[Phil_Latio]

I wrote aggressively expanded. It doesn't make sense to build wind in a region where it's only profitable due to subsidies.

> Wind power is so cheap

Germany has the highest energy costs in the world. The alledged price points for wind and solar do not account for the total cost: Negative electricity prices when there is too much demand, increased costs managing the grid (redispatch), the need for a double-infrastructure (because when there is no wind or solar produced, someone else has to produce)

France has lower electricity prices than Germany, while emitting only 16% (!!!!!) Co2 compared to Germany. Conclusion: Germanies "clean energy" way is a total failure. Electric cars in Germany are "dirtier" than gasoline cars due to the energy mix.

[cedilla]

Electricity prices are only very tangentially related to production cost. As you say yourself, grid costs are a factor.

> France has lower electricity prices

France has incredibly high subsidies for nuclear power, and it's still not enough. And their newest power plant cost 20 billion just in construction for a paltry 1.6GW, and to even begin new ones they need to subsidy them with 100€ per MWh (which is about thirty-three times the subsidies wind power recieves in Germany).

If anything, France is a nice example of how it's maybe nice to /have/ a fleet of nukes, but Germany does not have them nor do they have the time to build up reactors. Even if there were politicians interested in paying for them (because the free market sure isn't).

[Moldoteck]

France doesn't have high subsidies for nuclear. EDF financial reports are public, please don't spread misinformation. In fact they have an additional tax for it called arenh.

You could consider nationalization a subsidy(albeit it wasn't) but that was a one off 9bn payment. Germany spent double of that last year alone on EEG ren subsidies and still had highest household prices in EU.

German wind gets about 70€/MWh.

New french nuclear CFDs aren't clear. Fla3 doesn't have cfd and has a prod cost of 90-120€/MWh. But that's a failed project which got delayd and had supply chain issues. If EPR2 will have the same problems - yes, it'll cost similarly. Otherwise it'll be cheaper, like eg building a unit in 10y instead of 20

[Phil_Latio]

Well the whole clean energy transformation in Germany has a tax payer burden of 3 trillion or more till 2045. Frances nuclear plants didn't even receive 1 trillion of subsidies in total since their existence (according to my quick research). But let's say France and Germany are even in subsidies or France pays slightly more: I thought it's about Co2? Again: France has 1/6 of the Co2 emissions compared to Germany. Just by that metric it's a colossal failure!

When you say Germany can't just build nuclear plants now you are right. But the solution can't be to expand solar and wind, while destroying coal and nuclear plants - which is what they do. The last minister for these matters had the unironical idea to shutdown industry when the renewables don't produce. The idea was to move from a demand driven industry, to a supply driven industry. Total madness. The idea to produce wind in the south of Germany is part of such madness.

[cedilla]

You're mixing up historic costs with current costs. As an illustration: the moon landing cost just $25 billion dollars, the Manhattan project even just $2 billion, what do you think a project of these scales would cost today?

You're also mixing the status quo with your (unclear) desire of how the world should be. Germany spent the last 80 years to build up an energy grid built on coal – nuclear peaked at 30%!. Of course they emit more CO2 today compared to the French!

But if anything, that's an argument for why Germany should start agressively building out renewables (aggression there was abandoned 20 years ago by the Merkel admin).

> 3 trillion or more till 2045

Looking at decades is a surefire way to get big numbers. But depending on your starting points (I guess 1999 during SPD/Greens coalition), that's just €60 billion per year. A lot of money but not exactly shocking.

> The idea to produce wind in the south of Germany is part of such madness.

Even the state of Bavaria - not exactly known to be mad for wind power - classifies more than half of its area as containing locations suitable for wind power. Of course that's nothing compared to Lower Saxony, but that's why they aim for total installed capacity of just 6 GW by 2050 (source for all that is the Bayrischer Windatlas issued by the, again, very sceptical of wind power, CSU government of Bavaria).

You're really just decade old fud against renewables. Do you really think that in the whole of 70 thousand square kilometres of Bavaria there are no points where the wind is strong enough 150 m above ground to produce power profitably? Because that's just not true. And 6 GW, by the way, are just one to four thousand modern turbines. Across the largest state of Germany. There's nothing mad about that at all.

[Moldoteck]

Germany spent over 360bn on eeg alone till now, not adjusted to inflation. That's about 2x the cost of entire french nuclear fleet. And EEG is projected to rise further.

In 20y since EEG creation, Germany achieved much poorer decarbonization vs France during Messmer

You can check out today how nicely is that investment performing https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

So Germany did both spend more and achieved poorer results which can be seen literally today or in yearly average. All this while it has highest household prices in EU per eurostat (last year, this year it'll probably be topped by Romania)