Germany has historical low usage of gas for generation and is adding 14-17GW of solar per year. Germany will need ~57 GWh of batteries by 2030 to sunset coal generation, scaling to 271 GWh by 2050. Current storage is just ~19 GWh (mostly in homes).
> 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.
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.")
(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".
> Spending 10x as much on nuclear power subsidies and hopefully getting some plants finished in the 2040s?
Here's the thing. If Germany had spent on nuclear the same amount of money it has spent (so far) on renewables, then it could have had 100% carbon-free electricity and heating. With lower energy prices than now.
So yes. Nuclear all the way.
Instead, we now face the reality where Germany will have to rely on imported natural gas as far as the eye can see. And certainly past 2040. While having one of the highest electricity rates in Europe, so high that they're now depressing the industry. And the plan to fix it is to keep repeating the word "hydrogen" until something happens.
Meanwhile:
> The coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD mentions the construction of up to 20 GW of gas-fired power plant capacity by 2030. In June, Reiche announced a first step with a tender volume of between five and ten gigawatts.
It is sad to see someone fall to logical inconsistencies because you know you are wrong, but can't bring yourself to admit it.
Do we live in 2005 or 2025? We live in 2025 and can not influence past actions.
Solar power was expensive a decade ago. Today it is not. We build it based on 2025 costs and not 2005. I would suggest you stop crying over spilled milk and instead start looking forward.
Today renewables are the cheapest source of energy in human history, why don't you celebrate that we over the coming decades finally are able to let go off fossil fuels for all but emergency and niche use cases?
How much money has been spent on extra subsidies on top of what a fossil based system would cost for Energiewende? Say €200B? Please do not link the Norwegian professor double counting costs as a source, that would just prove how desperate you are.
As per modern western nuclear construction costs that would result in about 10-15 GW of nuclear power. But somehow that would be enough to power a grid which over the year averages 56 GW. Does not sound very logical does it? Or do you suggest the now phased out fleet could be running today without spending enormous sums on LTO upgrades?
And then you round it all off with crying about perfect. Missing the forest for the trees.
Who cares if the emergency reserves are a tiny bit of fossil fuels when we have an entire economy to decarbonize? The costs to switch the reserves to biofuels, synfuels or pure hydrogen are negligible and trivial to do when they become the most pressing matter to decarbonize.
Take the US and ethanol mix in for gasoline. That is enough energy to run the entire US grid without any other source for 16 days. What happens as we switch the car fleet to BEVs? The ethanol becomes available for emergency reserve duties.
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.
> "Nuclear power mitigates storage needs, but only to a limited extent"
So you suggest we spend 10x as much to not solve Dunkelflautes.
This truly is getting quite sad. Who cares if the 1 in 36 year event is solved with fossil fuels, biofuels, synfuels, hydrogen or whatever?
We are literally talking the scenario happening once during a nuclear plants economic lifespan.
Do you build technologies which are extremely heavily weighted towards CAPEX to solve a problem happening once?
Of course not. You minimize CAPEX and accept high OPEX to solve it. Which might be rationing for a week in the 40 year period.
The study of course did not specify what level of renewables they implemented. What would a 20% overbuild lead to? 50%? It would still cost a fraction compared to new built nuclear power.
This is what is so funny with you nuclear bros. You cry about Dunkeflautes and reliability but then propose literally the worst solution for extreme events.
Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.
Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.
The study was from 2005. I can find it, if you want.
> A few years ago ”even an hour” of storage was the impossible marker. Then it quickly became ”a day!!!” and now we are at a month without any solar or wind power.
No. The problem has been known for decades, but governments simply ignored it. That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
LOL. Can't find any modern research can you? I love how the nuclear bro crowd never wants to step into 2025 and instead keeps living in the past.
> That's why there's so much noise about hydrogen in Geramny. It's used to whitewash the natural gas.
Nah. There's so much noise about hydrogen because the fossil and chemical industries in Germany rely on hydrocarbons. They want another complex gas based system to profit from.
We will likely keep a fleet of gas turbines around for emergency reserve duties for the coming decades. But you are trying to paint the emergency reserves as if they would be the entire grid. When they very much are not.
If you're looking for a renewables success story, Germany ain't it.