[UltraSane]

It is a real problem and is being addressed

Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr...

Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price

https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el...

Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry?

https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge...

Deindustrialization in Germany: Energy Costs Driving Industries Abroad

https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/

[uecker]

Whether there is a real problem with high electricity was not the question, but whether it is caused by renewables vs. nuclear.

[UltraSane]

It is caused by a overall incredibly stupid energy policy.

[uecker]

Thanks for confirming my comment about the intellectual level of this debate.

[quotemstr]

The subsidy strategy is strategically reckless and economically doomed. What is it supposed to accomplish? The factories aren't profitable at today's energy prices. Since it's these factories that create Germany's wealth, their being unprofitable makes the country unprofitable, driving down standards of living.

If you subsidize electricity by capping consumer prices, then you have to either cap producer prices (creating shortages) or have the state pick up the difference. The latter option might make individual factories profitable, but it makes Germany even less profitable: now the country as a whole is paying not only to import electricity, but also for administrative overhead of the subsidy and the deadweight loss produced by non-market allocations of a scarce factor of production, electricity.

All these subsidies do is transfer wealth to the industrial and energy sectors from literally everyone else and impoverish the country as a whole.

A subsidy might be justifiable if it covered a temporary market hiccup. These high prices aren't shocks. They're structural. They're foreseeable consequences of state policies that decrease the supply of electricity and thereby make it more expensive than in competing polities.

Imagine the US trying to address oil shocks in the 70s by subsidizing gasoline. Wouldn't have worked. Subsidies cannot create more of a resource.

Also, given the 2028-2030 pension budget crisis you're facing, I'm not sure you guys can afford to impoverish yourselves with subsidies even in the short term.

If you guys want to remain competitive, you need to find ways to generate power under an affordable cost structure and stop lying to yourselves about how, any day now, the Energiewende will produce a cornucopia of electrons. It's just not happening.

Something has to break here. Maybe you accept declining living standards. Maybe you just burn an enormous ocean-boiling amount of barely-not-peat lignite from your western states. Maybe you become a Russian client state and return to suckling the Siberian gas teat.

Or maybe, just maybe, you see that nuclear power works for others and can work for you too if you get over your atomic phobia.

[uecker]

All you are discussing the wrong points. All your conclusions rest on the assumption that nuclear is the more cost effective solution, but this is not true (and we could discuss this). You did not notice the price drop in renewables? Germany still pays subsidies (technically there are not subsidies though) but those are far less than initially. The cost drop caused a huge amount of investments world-wide in renewables far ahead of investments in nuclear. The reality is that nuclear needs more government support than renewables. The EDF in France was renationalized because operating it as a profit-driven company wasn't exactly a success story (especially since the electricity price is kept artificially low in France and does not all EDF to make the profits to make necessary investments)

Since nuclear is more costly, that all your arguments about the economic issues turn around and go into the other direction.

[UltraSane]

Germany emits about 10 times as much CO2 per kWh as France!

  Germany: 328-354g CO2/kWh
  France:   27- 39g CO2/kWh

[uecker]

Yes, and Germany's emissions for electricity production were double the amount a decade ago and are dropping as coal is phased out. So renewables do work. 1) Once the transition is complete it will also be close to zero. These numbers only show that if you move to a carbon-neutral production already in the eighties of last century your are done now. Please make a reasonable argument and not this nonsense comparison.

1) You can find a plot here (absolute numbers). See the dramatic drop in emissions in recent years? https://energy-charts.info/charts/co2_emissions/chart.htm?l=...

[UltraSane]

The sane and sensible thing to do would have been to phase out coal instead of nuclear, then Germany would have as low of CO2 emissions per KWh as France. What does Germany plan to use for dispatch-able power when wind and solar don't supply enough?

[uecker]

I agree that one should have phased out coal faster instead of nuclear. Also with nuclear one needs dispatch-able power because demand is also variable and one does not use nuclear for balancing. But one certainly needs more with renewables. For the time being this is gas (which is a small fraction of overall gas use in Germany). In the long-term it will be replaced batteries for short duration and likely back-conversion of synthetic gas if there is a longer period. Biomass and demand-side electricity management will also help. Overall, I do not see a fundamental problem.

[UltraSane]

I'm not German and very pro-nuclear energy and think Germany's energy policy is very VERY stupid. Shutting down perfectly good nuclear reactors while importing nuclear electricity from France is just insane. Germany emits about 10 times as much CO2 per kWh as France!

  Germany: 328-354g CO2/kWh
  France:   27- 39g CO2/kWh

[uecker]

Your arguments are calling it "VERY stupid" and "insane". That says all about the rationality of your position.

[uecker]

I see you edited your comment. But the CO2 emissions between a completed transition away from fossil fuels (France last century) and Germany (still ongoing) can obviously not be compared. With the roll-out of renewables there is a corresponding drop of emissions (and the electricity sector is the one saving Germany's climate targets by overachieving its goals while transport and building is behind). Once the transition is done, it will be essentially done. It would be same if Germany had decided to move to more nuclear, which would take even longer because building nuclear takes much.longer.

[UltraSane]

"But the CO2 emissions between a completed transition away from fossil fuels (France last century) and Germany (still ongoing) can obviously not be compared"

Isn't that convenient? The truth is that Germany could already have completed the "transition away from fossil fuels" that France did if it wasn't so irrationally afraid of nuclear electricity.

"Once the transition is done"

It will NEVER be done due to the intermittency of wind and solar.

[uecker]

The truth is that you need to set the decline of CO2 emissions to the progress of the transition. If you do this, you will see that emissions decrease accordingly to the rollout of renewables. If Germany had decided to build out nuclear, it would also not have low emissions the next day, but only decades later depending on how much coal is replaced by new nuclear. This not difficult to understand. In fact, it is very obvious.