[onli]

No. Nuclear energy was at the same time very expensive and only a very small percentage of the energy production. Sunsetting the old plants had no negative impact at all on electricity prices, to the contrary, insofar as it made space for more green energy.

[azan_]

Compare emissions between France and Germany during dunkelflaute. Germany is frequently at the Polish levels of emissions and Poland is famous for huge emissions. Sunsetting would make sense if they could already generate enough green electricity even in bad conditions, which was not and is not the case. It was purely political decision - Germany wanted to be European hub for distributing gas from Russia (that's why tried to convince others than gas is somehow green energy).

[locallost]

Your question was how would the prices be without the nuclear shutdown, talking about emissions now is goalpost shifting. Speaking of politics and not making sense, Poland is still at these levels because they put road blocks into renewables deployment and spend their resources on nuclear plants. If those plans go well they will be at around 35% coal in 2040, which is more than Germany is now.

[realusername]

> Compare emissions between France and Germany during dunkelflaute

Even without dunkelflaute, the absolute bottom per kwh emissions of Germany in summer still doesn't reach the maximum emissions of France in winter.

[bhelkey]

> Nuclear energy was at the same time very expensive and only a very small percentage of the energy production

The Guardian reports that Nuclear power produced ~20% of Germany's electricity in 2011.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nuclear-pow...

[Ringz]

But 2011 was not the year the nuclear power plants were shut down. However, that is the year your previous commenter was referring to. So what exactly are you trying to say? Incidentally, the electricity that the nuclear power plants had supplied was not replaced by coal power plants, but by renewable energy.

[bhelkey]

There was not a single moment in time in which all nuclear power plants were simultaneously shut down. The shut down was gradual [1]. 2011 is relevant because it is when the German government decided to phase out its remaining nuclear power plants.

[1] https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out....

[exe34]

How much solar/wind can you really install in the area covered by a nuclear station?

[lxgr]

That's not the problem; Germany has enough space to build solar and wind capacity to satisfy its consumption – on average. The problem is storage.

[happosai]

Most definitely not true. Maybe enough area to cover current electric usage, but to truly decarbonize society a lot more renewable energy is needed - for transport, heating, iron industry, chemical industries, fetilizers etc. Massive amounts of electricity is needed unless you export your industries to china.

[Glaklloo]

Heating can also use heat from the ground.

Also the market should be seen more holistic with water energy from the north and sun from the south.

[chopin]

That's prohibitively expensive. And not possible everywhere. And Germany's grid is not ready for heating with electricity.

[_ph_]

Heating with heat pumps is highly efficient and already the cheapest way of heating your home. The grids are ready for it - especially considering the amount of residential solar.

[KptMarchewa]

Ground heat pumps still use electricity.

[Glaklloo]

Yes but the major energy consumption of a household is heating than transport than utility.

Using ground heat (deep ones) reduces the electricity need sign.

Also if a heat pumpt creates 3-6 the energy from 1kwh, its even more efficient to burn oil and gas to make energy out of it and remote heat than just burning it locally in your burner.

[lxgr]

Why not? Germany's total energy consumption is estimated to be around 1-2 TWh/y. This could be generated by photovoltaics covering less than 5% of its land surface.

There are significant problems around rolling out that much capacity quickly enough, and I also don't think nuclear should have been shut down that hastily, but I don't think "only nuclear can cover long-term energy needs" is true in any way.

[happosai]

Wtf are your numbers from, but they are wrong. It's over 2200TWh per year. And it you truly want to be renewable, the numbers go up. Upcycling waste to plastics or using hydrogen to make steel is more energy intensive than using fossil fuels. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/indicator-final-energy-con...

[locallost]

Those are total energy numbers, which includes fossil fuels, but those are famously misleading because replacing those with electricity reduces the number of Wh needed. An electric car needs roughly 15kWh for 100 kilometers, a gas powered car typically at least 60kWh for the same distance.

[lxgr]

Germany uses “,” as the decimal separator.

[moi2388]

5% of the entire German landmass? That seems feasible and desirable to you?!

[lxgr]

I have my doubts about short and medium term feasibility, and much more importantly storage and adapting carbon-based industrial processes.

But yes, if all it took was 5% of landmass (which also doesn’t get permanently unusable nor polluted), I’d say that would be a pretty good deal, yeah. This is significantly less than what’s used for livestock farming, to put it into perspective.

Realistically, I don’t think we’ll solve storage fast enough to be able to afford zero nuclear power in Europe.

[Ringz]

You can install solar panels over areas that are already developed — rooftops (lol), parking garages, highways, and so on. Some agricultural land even benefits from being covered by solar panels. This has great potential and was first researched in the United States. China is covering water reservoirs with solar panels, which has the additional positive effect of reducing evaporation. And then there is the incredibly large amount of energy that the North Sea, far from any beaches or islands, could provide in consistent wind energy.

[_ph_]

Over 40% of the German landmass is currently used to produce food for farm animals. The space requirement for solar is far off from that. And you can use rooftops etc.