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Re:Reducing CO2 emissions by targeting the world's hyper-pol... by wazoox on Monday July 26, 2021 @12:31PM (#27961484)
North Stream 2 anyone? Why do you think Germany needs to increase enormously its gas imports from Russia? Gas is cleaner than coal, but still much worse than nuclear. That will be a serious problem to meet net 0-emission targets in 2050 as planned.
Re:Reducing CO2 emissions by targeting the world's hyper-pol... by hnaccount_rng on Monday July 26, 2021 @01:33PM (#27962358)
It really really doesn’t. This is a political thing with Russia, Gazprom and our former chancellor Schröder. The aim (mostly for Russia) is to circumvent Ukraine and thereby remove their opportunity to … acquire … some of what is moved through their territory. As far as I remember Nordstream I isn’t even at capacity.

Sure from a Ukrainian point of view NSII sucks. But it isn’t even close to an existential thing for Germany. The gas dependency is temporary (<15 years) and could also be filled by US LNG. Which is why the US is against NSII

So yeah from a geopolitical point of view this is all very interesting. From an ecological point of view the net impact is close to zero

Re:Reducing CO2 emissions by targeting the world's hyper-pol... by edhelas on Monday July 26, 2021 @01:33PM (#27962367)
I expect Germany to actually lower their CO² emissions by switching from coal to gas in the upcoming decade. It will be a way to show that "plenty of renewable + no nuclear is the way to 0 CO² emission".

Until they reach the lower limit with all the gas plants deployed, then they'll really have to think again about how they will definitely remove those plants.

Gas is really the best backup for renewable. It's cheap (for now), really adjustable (perfect for the renewable intermittence, on the contrary of nuclear), easy to deploy (not that easy with nuclear plants). The only issue is that it still emits a lot of CO²… and that you strongly depend on other countries for your energy (gas cannot be store as easily as uranium for example).

Re:Reducing CO2 emissions by targeting the world's hyper-pol... by xvilka on Monday July 26, 2021 @02:12PM (#27962975)
They will just ask China to build modern nuclear plants[1].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2021/04/23/china-wil...