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by roenxi 740 days ago
Yes. We all saw what happened to Germany when they pretended wind/solar was competitive with fossil fuels in the Energiewende. It was a clear step backwards. Countries utilising cheap energy have energy (and electricity) profiles that look like China, not Germany.

The fact that now renewables seem to be honest-to-goodness competitive is big news. If serious people should be investing in renewables which is a huge change in the economic equilibrium.
2 comments
toomuchtodo 740 days ago
Germany helped drive down renewables costs. Someone had to eat the beginning of the S curve.

Lazy laggards are receiving the benefits of those investments previously made.

https://energytransition.org/2016/01/how-germany-helped-brin...

> “The Germans were not really buying power — they were buying a price decline,” Hal Harvey, a US clean energy expert.

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roenxi 740 days ago
The numbers suggest their efforts failed and what they should have done was waited for China to start manufacturing solar panels using the returns from heavy investment in fossil fuels.

But regardless; if we don't have any argument that Germany spent a lot of money on wind/solar and weren't getting power out of it then I think serious people would dispute that wind/solar had higher energy returns than coal at the time. It is pretty obvious that coal/oil/gas had better returns. But it has been a busy decade and it is much more plausible now that renewables are competitive. The explosive growth certainly suggests they are.

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dralley 740 days ago
Current geopolitical events suggest that not only was reducing European reliance on fossil fuels sourced from the Middle East and Russia a good idea, but that they were not nearly aggressive enough in doing so. IIRC, gas heating still receives government subsidies in Germany that heat pumps do not (and have for more than a decade)

The transition away from oil will take a long, long time, and natural gas will be an essential component in renewable strategies for some time to come. But Europe needs to figure out how to reduce that consumption to not much more than what can be provided domestically and via trade with the US for geopolitical reasons.

Any cost comparison that doesn't factor in geopolitical concerns is incomplete.

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h0l0cube 740 days ago
> The explosive growth certainly suggests

Also the LCOE:

https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april...

They haven't put out a report for this year, but it appears they didn't for 2022 either.

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ZeroGravitas 740 days ago
> I think serious people would dispute that wind/solar had higher energy returns than coal at the time.

This is why I think it's important when stating that renewables have a higher EROI than fossil fuels, to also emphasise that EROI is a stupid metric that doesn't matter at all in reality.

It was only ever popular with doomers and cranks for this reason.

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marssaxman 740 days ago
> what they should have done was waited for China to start manufacturing solar panels

...but China started manufacturing solar panels in no small part because Germany started buying them, promoting a virtuous cycle. It might have been a long wait for that cycle to begin of its own accord!

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ZeroGravitas 740 days ago
> We all saw what happened to Germany when they pretended wind/solar was competitive with fossil fuels in the Energiewende.

I think you've gone off script.

You're not supposed to state that you think burning dirty coal and imported Russian gas are better than renewables.

Normally people bashing Germany hide behind pretending they're nuclear fans.

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