[mvgcf]

This op-ed is getting things so utterly wrong, I don‘t even know where to start.

The Energiewende (so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility) here in Germany is working just fine. It is a reasonable investment in our future.

The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy. The lack of gas is problematic because it is a preliminary product used in chemical processes. This is where a looming recession might derive from.

On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated, especially for the generation of nuclear power plants in use right now. They are expensive both in terms of dollars and in terms of their ecological footprint.

[dang]

> so cool he can make use of a german word, so much credibility

Please omit swipes like this from your HN comments. They're against the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and they weaken your argument.

[Zanfa]

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

Grid-scale storage (apart from hydro, but that's basically maxed out or unsuitable for most geographies) is still an unsolved problem for renewables, even the largest lithium-battery ones are basically a rounding error. You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables. Not even sure if there's enough lithium to make this work theoretically with current tech.

> On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated

Same is true for every other power source as well. Energy storage for renewables is never included, so you need backups, the €100 billion German defence package announced a few months ago is a direct consequence of "cheap" Russian gas, the millions of people suffering/dying from air pollution related issues from using coal.

There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.

[ben_w]

> There's no perfect solution, but nuclear is definitely a strong contender for the best way forward.

Absolutely! But:

Nuclear was approximately as cheap as the equivalent LiIon storage a few years ago, but the batteries are getting cheaper and the reactors are not.

There are also other chemistries, and other storage options, which I'd include under the banner of "no perfect solution, so let's do everything".

> You'd need multiple weeks worth of battery capacity to really run on renewables.

I have no idea why this meme propagates. How many people live where there is no sunlight for multiple weeks at a time? And it's not like we don't already have some long distance power lines.

PV is so absurdly cheap that overproduction is seriously not a bad solution if you're just concerned about cloudy weeks.

[VaxWithSex]

It's a solved problem for Germany. Electrolyze Hydrogen, store it in the existing gas infrastructure for the winter. Use the gas plants to burn it in the winter.

[ThePhysicist]

That has a round trip efficiency of around 20-25 % I think (more if you can also use the process heat), so we would need to over-provision renewables by 400 % to make it work.

[dividedbyzero]

There is a ton of unused roof space that could be decked out with solar, though. There are few heat pumps deployed so far, lots of inefficient old houses that could be modernized, plus there is an array of concepts for other storage tech still at a pretty early stage. It's probably going to be a mix of different generation and storage tech coupled with gains in efficiency, and that seems like it could work out.

[ThePhysicist]

Sure, feasible in the long run but don't hold your breath on it to work in the next 5-10 years. China has just doubled their growth targets for solar so producers have trouble keeping up with demand already and we have almost no domestic production anymore, so there's just no way we'll be able to act on this in the near future.

[DocTomoe]

I would love to see a reference about this being actively used, in a meaningful capacity (as in: enough to prevent a countrywide blackout).

[dispat0r]

We don't Electrolyse Hydrogen in Germany there is not one large-scale installation. You can't pump 100% hydrogen in the natural gas infrastructure, and the gas plants need to support hydrogen burning. You also need a surplus of energy, which Germany obviously not has.

[epups]

There is no large scale hydrogen storage facility that could take even 1% of German's energy needs.

[dividedbyzero]

Yet.

[ben_w]

Indeed. If the annual natural gas use of all of Germany was represented as liquid hydrogen, it would be a ~700m cube.

A year is probably more than is needed, but I don't know how low storage can go before it causes problems. If I guess a week is sufficient then every million German residents need a 43m cube.

This isn't unbuildable if there is sufficient political will.

[timbre1234]

"The reason natural gas is a problem right now is not that we have insufficient energy."

Yeah, I stopped reading here. This is just a flat out untruth. I'm sorry if this article doesn't agree with how you wish the world could be, but simply saying things like this that aren't true doesn't help.

[disgu]

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

No you don't. Just because you pay for Ökostrom or whatever doesn't mean that the electricity you actually use was produced by renewables. It's one grid. You use the electricity produced by coal plants just like everyone else.

[mvgcf]

I am glad you got my point: My share of energy consumption is completly covered by renewables.

[CRConrad]

> My share of energy consumption is completly covered by renewables.

Only if you

a) Pretend that the electricity you get doesn't come from the same grid as everyone else's, where the input to that grid is a mixture of renewable and non-renewable energy, and

b) Don't look too hard at how many others make that same boast: Being "green" is "in", so lots of people's consumption "is completly covered by renewables"... Perhaps a larger proportion of electricity consumers than he proportion of electricity actually generated by renewables?

I mean, if you can happily -- and unthinkingly -- echo the empty promise on your electricity bill, so can everyone else.

Your claim is point-less.

[ThePhysicist]

Those renewable energy contracts were mostly a scam in my opinion, most of these providers just bought renewable electricity from the stock market when it was cheap and sold it to consumers at a premium, creating zero new renewable capacity in the process. Greenwashing at its finest. And last year when prices for renewables went through the roof due to several unanticipated factors most of them went belly-up and had to "fire" their long-time customers (myself included) because their business models stopped working as they had built zero renewable energy production themselves.

The whole "Energiewende" feels a bit like that: Electricity production was privatized and more than 300 billion € in subsidies went into investors' hands. Now the infrastructure that was created is mostly privately owned and even though renewable energy production currently peaks the prices go through the roof because consumer prices align with the stock market price of electricity and not the cost of production. It really matters how you create renewable energy.

[mvgcf]

While you do make a fair point on greenwashing being a problem in general, your opinion does not apply to my non greenwashed contract. 100% green energy and a coop investing heavily in more capacity.

This is true for gas (heating) and electricity, btw.

[CRConrad]

> does not apply to my non greenwashed contract. 100% green energy and a coop investing heavily in more capacity.

So you're connected directly to a co-op's green power plant; neither your house nor that power plant are on the national grid where your "100% green energy" gets mixed up with all the other -- non-green -- electricity being produced nationwide?

[dispat0r]

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7. On paper maybe, most people are actually using electricity generated from conventional power plants most of the time, and we are paying the highest energy prices in the world for that.

> On nuclear: The cost of nuclear power is wildly underestimated, especially for the generation of nuclear power plants in use right now. They are expensive both in terms of dollars and in terms of their ecological footprint. Building thousands of windmills in forests and installing solar on farmland also has a high ecological footprint.

[ben_w]

> Building thousands of windmills in forests and installing solar on farmland also has a high ecological footprint.

False dichotomies. See for example Flugplatz Brandenburg-Briest: https://goo.gl/maps/WATEJANE9wiHk7UAA

And pastureland can continue to be used as pastureland simultaneously with both PV and wind.

[ucha]

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

How can you receive energy purely from renewable energy sources when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine? Germany doesn't have any significant capacity for electricity storage. It's such a bold statement but it seems physically impossible.

[mvgcf]

One example: my energy provider builds biogas plants. Guess what, they turn agricultural waste into electricity. Even at night.

Your argumentation is similar to suggesting Tesla should stop developing electrical cars because there is no charger infrastructure. So 2010.

[ucha]

I thought biomass was marginal but you actually produce almost as much electricity with biomass as with natural gas. I stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany

[WanderPanda]

> On sustainable energy sources: I, as many other germans, receive all of my electricity from purely renewable energy sources for more than ten years now. 24/7.

More probably you‘re running on green (washing) electricity certificates from Norway…

[VaxWithSex]

Nope, 100% green energy in the hands of the citizens.

[mvgcf]

This. It is 100% green energy. No certificates or whatsoever.

[tallanvor]

Then they're lying to you. Unless you're on a completely separate power grid, your energy is, in reality, provided by the power source closest to you. It might be solar or wind sometimes, but the rest of the time it's probably a non-renewable source.

German companies claiming to get their energy through renewable sources are primarily buying credits from Norway and a few other sources in Europe.

You can stick your head in the ground and pretend all of the electricity you use is being generated by renewable resources, but as long as plants in Germany are producing power using coal and natural gas, it means you're using that energy.

[mvgcf]

This is not true. There are multiple energy providers selling only renewables. There even is one village that managed to do so on its own for itself.

Your argumentation is wrong. What you say is: There is no use in limiting pollution, because there will still be some pollution left anyways. I bet you never clean your place, because it will get dirty soon after.

[Ekaros]

It's funny that those wind and solar contracts don't stop delivering when there is no supply... Makes one wonder about truth.

[mvgcf]

It’s funny that you cannot provide a single day within the last 10 years where there was neither solar nor wind supply.