet ?
No, there's actually plenty of hydrogen, what people who say they "need" methane to make hydrogen actually mean is that they don't want to pay what this really costs.
Do you know of any major German industry for which energy costs amounts to even 10% of the labor costs? It's a rhetorical question intended to engage the common sense pathways of your cognitive system.
Realistically, without running the numbers, only few industries come to mind that may come close. Chemical manufacturing, steel production and maybe glass production as well.
For the remainder, the wage costs - more specifically - the overhead costs are the true killer. If you want to pay someone 80k a year in Germany, the actual costs are closer to 100k a year in purely salary overhead costs, not to mention the other bureaucratic overhead in Germany
it's less more around 94k - IMHO the overhead is the bureaucracy that basically forces you to employ a large amount of non-productive workforce in larger companies just for compliance topics.
Considering Germany wiffed on the tech boom, and still relies on the same industry as 50 years ago, I'm not sure if you are gesturing that 10% is way too small or way to large. Their three largest exports are all very energy intensive (cars, machinery, chemicals).
i am pretty sure its not energy that domaines the move. eg skoda is now way more profitable than rest of VW. The cost of employment is way higher in DE..
> But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation (which, when I was at school, was still called ‘structural change’), to a service-based society. It seems to be the price we pay for economic prosperity and cheap goods - and it is not the first time in Germany this happens.
People don't like factory work. Given options, they will choose to do some less physically wearing work that pays more, and pay somebody else to do it.
Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.
I don't think you have set foot in a factory recently.
Factory work isn't generally physically demanding, more tedious & repetitive than anything.
It's air conditioned, generally pays a lot more than minimum wage and has benefits.
Producing nothing only works as long as there's someone else to produce things for you who wants to produce things for you. It's been China, but only by accident. China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.
It's a political choice by our own politicians.
> China is not far away from deindustrializing and then we all suffer.
How? China is actively moving up the value chain, into EVs, batteries, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, etc. China is not abandoning industry.
> It's a political choice by our own politicians.
No, it's mostly how our economic system, how capitalism works. Production goes where production is cheap. You’ll never be able to produce goods in Germany at such low costs as in China or other third-world countries without eroding workers’ rights and thereby creating a new lower class.
Or you know, you could demand that the goods being imported are made to the same quality, environmental, health & safety standards as your home country.
But that would turn off the spigot of cheap goods.....
Economic system choice is a political choice...
> Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation
Are you sure? Jobs are no longer in industrial companies, and that isn't where the growth is. However when I look at the numbers I see heavy industry output is still growing.
There’s nothing wrong with creative destruction
RE "...... yes, absolute generation from fossil fuels is declining quickly...."
The challenge is to nake renewables reliable accross several days .
This is the most expensive part for needed storage and transmission lines ....
Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy sources. This includes nuclear because it allows thermal storage of excess heat from nuclear energy. This kind of setup is supposed to be more stable for the grid and more reliable for storing energy.
I think I have read that heat is hard to convert to useful energy. Can someone confirm? But the, if that's true, why use heat as energy storage?
Heat is really useful if the energy form you want is heat. If you want electricity or motion it's not the best.
"What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense." (Napoleon Bonapart ~1800)
That depends on what you need energy for. Converting heat energy stored during the day to heat my house at night is easy. Converting heat energy stored into light is much harder (as the other reply stated, it needs high heat and thus is a fire hazard)
It's inefficient, but still better than completely losing out on it. Better yet would be direct reuse or remote heating.
Heat can't be converted losslessly to useful energy, but converting to heat to other forms of energy is extremely common. What do you think a steam turbine, boiler, internal combustion engine, etc. do?
But all the examples you give have a heat source of high temperature and dense energy, and a lot of energy is lost in it's transformation, as illustrated by the combustion engine. How can heat be a good energy storage if so much is lost when you want to use it?
If it's free to collect (solar) then efficiency matters a lot less.
It isn't just the cost to collect, it is also the cost to store. Heat is easy and safe to store at just above room temperature in rocks - but you need a lot of rocks. Just to heat my house for a few days would need tons of rock at temperatures I'd allow in my house (I have kids and so I worry they will open the rock container and get burnt). Rocks are not free. You can also use water for storage, but again you have the issue needing a tank (and water is a drowning hazard, plus the worry about leaks...)
"Low grade heat", less than the boiling point of water (often), can be stored in a sand system and recovered efficiently and distributed later.
But low grade heat cannot efficiently drive a heat engine to produce other, more useful and transferable versions of energy, like electricity. For that you need "high grade" heat.
The reason is, heat engines do not operate on heat. They operate on heat flow. You must have a high temperature side and a low temperature side, and you extract energy by taking heat out of the high side and injecting it to the low side, through various processes. By thermodynamics, this process has hard efficiency limits of around 35%, with that efficiency heavily affected by the delta between the hot and cold side.
The "low" heat side is often a great source of low grade heat, for industrial or communal purposes, but cannot be used to run an efficient heat engine. It's already "used up" essentially.
The "grade" you refer to is simply temperature. To efficiently extract energy from a heat flow you want a really hot hot side and a really cold cold side. On earth we can't get a cold side much colder than outside air temperature (not without wasting more energy than you gain) but luckily that is cold enough when the hot side is thousands of degrees. But you can't get much energy from roomtemp and roomtemp+10. A warm cup of coffee will run a Stirling engine for a party trick, but it's not going to charge your phone, much less your car.
A lot of energy generation is just "produce heat, boil water, steam moves a turbine
So in that regard heat is very useful in producing energy. But converting directly from heat to energy? Not so much as far as I know.
Nuclear reactors do exactly that
Yes. This is sometimes called "Carnot tax".
The efficiency of any heat engine is bounded by the Carnot cycle. In simplified form, it depends on the temperature differential between the cold and the hot parts. So if your hot part is at 300C (572 Kelvin), and the cold part is at 30C (300 Kelvin) then the absolutely best possible efficiency is around (572-300)/572*100% = 47%.
You see that it quickly becomes inefficient as the differential goes down. E.g. if you use 90C to store the heat, then the maximum efficiency is just 17%.
Use it directly, see my silbling comment.
so all such 'energy' storage are to be used as heat and no other form of energy? The name energy storage is somewhat confusing then, even if not incorrect? Heat storage would be more accurate iiuc.
I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe.
The amount of energy needed to test things is just intuitively huge. Boiling one liter of water takes the equivalent amount of energy as lifting 34 metric tons up a meter. Or to translate it to human scale: the same as walking a vertical climb of 1000m with a weight of 34kg.
Was this electric or direct water heating?
Breaking news: "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in <insert_European_country> for the first time" for the 10th time this year.
Also on other unrelated news German economy is rocketing to the bottom, their industry is dying with thousands of layoffs, closing factories, and complains on energy prices and they can't even maintain their rail and road networks for the first time since forever. The signs of decline are not even signs anymore they are bright neon signs. But at least we are taxing cows farting. While china is steamrolling ahead and we are regulated to death by bureaucrats.
The continent is literally on fire due to global warming. Europe does not produce any fossil fuels and needs energy independence. It's because politicians dragged their feet for so long on net zero that we are even in this mess in the first place. Better now than never.
Europe doesn't produce any fossil fuels?
Russia and Norway do, but most of that is Russia
Effectively. Europe and the UK do, but there isn't much easily accessible left and besides they aren't in the EU. Netherlands has had to close their gas fields. Germany still mines some coal...there are probably a couple of other gas fields etc but the big picture is that Europe is highly dependent on imports.
What’s your point in relation to this article?
"Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
Even if the entire Germany stopped existing overnight, this would barely make a dent in global carbon emissions and planet destruction rate.
Okay. What is your solution, then? Except for giving up or downplaying the problem.
The headline should state this is about electricity generation.
If you compare e.g. with a country like Sweden or France they have been free from fossil fuels for electricity since the build outs in the 70s-80s.
Also Germany is an importer of significant electricity (e.g nuclear power from France).
But due to a stagnant economy and no increase in electricity demand - yes, I guess this milestone is now passed...
Some good data on this topic: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
I love renewables, but the problem with solar is the lack of inertia (literally). Big spinning masses like steam turbines have an easier time staying on network frequency. Wind turbines better than solar of course so I hope we continue to have diversity there.
Batteries paired with the right inverters solve this fully. Buys you enough time for powering up backup power in the form of a good old steam turbine (gas or coal powered). No need to keep spinning if they aren't needed.
The good news is that batteries are deployed at almost the same scale as solar now on grids world wide. They can respond in more or less real-time to huge fluctuations in supply and demand and smooth out peaks and dips in those.
The other thing that massive synchronous machines provide is fault current handling. A turbine hall can eat 10x rated current for several cycles. Semiconductor junctions cannot tolerate anything remotely close to this.
Thankfully this is one of the easiest limitations to get around technically. Grid forming inverters and inertia markets make this pretty straightforward to solve IMO. Storage is the key thing we need to solve
It's a good news and a milestone to celebrate but if we count all energy and not only electricity and not only developed world then the progress is not as fast unfortunately [1].
Not a long time ago I've seen a post arguing based on the data [1] that renewables are irrelevant and should not be taken seriously and fossils will the main source for the lifetime.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
This is such a misleading comparison. The energy used that comes from a solar panel is already in an extremely low-entropy, highly usable form. The energy used from a fossil fuel is highly inefficient and hard to harness.
For instance, if you just go by the number of joules in an electric car's battery versus the number of joules in a gasoline car's tank with the same range, you'll see that a 'normal' electric car gets around 15 kWh/100km whereas even a rather efficient gas car needs something more like 50kWh/100km. That's because gas combusion loses gigantic amounts of energy to heat and sound.
If you want to talk about 'total energy consumption' and compare solar/wind against fossil fuels, you should count the amount of energy in the sunlight that hits the surface of the solar panel, or the amount of wind energy hitting the turbine blade, rather than the amount of energy they deliver to the grid.
When looking at hat kind of graphs, it's good to keep in mind that burning hydrocarbons is relatively inefficient: only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Still a long ways to go regardless, but much less bleak. And also, exponentially growing deployments of wind and solar are harder to spot on this 2-year old graph which goes only up to 2024.
That is very much a it depends. The best combined cycle power plants get around 60% efficient. The gas engine in your car is in the ideal case around 45% efficient - but the way you drive in the real world is only about 20-30% efficient.
Indeed. That exponential has renewables being ~100% of electricity in the early to mid 2030s, and approximately ~100% of all power in the late 2030s to early 2040s even without the efficiency improvement from direct electricity use.
> only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Isn't a lot of energy used for heating, not work?
Yes but by a weird coincidence most of that heat can be provided by heat pumps at a similar 3-5x ratio.
(it's not a coincidence, it's the exact opposite formula. You can only get 20% out of a certain heat engine because running it in reverse would be a 500% efficient heat pump, and the closed loop can't be more than 100%. This still applies even if the engine isn't built to be able to act as a heat pump, because some other engine could.)
Maybe, but that other 70-80% is waste - we could turn it into useful heat, but instead we vent it to the environment.
I've seen plans to run an engine in your furnace, thus creating both electric (at 20-30%, and capturing the rest as heat to the house. I've never seen this in the real world and experts who have looked as those systems said they won't enter a building that has one using that design. (it is possible to make a design they would trust, but they haven't seen any)
They account for this.
> Primary energy is based on the substitution method and measured in terawatt-hours.
Also interesting to look at the chart per country. [2] US fossil fuel is 4x entire Germany, while for China just coal is over 8x all of Germany. So good and relevant news at a local scale! But pretty irrelevant at a global one... A scale at which there is more talk than action in parts of the world, probably because it would be too economically painful if not unfeasible to e.g. limit or tax imports, outsourcing etc by emission source.
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-source-bar...
Cheap, renewable energy offers a competitive advantage to manufacturing and AI.
This undoubtedly explains why the current US administration is openly hostile to it.
does natural gas count as fossil fuels here?
yes.
Thank goodness the energy policy of the US is being dictated by a single, highly intelligent man that isn't falling for the clean energy hoax, a man who consistently puts the interests of the people over his own interests. It's sad that the rest of the world is falling for this scam. </sarcasm; gosh, i hope it was obvious>
Now they just gotta get the good ole DB to run on time.
I'm confused by the US conservatives' full court press for fossil fuels and against wind/solar. I believe it's mostly about protecting existing money/power structures, but I don't really know. I mean, where does all Trump's energy on this topic come from? Is it owning the libs or courting donors or the Heritage Foundation/AEI?
If it's really about protecting fossil fuel wealth, is there a long-term plan or are they just juicing quarterly earnings as long as they can? Is there a serious belief that wind/solar is a fad?
This isn't the kind of thought that begets rational discussion, but if you can avoid cynicism and sarcasm, I am curious to hear what the smart people of HN think.
I think this is more about tribalism than conservatism. There's nothing inherently "conservative" about opposing renewable energy.
The political movement that's currently leading the Republican party shouldn't be understood as "conservative". At least, certainly not in terms of the conservative values of respect for the rule of law, traditional mores and institutions, or personal integrity. The populist energy that passes for "conservative" is reactionary and much more concerned with scoring points on social media than governing sensibly.
To be fair, the populist left is also ascendant with its own set of bad ideas.
I knew as soon as I read your comment that multiple people would object to your use of 'conservative' instead of focus on the point (as if the opposing political views lack integrity, values, respect for law, etc).
In any case I think the reason comes down to money/power structures and short-term thinking. We have two corporate controlled parties with one that is wholly owned and the other which allows a tiny sliver of dissent. Fossil fuels will never completely go away but anything that questions the entire infrastructure (worldwide, including the need for bases in producing countries), is seen as a threat to the status quo. In this way I don't see it as any different than teams protecting their turf in a large company which stifles innovation.
I'm confused too, and I often self-identify as conservative.
Part of the problem is you think there is unity in any large movement. There is not, only tiny movements with no political power have unity. There are multiple factions is always the right answer and you have to understand each. As a short cut, many (often the majority) are willing to live with those in their midst but don't actually care.
Fossil fuel companies have long supported conservative positions. This is their payback, they get support back.
Many do see renewables as the "left", and so they don't care to think, they just oppose anything the left does. (you often see the reverse)
I'm confused by the US conservatives' full court press for fossil fuels and against wind/solar.
It's almost all tribalism: the left is for it, so they're against it. They have a partially valid point that a lot of so-called environmentalists are anti-progress degrowthers, but the response should be to demonstrate that clean energy (including nuclear) is very good for growth. When conservatives do what they're supposed to and let market forces work, you see things like Texas producing more renewable energy than California.
I know what you mean. You'd think nationalists would want to put the citizens of their country first but nope they can all go and get cancer from coal power plants.
Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear!
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/live/fifteen_min... Anyone is free to compare France and Germany here.
> Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear!
Germany has 15.4 GW of hard coal generation, and 14.7 GW of lignite, for a total of 30.1 GW:
* https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear.
So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear and coal was swapped, Germany could have reduced its emission generation capacity by an extra 66%. (Focusing mainly on coal, since that is (AIUI) the worst of the carbon emitters.)
(Meta: I understand some folks aren't a fan of nuclear. I disagree, but recognize people have different values and weighing of priorities. But I just find it fucking stupid that coal was left to keep running by people who claim that climate change is a priority. Certainly a discussion can be had about pros/cons of new nuclear, but why the fuck would you prioritize closing current nuclear over coal?)
Well first, coal went down, too, if we are still discussing Germany. In parallel with shrinking nuclear generation. See the cleanenergywire link upthread for the numbers. So the coal vs. nuclear discussion is baseless already (again, if we still talk about Germany).
Secondly, energy != electricity. Coal is mostly used for central heating (a plant heats water, water is then transported to a whole neighborhood). Electricity is sometimes also produced, but usually not the primary reason for the plant to exist in the first place. Nuclear plants are usually used for generating electricity (in Germany). Germanys carbon problem is the heating infrastructure being dependant on fossil fuels (mostly gas), but it has no lack of electricity sources.
Thanks for stating your openmindedness re/ nuclear discussion, BTW, IME statements like this can really lift the whole level of discourse.
Who are those people that kept coal running but claim climate change is a priority? Because they are not the german green party, that much I know.
Germany was shamed endlessly for not shutting down coal plants fast enough by the same nuclear fans who didn't make a peep about Poland making a decision to be 80% coal for ages.
It raised some interesting questions about priorities.
Some people know how to look up GDP per capita numbers.
The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.
No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
> The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
Schröder was talking about it in 2000:
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/15/johnhooper
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder#Domestic_poli...
Oh, and he was appointed to Gazprom (and other Russian energy companies) after leaving politics:
* https://www.dw.com/en/former-chancellor-schröder-sworn-in-at...
(He did encourage renewables as well.)
> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.
> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
See perhaps:
> […] Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
> Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
The only people causing conflict is Russia, and Germany had to be dragged kicking and screaming in shutting down Russian supply pipelines, so don't go talking about "security" when the actions from Berlin showed there was zero consideration for it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
When the architect of the retirement ends up on the board of Gazprom:
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/15/johnhooper
* https://www.dw.com/en/former-chancellor-schröder-sworn-in-at...
An adversary could not strike a nuclear powerplant? I said in retrospect in my view, didn't I, not that it was a consideration then (or now).
Gazprom suspended supply via NS1 indefinitely before it was destroyed.
> It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
Maybe you should take a closer look how those prices come to be.
Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
Last time they wanted to play the free market game, they had to bring the company back into the forgiving hands of the French taxpayer.
I have rather Germany invest into future tech then waste it on rotting reactors which are obviously unfit for the current state of global warming already.
Nuclear was clogging up the grid with it's expensive energy. It is gone now and the grid is diversifying while it follows the path of complete decarbonisation.
There is absolutely no reason to look back for Germany and only those whose ideology is "looking back" seriously do that currently.
> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
You won't find any grid which isn't subsidized, remember Germany already spent ~2x the French grid and that didn't spend by itself.
> Every single nuclear watt is being subsidised and has been for decades.
So is everything else.
Can coal plants buy insurance against global warming? Can a hydroelectric dam buy insurance against downstream flooding?
Very few things in the power grid has insurance against major accidents. It is even doubtful for example if a forest fires caused by transmission lines will be repaid in full by the insurance of the power company, and to the degree that will pay all costs to property and land owners
I agree with everything you say, but the initial "Atomausstieg" was decided in 2000/put into law in 2002, when the Greens were in office. The exit was delayed in 2010 (and then accelerated again in 2011) by the CDU/CSU/FDP, but the initial decision for the exit was very with involvement of the Green party
And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.
The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.
Don’t forget the low IQ move that Germany did when they replaced the windfarm in NRW with coal.
Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas.
Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, batteries reduce the need for regular gas backup. By 2030, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour over 80% of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period, up from about 20% in 2025.")
Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 (0 comments)
Germany's solar installations drop while new battery storage hits record - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019046 - May 2026 (8 comments)
They could have done all this without dismantling nuclear power and emitting more carbon than they otherwise would have.
i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.
I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.
Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).
Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158035 - August 2026 (0 comments)
What's happening in Hungary's power grid? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154001 - August 2026 (0 comments)
Hungary to shut down sole nuclear plant as Danube falls to record low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145531 - August 2026 [dupe]
EU considers emergncy meeting as nuclear shutdown leaves HU facing energy crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131244 - August 2026 (1 comment)
How Hungary became the best at solar [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49125682 - July 2026 (1 comment)
Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120120 - July 2026 (231 comments)
France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)
Europe's extreme heat is shutting down power plants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697170 - June 2026 (2 comments)
Commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands.
Europe's summer heat has broken the Bell curve - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158483 - August 2026
Bloomberg: Europe’s Key Rivers Are Drying Up as Extreme Heat Impact Widens - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-02/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/tVpQJ - August 2nd, 2026
> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.
Bloomberg: Europe’s Endless Heat Waves Imperil Once Reliable Power Sources - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-01/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/EvSSS - August 1st, 2026
> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.
>commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands
Well it's good that Germans chose coal over nuclear!
> France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)
There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:
> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.
> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.
There's no physics reason of course, but not using the natural river source for cooling like this further hurts the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
Similarly, all industrial processes of heat rejection, including data centers, could use closed cycle cooling, but they don't, because it's more expensive to install and operate.
> the economics of nuclear power, which is already it's primary weakness.
That affects ~0.5% of the yearly production in France, it's not a "primary weakness", it's the opposite, it's so low of a problem that the state simply doesn't care enough to fix it.
They are saying economics is the primary weakness i.e. nuclear costs more than renewables even if you don't have fancy cooling methods that would increase the cost further.
Well no it isn't, this problem is so small that it's not even worth installing any additional cooling method. It's also the lowest consumption period of the year, making the problem even more irrelevant as some plants are already offline for maintainance anyways.
And since the poster didn't knew that, I'm not sure the cost analysis holds up.
They could've, but people and politics are hard and they didn't. It is what it is, can't change the past. We win or we learn.
That kind of fatalism could apply to literally any idiotic policy. The German government knew what they were doing when they made that choice.
"You can't change the past" really isn't fatalism
You think voters had no role there? I don't see nuclear power enjoying some constitutional protection as such, so choosing against it seems ok.
I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.
I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.
If the building costs for the nuclear plants are paid for, nuclear costs are comparable to the costs for utility solar today (and much less than solar 10 years ago).
Closing down nuclear plants while you keep burning coal is not a good decision, no matter how you look at it: deaths due to pollution (in Germany and downwind countries), deaths due to mining, economic costs, etc. We will also see in the future what affect all the extra CO2 that is being emitted. Even now, I just read that Germany ranks 8th globally for the amount of coal they burn. The people who made the decisions to close nuclear plants while they still burn coal are responsible for all that.
Now we know why El Niño is particularly bad this year, all those windmills slowing down the jet stream.
The total carbon emission of Germany in 2024 as a percentage of whole world is 1.5% (https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...). Even if Germany goes carbon neutral tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference on global climate, but there would be millions of Germans on Bürgergeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCrgergeld)