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by rapsacnz 296 days ago
Doesn't matter. At this point renewables are going to win, it's just an economic fact. This will only serve to delay this by a small amount.
1 comments

You underestimate how making something illegal can stop the thing in that country. Look at a place like Germany, blocking fracking and nuclear power and now reliant on Russian gas.
Germany needs north of 10TWh of batteries to sunset _gas_ generation.

If you're looking for a renewables success story, Germany ain't it.

> Germany needs north of 10TWh of batteries to sunset _gas_ generation.

Citation? Because the EU intends to phase out Russian gas entirely by 2027. I'm not too concerned about Germany consuming non Russian LNG at this time as they continue to deploy renewables and batteries (GP said "and now reliant on Russian gas." in their comment above). Germany is now getting almost two-thirds of its power from renewables; if that isn't a success story, I don't know what is.

EU plans ban on new Russian gas contracts using trade law - https://www.ft.com/content/8b005c13-2088-47cd-aa47-9163e36ef... | https://archive.today/INqOI ("Russian gas makes up less than 19 per cent of the EU’s overall imports of the fossil fuel, down from around two-fifths when Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.")

Import volume of natural gas from Russia in Germany from June 2021 to November 2024 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332783/german-gas-impor... ("As of November 2024, Germany has imported no Russian natural gas since September 2022. To compare, in August 2022, the import volume of the named commodity stood at around 953 million cubic meters. Over the period observed, the highest figure was recorded at 5.2 billion cubic meters in December 2021.")

Renewables Supplied Two-Thirds of Germany’s Power Last Year [2024] - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-renewable-power-2024 - January 8th, 2025

(edit: Supermancho wrote in a deleted comment about energy demand destruction due to German de-industrialization, but I'm unsure if that energy demand should be forecasted in the future without good data about potential re-industrialization in the future creating said energy demand)

> Citation? Because the EU intends to phase out Russian gas entirely by 2027.

Yes, by replacing it with natgas from Azerbaijan, Qatar, and other wonderful countries.

I'm kinda jaded about this whole topic because it exposes the utter hypocrisy of Germany's Greens.

But long story short, Germany can get Dunkelflaute. Long periods of time in winter when renewable generation falls to about 10% of the _normal_ generation for that time period. A once-in-100-years event is a full month of sustained Dunkelflaute. And this is not a hand-wavy theory. For example, in 2019 there was a 10-day sustained Dunkelflaute: https://energy-charts.info/charts/price_spot_market/chart.ht... - look at the period from 17 to 26 Jan. And as you see, they also coincide with heightened energy consumption, which will become even _worse_ as Germany switches to heat pumps for heating.

The current plan for these is to build more natgas powerplants (German government had to _subsidize_ them directly). With noises about magic "hydrogen".

What do you suggest? Spending 10x as much on nuclear power subsidies and hopefully getting some plants finished in the 2040s?
Where are you getting that number? Germany produced 488 twh of electricity from all sources over the entire course of 2024. That's a bit over 1 twh per day.
Yep. And Germany needs around 20-30 days of storage. Closer to 20, if some demand response is factored-in.
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Who's making anything illegal here