One might think that they've come to the conclusion that it's time to phase out coal and move towards renewables.
But coal is still big in Germany, and with the current Minister for Economic Affairs, Katarina Reiche [1], the fossil fuel lobby has installed a puppet in that position, one who is going all in on fossils again and pushing legislation that makes it much harder to expand solar and wind capacity.
Even though no one needs coal anymore, big companies like RWE still forcibly demolish villages to expand their mines and show off their power .
Wind and solar power do not provide dispatchable power and they therefore do not replace conventional power plants.
Germany isn't keeping their coal-fired power plants and they're not building new gas-fired power plants despite the energy transition but because of it.
You're spreading conspiracy theories when you claim Katherina Reiche is a fossil fuel puppet. She is doing what has always been the plan for the energy transition: Building gas-fired power plants.
That plan is even in the DENA study for the energy transition:
And before you claim DENA is some sort of fossil fuel lobby organization, they're not. DENA belongs to the German state and was founded in 2000 by SPD and Greens:
Sorry, but in Germany there isn't even much of a debate anymore about whether she is a puppet of the gas industry. She even asked EnBW for arguments in favor of gas-fired power plants in order to avoid holding a technology-neutral tender process as required by the EU: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/katherina-reiches-minister...
No, not exactly. Many kinds of rocks and soil will release Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) or otherwise release sulfates and heavy metals into the environment. Of course a lot of this will already be known from the treatments they had to do when keeping the water table low when mining.
When I was a kid I remember a number of very old stone quarries that had been allowed to fill, then years later they had to put up warnings for people to stay out because the high Ph water was dissolving metals into it.
There are lots of these in northern Minnesota and they used the tailings to turn the areas into some really great mountain biking trails, which really helps those old mining towns.
The Tagebaurekultivierungsaktivitäten have been going on for a long time. I remember visiting some former open pit in the 90s, as they started filling it, noting how it would take like 10 years or so. Pretty strange land.
10 years? That's nothing. Flooding Hambach will take approximately 40 years. And that includes water from the Rhine carried there by pipeline, which in the current state of the Rhine is... optimistic.
Why mention nuclear but not wind? Wind has nearly as low an LCOE as solar, and is still dropping too, and wind power is anti-correlated with solar power, meaning we get more wind at night and in the winter.
One of these things is not like the other. You can have solar next week at a reliable price and you'll be able to buy insurance for your solar array on the private market. Nuclear isn't going to happen no matter how many data center projects get hyped. No nuclear project will be complete before we're all talking about data centers like we talk about the Metaverse.
Even if the number of gas turbines will increase (it's not increasing nearly as much as you'd think if you just look at the number being built, because old ones are also being decomissioned), the amount of gas being burnt on an annual level is going to be going down. These gas plants are for bridging gaps left open by wind and solar which cannot yet be covered by batteries.
If you believe in the transition to renewables, Germany fundamentally does still need gas turbines to make that happen, more than we currently have.
That's not inconsistent. A robust grid will have enough capacity of any sort to cover peak demand during a dankelflaute but enough zero-emissions generation and storage to cover generation at all other times.
And that's exactly what Germany is doing. Their natural gas plants only run ~15% of the time. Usage is going down faster than capacity is going up.
It has to be scoped by area. A Dankelflaute that covers the European continent has never been observed. OTOH, a Dankelflaute that covers only Germany is a regular occurrence.
I'm saying there is always wind blowing somewhere on the continent. For the time period where we have had widespread measurement of wind speeds continent wide, there has never been an hour without enough wind to turn a generator in some location.
I'm sceptical that more gas turbines doesn't create a more vulnerable grid. The possibility of gas shortages this winter is on the horizon and if the UK were to cease exports for whatever reason it would be a disaster for the rest of Europe.
Ed Conway released a video on the UK's gas network and disaster planning[0].
As shown in their documentary, a shutdown of exports to Europe would only require 2 or 3 failure events (low production from wind/solar, high-usage of gas for power/heating, disruption or cessation of imports via gas-tankers, well-placed damage to the gas network, extreme weather in the north sea). To maintain pressure in the gas network, they would begin shedding the largest loads first, exports to mainland Europe is #1 on that list.
Let's also not forget Nordstream and the disaster that caused when it mysteriously blew up. Before those pipelines exploded, there were protests in Germany because people were struggling to heat their homes.
Nuclear isn't vulnerable to any of these issues, we're very lucky that construction and investment has continued these past decades. /s
Capacity isn't the problem, usage is. If Europe reduced its usage to about 10% of current usage, full tanks would last a full year.
Nuclear is unsuited for this problem. Europe needs something that will supply approximately all of its power needs for only a few days a year. Europe already has enough natural gas storage to do this. If you built enough nuclear to cover all its power needs for a few days a year you'd have enough nuclear to supply all its power needs 365 days a year. That would work great, but it would cost tens of trillions.
On the one hand, it's nice that they're doing it.
One might think that they've come to the conclusion that it's time to phase out coal and move towards renewables. But coal is still big in Germany, and with the current Minister for Economic Affairs, Katarina Reiche [1], the fossil fuel lobby has installed a puppet in that position, one who is going all in on fossils again and pushing legislation that makes it much harder to expand solar and wind capacity. Even though no one needs coal anymore, big companies like RWE still forcibly demolish villages to expand their mines and show off their power .
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherina_Reiche [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
Wind and solar power do not provide dispatchable power and they therefore do not replace conventional power plants.
Germany isn't keeping their coal-fired power plants and they're not building new gas-fired power plants despite the energy transition but because of it.
You're spreading conspiracy theories when you claim Katherina Reiche is a fossil fuel puppet. She is doing what has always been the plan for the energy transition: Building gas-fired power plants.
That plan is even in the DENA study for the energy transition:
https://www.dena.de/fileadmin/dena/Dokumente/Pdf/9262_dena-L... (p. 29)
And before you claim DENA is some sort of fossil fuel lobby organization, they're not. DENA belongs to the German state and was founded in 2000 by SPD and Greens:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Energie-Agentur
Sorry, but in Germany there isn't even much of a debate anymore about whether she is a puppet of the gas industry. She even asked EnBW for arguments in favor of gas-fired power plants in order to avoid holding a technology-neutral tender process as required by the EU: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/katherina-reiches-minister...
I wish someone would try to convert them in geothermal plant.
This is quite normal thing to do for many open pit mines or rather hard not to do if the pit goes below the water table.
There are some very nice natural swimming pools in the local area thanks to that, for example:
https://www.kudyznudy.cz/aktivity/koupaliste-u-libuse-v-lule... (stone quarry, IMHO one of the best summer swimming pools anywhere)
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatopen%C3%BD_lom_v_Blansku (stone quarry)
https://www.jednoustopouceskem.cz/listing/lom-kaolinka-prime... (kaolin mine)
Brazil has one as well (Blue hole), the water became blue after the rain due to its limestone soil and it became a tourist spot:
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=jericoacoara+%22Buraco...
I recently went swimming in one of these submerged mines/quarries in North America. This one flooded during a severe hurricane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Brownstone_Quarries
The Minnesota Iron Range is full of these and they're absolutely beautiful; terrifyingly deep, however.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAL_d-5FsGQ - Tioga Pit Mine (225' deep)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Mine_Pit_Lake (450' deep)
Luleč is really amazing and the food they have there is top.
Interesting machine that mines the coal and makes the lakes possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8772vEfUu8
Haunted Hydrology's video for October 8 is about divers in flooded mines:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V-HW5HAL7Lk
I feel bad for the post-apocalypse folks who won't be able to find any dry, solid fuel to burn.
Mining operations often are toxic environments for various reasons aren't they?
Excavation pits can be clean and I'm pretty sure they would have considered what was left in the pit.
What you're thinking of is the processing aspect of mining, which is a whole different beast.
No, not exactly. Many kinds of rocks and soil will release Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) or otherwise release sulfates and heavy metals into the environment. Of course a lot of this will already be known from the treatments they had to do when keeping the water table low when mining.
When I was a kid I remember a number of very old stone quarries that had been allowed to fill, then years later they had to put up warnings for people to stay out because the high Ph water was dissolving metals into it.
These strip mine reclamations are just great.
In the 1990s, we lived on a lake in Indiana that was reclaimed from strip mines. Recommended.
There are lots of these in northern Minnesota and they used the tailings to turn the areas into some really great mountain biking trails, which really helps those old mining towns.
Germany is pretty famous for tagebaurekultivierung.
The Tagebaurekultivierungsaktivitäten have been going on for a long time. I remember visiting some former open pit in the 90s, as they started filling it, noting how it would take like 10 years or so. Pretty strange land.
10 years? That's nothing. Flooding Hambach will take approximately 40 years. And that includes water from the Rhine carried there by pipeline, which in the current state of the Rhine is... optimistic.
Now please bring back solar + nuclear energy and stop pretending that burning oil is cleaner.
Why mention nuclear but not wind? Wind has nearly as low an LCOE as solar, and is still dropping too, and wind power is anti-correlated with solar power, meaning we get more wind at night and in the winter.
> Wind has nearly as low an LCOE as solar
Because production costs aren't what's setting the prices, supply and demand is.
Cheap solar and wind power doesn't help when it's not available.
How much less of a problem is this as batteries improve? Honest question, I never saw this quantified.
Yeah wind too.
The north, where I live, has lots of windmills and more is being built
One of these things is not like the other. You can have solar next week at a reliable price and you'll be able to buy insurance for your solar array on the private market. Nuclear isn't going to happen no matter how many data center projects get hyped. No nuclear project will be complete before we're all talking about data centers like we talk about the Metaverse.
Good luck with solar in Germany when you will be paying a fee for feeding in energy to the grid during solar peek time from 2027 onwards.
Do you have a source? Can you "waste" that energy instead of feeding it in?
Added 17GW solar in the last 12 months, reached 129GW: https://solarzubau.de/deutschland/
Cool, these are currently supplying 0.06% of their installed capacity:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/fifteen_minutes
Very useful.
We are currently busy building new gas turbines. lol.
Even if the number of gas turbines will increase (it's not increasing nearly as much as you'd think if you just look at the number being built, because old ones are also being decomissioned), the amount of gas being burnt on an annual level is going to be going down. These gas plants are for bridging gaps left open by wind and solar which cannot yet be covered by batteries.
If you believe in the transition to renewables, Germany fundamentally does still need gas turbines to make that happen, more than we currently have.
That's not inconsistent. A robust grid will have enough capacity of any sort to cover peak demand during a dankelflaute but enough zero-emissions generation and storage to cover generation at all other times.
And that's exactly what Germany is doing. Their natural gas plants only run ~15% of the time. Usage is going down faster than capacity is going up.
https://unpopular-truth.com/2024/07/05/natures-influence-on-...
Because everyone copies it: the word is Dunkelflaute. U, not a.
TIL Dankelflaute, a time when it is too dark with too little wind for either solar or wind energy generation. Thank you for this amazing word.
It has to be scoped by area. A Dankelflaute that covers the European continent has never been observed. OTOH, a Dankelflaute that covers only Germany is a regular occurrence.
So, you're telling me there is daylight in Spain when we have night in Germany?
Also, have you ever done some research on how winds work? They're usually blowing (or not blowing) across the whole continent.
So, yeah, Dunkelflauten usually cover the whole continent.
I'm saying there is always wind blowing somewhere on the continent. For the time period where we have had widespread measurement of wind speeds continent wide, there has never been an hour without enough wind to turn a generator in some location.
https://communities.springernature.com/posts/quantifying-the...
I'm sceptical that more gas turbines doesn't create a more vulnerable grid. The possibility of gas shortages this winter is on the horizon and if the UK were to cease exports for whatever reason it would be a disaster for the rest of Europe.
Ed Conway released a video on the UK's gas network and disaster planning[0].
As shown in their documentary, a shutdown of exports to Europe would only require 2 or 3 failure events (low production from wind/solar, high-usage of gas for power/heating, disruption or cessation of imports via gas-tankers, well-placed damage to the gas network, extreme weather in the north sea). To maintain pressure in the gas network, they would begin shedding the largest loads first, exports to mainland Europe is #1 on that list.
Let's also not forget Nordstream and the disaster that caused when it mysteriously blew up. Before those pipelines exploded, there were protests in Germany because people were struggling to heat their homes.
Nuclear isn't vulnerable to any of these issues, we're very lucky that construction and investment has continued these past decades. /s
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKDnZz4wypI
Capacity isn't the problem, usage is. If Europe reduced its usage to about 10% of current usage, full tanks would last a full year.
Nuclear is unsuited for this problem. Europe needs something that will supply approximately all of its power needs for only a few days a year. Europe already has enough natural gas storage to do this. If you built enough nuclear to cover all its power needs for a few days a year you'd have enough nuclear to supply all its power needs 365 days a year. That would work great, but it would cost tens of trillions.
We have to build new gas turbines since wind and solar do not provide dispatchable power.
I hear there is a shortage of blades for the turbines.