[bulkan]

> In fact Germany even recently invested in new coal powered plants.

Any sources on this? In Australia in the past few weeks Germany is given as an ideal example of a country decommissioning all of its coal mines and power plants.

[earthnail]

We are decommissioning them. The plan was quite badly executed.

Basically, in order to set a deadline, politicians decided to compensate power plant owners for their losses. Problem is: suddenly, all power plant owners came up with very optimistic plans on how long they would’ve kept each plant running.

This would’ve been acceptable to a certain degree if the plan to shut down plants was aggressive to begin with. However, the phase-out plan is largely in line with the plant’s lifespans anyway, so we’re not actually shutting anything off very early.

Reactions have been very mixed, to say the least.

On the bright side, it does close the discussion around coal energy once and for all, but for an unnecessarily high price.

[imtringued]

Some shut downs were motivated by the recent increase of the CO2 certificate prices. Three years ago it was at 5€/ton. Now it is at 25€/ton.

[redprince]

The only ongoing commissioning of a coal fired plant is Datteln 4. Construction was started 13 years ago to replace several ageing coal fired power plants. Due to technical and legal delays it will go online in 2020. Several other power plants will go offline afterwards, roughly with the same generation capacity as Datteln 4. I think it is safe to assume that this will be the last newly built coal fired power plant in Germany.

[xnyan]

It's being done by the biggest power utility in Germany: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-13/germany-s...

You're not hearing about it because it's very embarrassing to Germans, as it should be in my honest opinion. I get that Germans have a very unique and real perspective on the use of nuclear power. I get that nuclear power has very real and serious risks. It's still done less harm to the planet and the things that live on it than the use of coal. Furthermore, the forced dependence on fossil fuels as a result of shunning nuclear power has all kinds of add on effects. There's no Germany without Russian gas, and Putin knows it.

Maybe I am wrong, but the way I see it Germany is sacrificing the overall less negatively impactful option (nuclear power) for fossil fuel because they are unwilling or unable to confront the cultural stance on use of nuclear power. That's the norm for cultures so I don't blame them for it, but I do think it's leading to the wrong choice here.

[lispm]

> but the way I see it Germany is sacrificing the overall less negatively impactful option (nuclear power) for fossil fuel

but we don't. Fossil fuel consumption for electricity production is going down.

[xnyan]

I'm sure locals and many others know far more about this than I. I'm very happy with Germany's 2050 renewable plan which is way more than my country would ever think about doing.

[imtringued]

It could go down much faster.

[lispm]

One would wish. In reality it's quite difficult. We are rebuilding the whole electricity landscape for a country with 80+ million people. The time frame for this is 50 years.

There are lots of factors which are working against it. For example Germany has heavy coal resources (unlike France for example) and it's the largest domestic source of energy. Thus the country has used it for many many decades and this brought wealth and employment to people. Now to tell them that their coal-related jobs will be replaced is creating massive resistance in certain federal states against changing that.

[Brakenshire]

The UK is a better example.

[tonyedgecombe]

The dash for gas, it had big environmental benefits but they weren't the original justification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas

[C1sc0cat]

It was also to punish the NUM (Miners Union)

[jakub_g]

search for "Datteln 4"