| I am not trying to defend the study, but I don't think any of your points actually mitigate the issue of volatility. 1. trades with neighbours: most european countries face similar weather conditions at the same time. The french will need their own nuclear capacity to make up for their own lack of wind. 2. demand response: switching off factories or heating when you need it? That's no solution 3. over building: the problem is that the volatility of wind is massive, if you look at the uk grid website [1], it can go to nearly zero for more than a week. If the volatility was smaller, over provisioning could be a solution (provided the economics work). 4. efficiency measures: you only make the size of the problem slightly smaller, but you still have a volatility problem. And with cars going electric and us not relying on russian gas for heating, I don't see the demand for electricity going down 5. hydro, biogas: there is only so much hydro you can build. And the places where you can build some (Sweden, Norway) leave you at the mercy of a russian submarine cutting the cable. Biogas: isn't that co2 emitting? [1] https://gridwatch.co.uk/ |
EVs and heat pumps are over 4x the efficiency. 75% of your energy just not needed anymore to do the exact same work.
The real clincher is that most of the storage they predict is hydrogen and at the end they calculate that the crazy amount of storage required for Germany as an island is in fact, the same size as the existing gas storage facilities which can be reused for that purpose.
Which I think really rams home how utterly boring this allegedly insurmountable challenge is.