Germany’s Energy Conundrum
As noted here:
Germany is Europe’s largest economy, and its wealth depends heavily on exporting industrial goods made with cheap electricity. Lignite is the cheapest source of electricity from fossil fuels, and Germany has the world’s largest reserves of it. But lignite causes the highest CO2 emissions per ton when burned, one-third more than hard coal and three times as much as natural gas.
Yet Germany also has the most ambitious green energy strategy of all the industrialized nations — the Energiewende, or energy transformation. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany’s conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, vowed to phase out all nuclear power plants by 2022, while simultaneously sticking to the pre-existing goal of reducing national CO2 emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80 to 90 percent by 2050.
Barring some miracle in the development of renewable energy combined with storage, this isn’t going to happen. IMO, the key issue here is the misguided decision to decommission nuclear plants. The Germans are noted for their cool-headed rationality, but you would not know that based on their panic-stricken reaction to Fukushima.
Emissions are on the rise and lignite is terrible for the environment.
Germany: You need to rethink this one.
Craig,
At last you’ve seen the light, hallelujah ! It’s nice being able to agree:)
Germany’s increasing use of unprocessed brown coal in ancient coal fired power plants is completely reprehensible, but an economic necessity. Unfortunately Angela Merkel isn’t really a “conservative” chancellor. Her cobbled together political coalition is the product of a proportional voting system which allows for unstable government by political pressure from minor parties and factions.
The nation’s coal industry remains one of the world’s dirtiest because of indecision and ideological delusions.
A lot of political capital, massive collusion and downright lies have contributed to the failure of Energiewende.
The green-left remains committed to “only renewables”, so the neither the coal industry can invest in clean(er)coal generation technology nor can the Nuclear energy re-open and build newer more advanced plants.
Bio-mass is the latest “renewable” falsely being hailed as a “green” renewable source of energy. In reality, Bio-mass is mostly sourced from wood pellets obtained by the illegal and immoral clear felling of irreplaceable forests in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Dependence on natural Gas from suppliers controlled by Russia and the old USSR Republics, weakens Western Europe’s ability to deal with Russian political-military adventures in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Often ignored is the need for coal sourced byproducts needed in German industrial production. Without local coal fired power generation these products would have to be imported pushing up the price of German exports and lessening the competitiveness of German products.
The old coal fired plants in Germany could without too much expense be converted to advanced Ultra-supercritical power plants, equipped with advanced carbon conversion and sequestration technology. The plants would eliminated the need to burn Brown coal(lignite) and result in a dramatic reduction in emissions while saving forests.
The alternative for Germany is to build advanced nuclear technology, (my preference is thorium) and retain only a small, highly efficient, low polluting coal capacity for industrial purposes.
Regrettably, in such a politicized arena with so many vested interests and political reputations at stake, commonsense and any re-think appears unlikely.