Not exactly as clean as it sounds. They merely want to take away the burden of the developer to get comments and approval from people before they proceed with planning.
Individuals can still sue and block projects.
This is just talk in my opinion. Like when the government declared in 2010 that they want to have 1 million EV on the road in 2020.
Or when they decided to shut off nuclear and replace it with renewables and instead built out coal and gas.
Or when they decided to phase out coal by 2035…
The nuclear phase out was signed and ratified in 2002, since then nuclear has mostly replaced with solar and wind [0], while the share of electricity from coal has has actually gone slightly down.
Germany's 40%+ renewables are an testament to Germany pioneering the sector [1], one that too often gets belittled with straight up misinformation.
[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
[1] https://www.trade.gov/energy-resource-guide-germany-renewabl...
But the electricity generation in general has gone up since then. While total coal has gone down, gas has gone up, and therefore the total amount of electricity generated from fossil fuel sources has only changed slightly. It's clear on this chart[0]. So actual progress in reducing fossil fuel dependency in the last 20 years has been small (the chart is not properly labeled for this, but it looks like something around 50TWh less than in 2002) -- and that's not even counting non-electric heating.
[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
Germany has a huge industry which won't be able to switch away from gas that easily so I'm sure that the LNG suppliers will have a market for the next 20 years.
It's also not as easily replacable as "Just go to the other gas supermarket down the street", infrastructure needs to exist and support such supply chains.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-depe...
"Habeck said imports of Russian oil now accounted for 25% of German imports, down from 35% before the invasion, and gas imports have been cut to 40% from 55%. Russian hard coal imports were down to 25% from 50% before the invasion."
The flexibility is needed to compensate for spikes and especially the variable output of renewables.
In addition to that: My rough back of a napkin calculation[1] shows that we'd need almost tanker per day. Is this even realistic at all?
[1] 80E6 m3 / 250E3 m3 = 320. Please correct me if I made a mistake here.
I think these numbers are correct but maybe I am wildly off...
The best anti-NIMBYism rule is (for example of the building of new houses): "While the number of new dwellings built is below the target X for the region, all privately-funded plans that involve the building of a new house shall be automatically approved and all relevant permits automatically granted without review".
Obviously no city state or local government wants any plans to be unconditionally approved. So they'll go to massive lengths to meet the target.
Allow the targets to be transferable, so that some really NIMBY place can pay someone else to to do the deed they don't want to do.
> the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved.
would probably be something like a silver bullet, though, because if it is as strong as it sounds, any judge would basically have to agree to any reasonable planning proposal that was intended to increase renewables capacity.
We just need higher property taxes. This will mean that these store-of-wealth investments eat losses & stop consuming all the good land while city coffers start to fill up with money that can build public housing.
If you want lessons on how to solve an urban housing crisis look to 1950s Singapore not the building developers salivating over 15% margins on newbuild luxury apartments whining about NIMBYs getting in their way.
So even if Russian gas COULD be replaced by LNG tomorrow, in terms of pure volume, it would still not possible to Germany to consume it.
Germany really screwed the pooch on their energy policy for the past 15 years...
> there is not nearly enough of that in Germany right now
To elaborate on that: Germany has no LNG terminals. Zero. They signed the first contracts to build one this year March [1]. If I were a German citizen I would feel very cross with my own government. It's a good idea to have such an infra just in case. Just to hedge the bets.
There is a very real reason why the Floating Storage Regasification Unit serving as the LNG import terminal for Latvia is called "FSRU Independence". [2] These facilities literally provide independence.
1: https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/germany-speeds-pl... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSRU_Independence
The matter of fact is that only very few countries in Europe can "afford" to get by without Russian gas or other resources. After all it is the home to the continents largest concentration of natural resources.
There is only so much global production capacity, so much bandwith in terms of logistics, that can compensate for that. It's not like we can suddenly tap a new continent full of resources to replace Russia, reality ain't working like that.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201743/russian-gas-depe...
FSRU Independence has sufficient capacity to deliver enough gas to serve 70~100% of the yearly needs of the three Baltic countries, depending on how you count. Of course it remains a question of who supplies the LNG, but it gives the countries a backup, an ability to pick the suppliers and an ability to make politically important decisions, even if it means paying a little more.
They are connected to German pipelines.
This map is excellent: https://www.gie.eu/publications/maps/gie-lng-map/
Spain is also a wind power giant.
As comparison, Germany is not a great location for either wind or solar power.
It isn't that spanish companies can get much help from the government's diplomacy (long topic), so someone else interested in that connection would have to partner with such companies, or a foreign diplomatic body go and do the legwork for the spanish companies, which wouldn't be the first time.
Thus Germany could be like we have it back home in the Iberian Penisula, but no, many people are keeping the courts busy instead.
It's a straightforward piece of technology that can be built quickly by any country, unlike, say, a liquefaction plant or a LNG tanker.
But building any kind of infrastructure takes time. There are some factors which make it more complicated engineering wise: cryogenic fluids, handling large quantities of flamable and explosive liquids and gasses, being built on the waterfront etc etc. None of these are insurmountable mind you! They just complicate it a bit.
One way we can look at is by comparing how long such plants took to get constructed elsewhere. I looked up a few European examples. From the first announcement to the first ship docking:
UK/South Hook ~6 years
UK/Dragon ~4 years
UK/Grain ~6.2 years
Belgium/Zeebrugge ~10 years
Netherlands/Gate ~4 years
Poland/Świnoujście ~9 years
Probably I made some mistakes in the above, and there are some inconsistencies (do we count until the first commercial ship, or the first ship trialing the facilities?) Also I assume that all of these things can be done a bit faster in case of a dire emergency. But it seems even in that best case it might take multiple winters until a regassification plant is up and running. Which is a bit cold and scary.
I’m not putting Poland as some kind of benchmark for speedy construction, but I think 1-2 years is a minimum even in a hurry.
I'm willing to believe that we can build an LNG terminal in a year or two, but replacing the heating systems of our buildings will take decades.
If they would have pushed "this overrides all public interests" clause last year, they could have triggered a huge backslash especially among the German climate change deniers and car fans. This in turn could have hindered them from introducing the clause today. So, maybe they did a great job on the energy policy. Who knows
Why? Russia, and the USSR through the entirity of the Cold War, delivered reliably all the gas ordered. If you have a stable relationship with suppliers stretching decades and through all kinds of conflicts you have zero incentive to change. The infrastructure is there. And being in business with your "enemy" keeps channels open and results in intet dependencies.
Putin, in a bout of insanity, through all that out of the window. Once it was clear that's gonna happen, and no that was NOT clear a year ago, it was too late to switch (infrastructure).
As I commented recently on another thread:
This was done on purpose. There was the hope, that strong economic ties would make war between Germany and Russia impossible. While it now looks really stupid, it worked really well between Germany and France after World War II (first with European Coal and Steel Community and then later with the European Union).
I could think of ways to further minimize gas but there's politics involved too.
It also is a big carrot for Putin (or somebody who takes his place) to rejoin the peaceful world.
Build a golden bridge for your enemies to retreat over -- Sun Tzu
Feels a bit like a chicken or egg question. I'm still undecided though, as Russia was funding the green anti nuclear movements in Germany way back when Fukushima happened.
Fwiw, I don't think that renewables plus batteries are a safe hedge anyways. We're simply offshoring the environmental externalities to places far away in terms of energy storage, and China holds all the cards in this instance.
That said, 8 years is a very short time to switch from existing gas pipelines to LNG terminals.
All that green agenda, Kyoto and Paris stuff, affects Russia very badly by basically cancelling its fossil fuel export earnings. Just look at those who lobby the green agenda in Russia like Chubais.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
How exactly? You just explained it yourself very well; These trade relations even held trough the worst of the Cold War.
Just like Germany kept its trade relations with the US going while that invaded and bombed half the Middle East.
The only side that switched behavior here, throwing all established rules out of the window, is Germany and the US, by making Ukraine this "ultimate lynchpin" everybody shall pick a side over, and those who don't pick the "right" one shall be considered with the enemy.
These are very much 1:1 the same overtones the US bullied the international community with, thus tolerating American imperialist ambitions, on the other side of the planet, even those have resulted in some of the worst global damage since WWII.
> Once it was clear that's gonna happen, and no that was NOT clear a year ago,
It was clear. He threatened Europe with shutting down gas supplies in the past, more than once. He actually did it with Ukraine in 2014. In response Germany (& Europe) became more dependent on Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYaa5Zp7qBI This was 2018. Germany mocked him instead of listening.
Why? Given that Germany has unused North Stream 2 connection to Germany infra they should just build an LNG terminal right where NS2 beaches. An LNG receiving terminal is pretty easy and fast to build.
Germany could have diversified it's suppliers if the Iran deals weren't killed by Trump, but even then not a good solution.
It was not nearly as obvious 15 years ago, as it is today, but all the signs were there. We (I include myself here) were just not listening closely enough to the countries that knew Russia the best: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine.
The decision is also amplified by the meaningless end to the German nuclear program.
- Hungary: 110.4 percent
- Latvia: 100.1 percent
- Finland: 92.4 percent
- Estonia: 86.5 percent
- Czechia: 86.0 percent
- Slovenia: 81.0 percent
- Slovakia: 75.2 percent
- Bulgaria: 72.8 percent
- Germany: 58.9 percent
A big part of Germany's geopolitical strategy was (and partly still is) to act as a communication channel between West and East. Similarly to the EU which brought long-lasting peace in Europe through economical ties, the idea was to establish economical relationships with Russia to advance the relationship for a beneficial win-win situation both sides could live with. This, of course, was shortsighted in many ways.
https://www.zeit.de/1988/08/sieben-prinzipien-vernuenftiger-...
Contrary to this, Russian gas imports to Germany used to account for 40% of total consumption in 2012 vs 52% as of today.
After living in Western Europe for almost a decade it's still shocking to me how much people here do not understand Russia.
Similarly, opposing Chinese built telecom infrastructure is just seen as an attempt at American protectionism. Hopefully that continues to be a viable position, unlike depending on Russian gas.
How does diversifying away from one totalitarian government only to depend on another totalitarian government solve anything?
The amount of extra energy that needs, the extra emission it creates, its a complete enviornmental disaster.
One that's mostly ignored, as it gets into the way of certain foreign policy narratives, where neither "climate change" nor the "enviornment" are even recognized concepts of any kind of priority.
Here is their own report: https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2021/04/28/ERCOT_Winter_Sto...
The weatherproofed windpower plants as well als gas plants function very well in Germany, Norway, etc. even though it is often a lot colder.
In bad conditions, if that is still the case, having wind turbines connected to the grid might be worse than having none.
The good thing is, that wind turbines are highly distributed, so the chance for every single one being in bad conditions is slim.
https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2021/04/28/ERCOT_Winter_Sto...
The comment I originally responded to said:
> Isn't it a bit naive to assume the planers of these expansions didn't at one point or another had that exact thought themselves?
The answer is no, it is not naive to assume that they didn't think about these things, because even in a state like Texas where energy is king it was not fully thought out.
Edit:
Also to be clear, I'm not ragging on Texas. I love the people of Texas and I miss being there, but I think the state has some important lessons to pay attention to and learn from.
The categories in the report are weather related, equipment failure, and fuel supply issues. These are considered in the report mutually exclusive. But they aren’t, it is just a useful categorization.
You are simply wrong to think that they don’t consider intermittent resources as part of their planning. Wind stops blowing all the time, this is known. The fact that many natural gas generators iced over, fuel was too expensive, fuel wasn’t available, or they couldn’t maintain their equipment when needed was the principal source of lost capacity.
In this case the price was set at the absolute maximum as allowed by the system. If the 'market' couldn't react to that absolute maximum price then the market cannot be the problem at hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
https://en.winddenmark.dk/wind-in-denmark/current-energy-pro...
Also, fossil fuels appear to be highly unreliable. The moment there’s no gas you have no electricity, it’s not a good energy source.
One of the main advantages of battery storage, apart from decoupling production and consumption, is that it enables delocalization (and portability) of energy sources.
Extraction of key metals from batteries (ie.: recycling) does need to be developed further, but in terms of total capacity, that is a bigger future concern than a present one.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-boosts-renewabl...
> "By 2030, installed onshore wind capacity should reach 115 gigawatts (GW), the government says. Annual capacity additions therefore have to reach 10 GW as of 2025. Solar PV installations will amount to 22 GW per year as of 2026 to achieve a total capacity of 215 GW by the end of the decade. Offshore wind additions are increased as well to reach a minimum of 30 GW per 2030 and 40 GW by 2035, and 70 GW by 2045. While the government wants to incentivise the production and use of biomethane in highly flexible plants by increasing tender volumes, the use of biomass for power production will be superseded by its use in transport and industry."
In particular there's an anti-NIMBYism provision in there that makes a lot of sense. This has been a huge problem for rolling out renewables in the USA from California to New York:
> "To ensure that these ambitious growth scenarios are not hampered by lengthy planning procedures, local opposition and contradictions with other protected goals, the government establishes the principle that the use of renewable energies is of overriding public interest and will be given priority over other concerns until greenhouse gas neutrality is achieved."
The benefits are obvious: Germany will be able to escape the need to import Russian gas and oil - although the American fracked LNG exporters who hoped to simply seize that market from Russia are doubtless disappointed.