[evanlivingston]

Whenever power in Germany comes up, I have a hard time interpreting anything because of the reaction the HN crowd has against the Germany's resistance to Nuclear.

But from what I can tell, they're doing a pretty good job reducing their usage of fossil fuel? Can someone clarify.

Yes, power is more expensive in Germany. Yes they have periods where they don't produce all the power they consume, yes the import nuclear power. But for their goals of reducing fossil fuel consumption and not building nuclear power plants they seem to be doing well?

[locallost]

It comes up frequently, but the price of electricity in Germany is not high in reality, mostly because traditionally the costs have been covered by the actual bills paid. The exception now is the renewables surcharge which will in the future be covered by taxes. The surcharge fills the fund for cases where the guaranteed price for renewables is higher than the market price. But even this used to be on the bill. There are hundreds of companies that sell electricity and it has a market economy there.

On the other hand France as the complete opposite example, it has a nationalized electricity company because it can't survive otherwise. They lobbied hard (successfully) for rule changes in the EU so they are able to fund their nuclear plants through government subsides. We are talking hundreds of billions for their plans to keep old plants alive and build new ones. This will not be on the bill, so the prices are not a realistic comparison.

But even with all that, the price in France is 24c as far as I know. In Germany you can get it for as low as 19c per kwh [1], but you only get a two month price guarantee and can get hit if the market prices spike again. Your choice.

[1] http://energie.check24.de/strom/vergleich/check24/?product_i...