Re:Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants
by Isolus on Monday October 17, 2022 @03:50PM
(#33238661)
> Yes and why is that?
Gas price was 4 ct/kWh two years ago, electricity at 35 ct/kWh. People always take what is currently the cheapest.
> It's all because wind and solar are intermittent, there's nowhere near enough storage capacity on the grid and there won't be for decades, and their politicians have their heads in the sand about the whole business.
They didn't put their heads in the sand. The former government sabotaged the whole renewable industry again and again (e. g. they didn't allow building new renewable power plants for years, storage facilities need to pay for the grid when they store energy and when they release it so they can't be competetitive to gas).
Yes and why is that? Electric heating is not some space-age technology. It has been around for a century. There are countries where it's ubiquitous.
Saying "Germany doesn't have the infra for electric heating" is not an explanation. It's just restating the problem in different words. It isn't some accident, it happened by deliberate policy.
I keep harping on this point, but the German government has spent cumulatively half a trillion USD on moving toward green energy, ostensibly in the name of combatting global warming. And yet with all that money and effort, they couldn't transition towards ubiquitous electric heating? Instead, they wrecked their one dependable green energy source (uranium) and became further dependent on Russian gas, which fuels global warming even more (despite propaganda to the contrary). It's all because wind and solar are intermittent, there's nowhere near enough storage capacity on the grid and there won't be for decades, and their politicians have their heads in the sand about the whole business.