It's not too surprising. Yes, Germany is slow to adapt to new tech, but they are a car manufacturing powerhouse and are the biggest country in Europe. The whole country is in an everlasting debate about its dependency on car manufacturing, and cars are _very_ important. It would be surprising if they weren't no 1 producer (and probably consumer) in Europe.
It is surprising to me, though, seeing as Germany was the country responsible for undercutting the ban [1] on sales of new combustion engine cars in the EU after 2035. It is wild to me that they would block such an important deal knowing that they are already ahead of everyone else.
There is an ongoing war between the progressive and old forces. And the old forces try very hard to preserve the outdated technologies for whatever reason. Problem is that they are few, but in powerful positions, so they poison the waters for everyone, as they did already for the last decade with the whole energy-topic. At this point, it's really ridiculous how much one can stay behind and still harm everyone.
I'm not sure I follow you on the energy topic? If anything, the "progressive" shutdown of the nukes was a rather questionable move.
In general, I think there's a relatively healthy balance, albeit, with a fair bit of animosity between the sides.
The thing about "outdated technologies" is - they work. It's really easy to see in the software world, where I will choose a battle-tested technology any day, over the new flashy thing that everybody's buzzing about that is in theory or with many iterations will be great. So why would other industries be different? Surely there will be a drag from people whose wealth depends on the technology/approach being used, but that's just how it works. If I put a lot of effort into developing a thing, I will defend the thing as much as I can, and it's the job of the newcomers to push me over with big enough arguments.
> the "progressive" shutdown of the nukes was a rather questionable move.
Nuclear plants were shutdown by the conservatives. They decided this in 2011, when Fukushima happened, and executed it over the following decade while they were simultaneous derailing the switch to EV. A notable part here was that just months before Fukushima, they had already stopped the shutdown that previously was decided on.
Only the remaining three(?) plants were shutdown by the acting administration, because there was nothing to continue anyway. The previous administration had to renew the technical checks and order new nuclear rods for the plants to continue, which they obviously did not.
Overall, the whole act was a big clusterfuck of competing interests, but this wasn't the progressives fault, because they never had the power to fail this in the first place.
> In general, I think there's a relatively healthy balance, albeit, with a fair bit of animosity between the sides.
There is no healthy balance when you make up nonsensical lies to sabotage an ongoing process, which is even for the benefit of your own country.
This is simply not correct like this. The Green faction and the SPD had decided on the shutdown in 2002 when the "progressive" parties had the majority and conservatives where in the minorty. https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2012/38640342_... More then 20 years ago the conservatives could already see that this would end in disaster and they resisted the change. Then fukushima happend and the media and public pressure was too big and the conservatives stopped resisting in 2011. The "progressive" shutdown was planned by the SPD and the Green faction and they pushed it through in 2002. The conservative did neither plan not decide the shutdown.
The conservatives stopped the shutdown in 2010, and reinstated it in 2011. And they continued with the plan the whole following decade when they were in power. True, the original plan was from the progressives, but the conservatives had the power and executed it. They, too, decided on this, and they had the power to change it for a whole decade, and did nothing.
And the BS about a "disaster" never happened. There were no blackouts, and even the prices went down. All the problems of the money driven fearmongers never manifested, yet they continue to spread lies about the greens doing harm and the all so great (money wasting) atomic plants...
Everyone can make EVs. Not everyone can make good combustion engines. It swwms unwise to risk your main source of income when your population majority consists of nostalgic pensioners.
It's not really surprising. EVs (both foreign and domestic) haven't caught up in price and range as fast as expected since the proposal was originally made, for EVs to be a drop-in replacement for ICE cars the voting population can afford and drives to work everyday and on vacation in the south of Europe every summer.
And neither is the EV charging infrastructure already there to support the same use cases. And since there's no sign we'll be there in 10 years, then a lot of voters will be pissed that they'll be priced out of car ownership when the future they were promised didn't pan out.
I'm already betting the deadline will be extended past 2035 as we get closer to it.
The problem is prices. People want to buy EVs but they cost nearly twice as much as conventional cars, it's crazy expensive (which to me smells like racket by the car companies, China has been doing it much cheaper and from what I hear, which good quality too)... it's a bit more competitive in some countries where the government give really high bonus for people buying EVs (Sweden was giving like 50,000 SEK bonus for each EV which was just enough to make it affordable for the richer people, but without that bonus only taxi drivers, environmentally friendly people who believe EVs are really great for the environment - despite their manufacturing being less than green - and people who drive a lot and can save a lot on fuel can justify going for EVs - and as a result EV sales fell for the first time in decades last year).
Price is a marketing choice, EU manufacturers (with a few exceptions) are choosing to position EV cars at the high end of their offering and brand them as high tech for high margins. More largely EU manufacturers currently have the problem of trying to position their whole offering as high end.
It isn't just prices alone. New ICE cars have also gone up in price a lot.
And EVs are marketed more towards the high end because mostly rich Europeans have a single family home with a charger at home where the EVs slot in. Most ICE car owners don't have chargers at home or in the vicinity meaning mostly the rich can quickly dump their ICES and replace them with an EV without loosing UX.
EU car manufacturers are just following the local market/demographics. Cheap EVs exist here, like the Dacia spring, but that's kinda crap and the charring infra issue still remains.
I live in the countryside and single family home are mostly not rich people but very middle class. EV would be perfect for them but they are far too expensive. No it’s really like manufacturers deliberately price EV to make up for the energy economy so it doesn’t cannibalize their ICE offering they spent billions developing.
it's not just that. EV's are simpler and a lot of knowledge about making ice cars is not transferable to ev, meaning if germany accepts this, a lot of ppl will remain out of their jobs there
Maybe not range per se, but there are a couple of Europe-specific things that make EVs less attractive. First, many people live in apartment buildings and park their cars on the street, with no charging facilities. So they'd have to make that supercharger trip pretty often. Second, on any given Saturday in July and August there will be millions of people driving for vacation (1000+ km not being uncommon), mostly to the Mediterranean or back to their country of origin (Eastern Europe, Balkans, Turkey). In this period I've already ended up queuing for 10-15 minutes for gas - I can imagine it would be worse without chargers. Also, people who take their car to the poorer European countries often do it because of poor public transport infrastructure there, so the likely poorer EV infrastructure there would play somewhat of a role as well (though likely minor).
If you dig a bit you’ll find studies that show things like “95% of vehicles are driven less than <some number much smaller than standard EV 400km range> per day”
So no, I don’t think range is a huge issue, and fast charging infra is a lot better in EU than US in my experience.
Price though - it’s a tall order to expect everyone to buy EVs when the low cost options are so much higher than the low cost gasoline options. I can see how that would make politicians nervous
> Price though - it’s a tall order to expect everyone to buy EVs when the low cost options are so much higher than the low cost gasoline options. I can see how that would make politicians nervous
100%. Honestly, I hope that we use this opportunity to improve public transit in Europe a lot more than it already is done.
Both:
1. Better bike lanes, everywhere, well maintained throughout seasons with good government subsidies on ebikes.
2. Public transit density and focus on lowering wait on connections. Basically, look at what Switzerland has done and try to copy it.
>I hope that we use this opportunity to improve public transit in Europe a lot more than it already is done.
And I hope for all wars and world famine to end and all employers to let me WFH so I won't need a car and to raise my salary by at least inflation every year. The thing is we rarely get what we wish for, and in the EU countries I've been it's not really improving at the rate needed for people to give up on cars. The reality is the public transportation infra develops much slower than the demand shifts on the ground, hence why cars will always be with us.
depends, in terms of territory us is big, but you don't randomly travel east to west coast just like you don't randomly travel portugal to estonia. Most car trips in both us and eu are pretty small and can easily fit current ev range for most ppl/cars
I wouldn't say range is really a problem outside of a few groups - people who tow horses or caravans, people who use their car routinely for long journeys.
The challenge, certainly in the UK, is that only half the population has the potential to charge their car "off-street" and the roll out of on street charging is slow and the costs mean it could cost more than conventional car - which given it's also more expensive makes it a challenge to justify.
Spamming posts with 4 pieces of 16A outlets shouldn't be too hard though. That is essentially how marinas might look, or parking lots in countries with alot of snow for cabin heaters.
Alas, I believe the poor in rentals will just end up with shitty rent seeking app-driven spyware chargers.
>Is range seriously a problem for someone in Europe? US I kinda get it, superchargers help but they’re not perfect, but in europe?
For a lot of people yeah. The cars isn't just for trips to work and the supermarket (which sometimes can be done by foot, public transport or bicycle), but that same car is used for vacation trips in summer and winter with the whole family.
You can call it an edge case, but edge cases matter to car owners if they can only afford one car per household. Also, a lot of people in the EU work in one country but have family in another and commute by care quite often. Charging speed and infra density isn't there to suport these cases.
> but that same car is used for vacation trips in summer and winter with the whole family.
Right, and the charging network isn't _that_ bad, is it? Like, I've now done 4 cross country trips in the US (PA <-> FL <-> WA) in both summer, and winter. With the pre-heat-pump-for-heating Tesla Model 3. I basically had to charge one to two times a day, for about 20-30 minutes each time. This was genuinely a good way to force me to stop and take a break too.
I don't really consider these cars a limitation for long distance trips either?
Good for you. But I'm talking about Europe, not the US.
And most don't have (and can't afford) Teslas here. Maybe in Norway and Switzerland, but not all Europe is like that.
A lot of non-supercharger infra here is non-existent or slow charging meaning long distance trips are gonna be much longer and less predictable, hence why those who rent cars for long distance trips never rent EVs.
>and the charging network isn't _that_ bad, is it?
You've never interacted with non-supercharger chargers have you? Like broken ones with issues, or crap payment systems that don't work. It's the kind of things giving people major anxiety.
The other problem with the charging networks is that each country has its own charing companies doing their own thing with their own apps and payment solutions. Even though I've never driven in Poland or Lithuania, I'm very confident I can work out how to pay for petrol at any petrol station I stop at there. I have no idea if I could actually charge my car at any charging station I roll up to. The last thing I need when on a road trip is to pull up to a charging station somewhere in Lithuania with 8% left and find out I need an app that cannot be installed on a UK phone.
I am not sure a decade is enough time and after the energy crisis in the EU with the Ukraine conflict, I am not sure its smart to back yourself into a corner.
Why would they pass legislation against one of their biggest industries when it isn't entirely clear how things will play out? EVs still face substantial hurdles on their way to replacing ICE vehicles. Germany is not going to encroach on their biggest businesses and employers until all uncertainty is gone.
It's easier for a country where this doesn't matter as much to pass such legislation.
Germany FUBARed this like you wouldn't believe, those responsible will probably be branded traitors decades after the fact, primarily Schroeder (now a Gazprom shill) but probably also Merkel for not doing anything to change the status quo.
Up until 2011 or so Germany was a leader in solar and wind power equipment production. Then they cut off subsidies and it took AN ENTIRE DECADE to get back where they were, in terms of adding additional capacity, by which point China absolutely towered over everyone else.
Europe has also missed the battery production train.
Oil and gas are considered geostrategic priorities and almost every country tried to secure its supply. Solar and wind power equipment production as well as battery production, for some reason, were treated as second class citizens in a world where they will replace oil and gas for 80% of uses.
'In Germany, the government has introduced various incentives to accelerate this shift. Among these are substantial subsidies for electric cars, which have been updated for 2023 and will be updated again for 2024. This article provides a detailed overview of these subsidies, their application process, and eligibility criteria.'
This is outdated. Subsidies were cut in December 2023 on a very short notice. The reason were unexpected budget-problems of missing 60(?) billion Euro, which forced the administration to cut several things very fast.
Tell that you uave no idea how electricity grids work and why a connected one across a whole region is better than isolated ones without tellong you know shit about that topic...
Sweden is perfectly energy independent as long they don't export. Existing nuclear and wind production is perfectly able to produce the wast majority of energy that get consumed, and national hydro power has so far capacity to last through any periods of low production. There are also additional thermal power plants that operates on gas, oil and garbage to balance the grid.
What Sweden do not have is hydro capacity to also power nearby countries while maintaining low prices and energy independence. From a national perspective, the natural resources that is hydro power would results in lower energy prices in Sweden if they did not share the market prices of the European grid (Multiple energy experts has voiced this in the last few years of energy debates).
However, Sweden has agreements to allow free trade of energy as part of the EU membership. Many of the stakes holder in the hydro power is also non-state owned, which means they are legally allowed to export the energy at the highest bid even if that results in higher costs for Swedish citizens. In theory the government could issue tariffs to recover some of the value from the natural resources that is hydro power, but that would lead to rather severe geo political consequences. Denmark is for example one of the largest importer of Swedish energy, and energy tariffs would basically target the Swedish-Danish relationship in a rather major negative way.
It's better for Germany since the Swedish power production is cleaner and cheaper. The demand from Germany makes it more expensive for Swedish customers.
I guess it's fine that they want to import but don't block nuclear in Sweden then.
Sure, renewable _electricity_ is up. But up alone is not enough. When talking energy, you should use gross energy, including e.g. transport.
Take this chart [0] from wikipedia [1]. Doesn't look too amazing. Now, being a gross exporter, the numbers are obviously skewed, but I didn't really mean EVs or electrical production specifically. German bureaucracy famously still runs on fax and emails are printed, there are lots of small-ish villages to small cities with _really_ bad internet connection among other things. It's a big country where politicians seem to be really afraid of change. It's not that the country is stuck in the 70s, but some things just take more time to arrive in Germany, or at least in parts of it.
I'm not sure where this fax myth originates. I've been living in Germany for most of my life, and I'm no longer in my thirties. During this time, I have sent a total of zero faxes. I can't even remember anyone ever asking me to send one.
I've lived in Germany for 30 years and I've sent zero faxes as well. That doesn't mean the administration doesn't run on fax. The number of times I've been told by the tax agency or my healthcare provider to send a fax is astonishing.
When doing my taxes, I've asked if I could send some required documents of my deceased father via email, and the lady _didn't even know if she had an external facing email address_. I was just to send it to info@, tell them to print it and put it on her desk. She also didn't have a direct phone line, so I had to call the central office first and ask them to connect me to her.
My mom runs a small business there and luckily she's got fax-to-email and email-to-fax. Just because younger people use other means of communication now doesn't mean it's a myth. It's very much there, and other means very much aren't.
I live in Germany, and while I never used fax as well, I did use paper mail a lot, and I don't know how I would live without a printer and a scanner. It gets better, e.g. taxes have been completely digitized in the recent years, but still a lot of paper there.
I don't live in Germany and this is all based on accounts I have seen posted in HN. Everytime there is a post that journals the process to setup a startup in Germany or do other business functions, it always included something that needed to be faxed.
I work for a large German company and some of our suppliers and business partners have had a fax machine for a long time that they used exclusively for our purposes.
Fortunately, these times are over, and the company has celebrated the long overdue abolition of the fax machine ;-)
Lawyers, administrations and corporations still send each other faxes because it is a way to provably deliver documents instantly. At scale it’s cheaper and quicker than a registered letter.
Last time I had to fax something was probably around 2018. It were legal documents, sending it to a lawyer. Most faxes I've sent in my life as a private person were legal documents. This is not something common for most people, but it can happen. There are several corners in administration which are famously still use fax, but the good part is, the normal citizen will barely encounter them these days, and they are working hard on removing them.
Electricity generation is still 25% coal. Germany's emissions per capita are very high compared to, say, France, because their electricity production is still actually very dirty. France's electricity production has been very low-emissions for decades because of nuclear and hydro.
There's a lot of spin about renewables in Germany but overall this is a failed energy policy.
But then we would have to deal with expensive and problematic nuclear. It's much more efficient to scale renewable energy, then deploy old technology like current nuclear powerplants, which are extremely costly with lots of unsolved problems. If you look at the countries which deploy nuclear, they have/use mostly government run industries. That's not our goal. Germany also has no nuclear weapons, where other countries use their nuclear industry to have that option.
Germany has plans to stop sales of new combustion engine cars after 2035. Significantly, they do not have similar goals for new fossil fueled power plants.
If they could just scale renewable energy then they would issue such plans, but they can't. There is no end-date for fossil fueled power plants, and plans for new ones are being built right now with operational times lasting long after 2035. German even pushed through a EU deceleration of making natural gas "green" in order to be able to continue invest and build more natural gas powered power plants. Germany is Europe's largest advocate for renewable power and natural gas with clear intention to continue supporting both for a very long time.
This is upside down. Nuclear energy has pretty much nothing to do with nuclear weapons, and is pretty much solved. Also it's not "old" technology (there are new designs like the 4th gen that we actually need).
Scaling renewable energy is an open problem: it has never been done. It's easy to say that "renewables doubled last year" when they go from "marginal" to "still marginal". Renewable energy is intermittent, and that is completely unsolved between seasons.
> Nuclear energy has pretty much nothing to do with nuclear weapons
That's not true. For example Japan has Plutonium for several thousand nuclear weapons, where the Plutonium comes from reprocessing of fuel of Nuclear Power Plants.
Take Iran, which was hiding their nuclear weapons program behind a nuclear energy program. -> "Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful,[58] and had then enriched uranium to less than 5 percent, consistent with fuel for a civilian nuclear power plant."
> With this logic, the Raspberry Pi foundation is involved in producing F35 fighter jets, because there is electronics in the F35.
You should be able to see for yourself that your argumentation is nonsense.
For Japan the accusation is that the Government by purpose produced this stockpile of Plutonium, also by creating a certain nuclear industry, to be in a position to create nuclear weapons, if they see it necessary. That's a political decision and the nuclear industry around nuclear powerplants is an enabler, created by the government via its energy and defense policies.
> It's not like a power plant reactor gives you the weapon technology magically.
They designed it.
Remember, you claimed that there is no connection. I reality, government set up nuclear industry such that it supports their weapon programs.
> All year? What happens when there is no wind and no sun?
You can find out. There is enough information about this topic.
A renewable energy landscape is more than just "wind & sun". An electricity grid is also more than a nuclear fleet in France, which for weeks&months had poor availability.
"In France, state-controlled EDF's nuclear output dropped by 30% in 2022, to 279 TWh, as more than half of its 56 reactors were taken offline for repairs which had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic"
> "In France, state-controlled EDF's nuclear output dropped by 30% in 2022, to 279 TWh, as more than half of its 56 reactors were taken offline for repairs which had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic"
I don't understand the criticism of nuclear power. A pandemic broke out, and with it, there was a shortage of labor to allow for the scheduled maintenance of the reactors.
What fault does nuclear power have in this? If solar panels are not consistently maintained and cleaned, their production also decreases.
Anyway, I would like to point out that France is currently the largest exporter of electricity in the world. I wonder why, considering that according to your view, nuclear power creates so many problems.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/net-electricity-imports
> You should be able to see for yourself that your argumentation is nonsense.
I think the same about yours. Any country can pretend to do research in nuclear energy and secretly work on nuclear weapons. Or just secretly do it. It's not like they need to make energy for that.
> You can find out. There is enough information about this topic.
It was a rhetorical question. I know Germany relies on fossil fuel to compensate and imports when needed (e.g. from France...). You can see it real time, there are interactive maps.
> A renewable energy landscape is more than just "wind & sun".
How do you compensate the intermittent production of wind and sun with renewables, then? And if you have another renewable that compensates entirely, why don't you just do that instead of wind and sun?
nuclear doesn't have unsolved problems. It's only problem is the cost. We already know how to operate the plants, how to safely store the waste or reprocess it to reuse multiple times, how to solidify the waste - all of this is already known, the question is if govt's want to spend the money now for this infra to get the prices down in the future and reduce the build times like China did
Reprocessing and vitrification are certainly not financed in the bill since these require separate infra and nuclear pp can operate without them. Usually the waste is going through several stages of cooling and stored underground 'till reprocessing is possible/economically profitable'
The cost of nuclear energy is reflected in the electricity bill, not the initial investment. If you look at countries like France or Finland, the cost is very low. And in Finland, it's not "old technology."
In contrast, German bills, heavily reliant on renewables, are among the highest and most unstable in Europe.
> "unsolved problems"
Do you mean the intermittency of renewables?
> they have/use mostly government run industries.
I don't think in French nuclear is mostly used for gov industries. So I dont understand this point.
It's amusing how your arguments against nuclear are purely ideological and filled with intellectual dishonesty.
I don't understand your connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
> It is OWNED by the French state. The French government rescued its nuclear industry from bankruptcy.
Okok, your statement wasn't clear to me. Sure, it's definitely true what you say, but what exactly is your point? What are you trying to prove or say with "French nuclear is mostly used for gov industries"?
I said "If you look at the countries which deploy nuclear, they have/use mostly government run industries."
The nuclear industry in these countries is mostly owned and fullydirected by the government: electricity providers and companies selling&building nuclear powerplants.
Nuclear power is especially strong when central governments direct & pay for the the industry, which is far from a free market. China: authoritarian dictatorship with centrally planned economy. France: government owned. Japan: government directed, TEPCO rescued by the government.
Nuclear: big government. Centralized. State-owned monopolies.
Renewable energy: lots of energy producers, strong local ownership, distributed industry, distributed grid, markets for energy, ...
I understand your perspective, but it's important to address some misconceptions.
Firstly, the notion that the nuclear industry is predominantly government-owned and directed is somewhat outdated. While it's true that historically, many countries relied on state-run entities for nuclear power, the landscape is changing. Countries like the United States have a mix of private and public involvement in their nuclear sectors, with significant contributions from private companies.
Secondly, the argument that renewable energy operates within a "free market" is misleading. Renewable energy industries, especially solar and wind, receive substantial government subsidies globally. In 2021 alone, global renewable energy subsidies exceeded $120 billion, highlighting that renewables are not thriving purely on market dynamics. Moreover, the renewable sector is heavily influenced by government policies, incentives, and international competition, particularly from countries like China, which dominates the solar panel market through state-supported enterprises.
The claim that renewables foster "local ownership" and "distributed industry" oversimplifies the reality. While small-scale renewable projects do exist, the production of critical components, such as solar panels and wind turbines, is concentrated in the hands of a few major players, often backed by significant government support. This centralization can lead to market distortions and dependencies, similar to those seen in the nuclear sector.
Lastly, suggesting that support for nuclear power equates to endorsing "big government" overlooks the complexity of energy policy. Effective energy infrastructure, whether nuclear or renewable, requires substantial investment and regulation to ensure safety, reliability, and sustainability. Both sectors depend on a combination of public and private investment and face significant challenges that require coordinated efforts beyond simplistic free-market solutions.
In summary, both nuclear and renewable energy sectors involve significant government intervention and investment. The debate should focus on how best to balance these investments to achieve a sustainable and reliable energy future, rather than framing it as a binary choice between free markets and government control.
"the U.S. Government will move into markets currently dominated by Russian and
Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE) and recover our position as the world leader in exporting best-in-class nuclear energy technology, and with it, strong non-proliferation
standards"
Russia and China have state owned enterprises. Now the US government will move into their markets...
"The U.S. has ceded its leadership position to countries with state-owned-enterprises, including Russia and China,"
The US government is the actor who is directing the US industry.
> The claim that renewables foster "local ownership" and "distributed industry" oversimplifies the reality.
The topic was that "we", Germany, don't want this. We want to strengthen local ownership of energy production. There are a lot of examples here. Nuclear power plants are so far large (large plants are more cost effective) and based on large monopolies (granted or even owned by the government).
Example: Before the movement towards renewable energy, the grid and the electricity production was owned by only four large companies each occupying a region in Germany.
The electricity grid was then taken away from them and opened to many players. Now (basically) everyone has the right to be a producer and to feed electricity into the grid. Now we have a large landscape of energy producers, with the goal to establish this across the EU.
Nuclear power plants (owned by very few companies in protected markets) are dinosaurs in the effort to create dynamic energy markets.
Nuclear power demands long-term contracts and guaranteed prices for huge monopolistic players. See for example the new nuclear power plants in the UK...
"EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a "strike price" – for electricity from Hinkley Point C under a government sanctioned Contract for difference (CfD)."
"PARIS, Jan 25 (Reuters) - France wants the British government to contribute more money to two new nuclear plants its state-owned energy utility EDF was contracted to build in the UK, given delays and spiralling costs, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters."
A state-owned French company builds for the British government a nuclear power plant.
We are not talking about a distorted "free market". There is no market at all, it's all government controlled: building and financing.
Cherry-picking and pseudo-Marxist rhetoric. I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not interested in entertaining your moralistic arguments.
Your position is very transparent; it’s a celebration of ideologies that prefer "good" inefficiency. Even though goodness is a completely subjective factor and communicates nothing except a political position, to me, the goodness of a technology, especially in this time of extreme climate urgency, has only one valuable metric: pollution. I understand that this might not be your priority, and for this reason, I have no intention of continuing this discussion with you.
Taking the disaster of the Energiewende as a virtuous example is laughable, given that it is one of the greatest environmental and economic disasters. And of course, the Energiewende is also financed with state money. Your problem is very simple: if the money goes to nuclear power, it's bad; if it goes to renewables, under the guise of collective and decentralized well-being, it's perfectly fine. What's "free market" about this? Absolutely nothing.
You don't like state-owned nuclear power but completely ignore my argument that every solar panel bought is equivalent to the same thing, just at a higher level. Instead of the French buying electricity from the French government, you have the Germans (like you and me, as a non-German living in Germany) buying electricity from German fossil fuels and Chinese-made panels. Are you content with this? Honestly, I prefer to give money to the French state rather than the Chinese state if I had to choose. Besides, we are talking about a democratic state that has also decarbonized. You criticize, but they are decades ahead of any European state.
Meanwhile, as we are writing, France is polluting at 18 gCO₂eq/kWh, and Germany at 210 gCO₂eq/kWh with a daily peak of 510 gCO₂eq/kWh. Moreover, if German pollution is so low, it’s also because you're importing 2.2 GW from France's "bad and evil" government-financed nuclear power. Not to mention that the French have the lowest electricity bills in Europe, and the Germans almost always have the highest. It's up to others to make their own considerations.
"pseudo-Marxist" ? LOL, you have no idea what you are talking about. I'm arguing for a smaller-scale energy landscape, for privately owned enterprises, individuals, etc. If that is Marxist, you are seriously confused.
EVEN if I were to buy solar panels from China, then I'm still financing them, I'm buying them, I'm installing them, I'm operating them, I'm selling the energy and the profits from solar electricity is MINE - over the full lifetime. Solar energy production is more than "chinese panel manufacturing".
The nuclear reactor Flamanville/France, which has massive cost overruns and delays:
* controlled by the state
* financed by the state
* bought by the state
* constructed by the state
* operated by the state
* energy sold by the state
EDF (Electricité de France) is government owned and builts and operates the power plant, it also sells the electricity to the customer.
ALL, literally all, of the electricity production and distribution from French nuclear power plants is owned by the state. That's Marxian!
If I see where I live, the Wind Farms serving the region:
The Energiewende had established a mechanism where the consumer pay higher prices (which you have lamented about), which finances the build-up of renewable energy -> the money goes to the renewable energy electricity providers, which are private enterprises and individuals.
The energy companies, the grid, the construction companies, etc., none are owned by the German state. These are all private enterprises or local municipal utilities.
I'm still trying to understand why EDF is considered problematic despite its ability to provide affordable and clean electricity nationwide. EDF outperforms other major European countries in this regard. While I support free competition and acknowledge that French nuclear energy might not be the best example of that, the fact remains that it delivers reliable, cheap, and clean electricity. This should be our primary focus, with room for improvement always available. An honest discourse should start with these facts, rather than solely moral viewpoints.
> The German Wind Farm "Kaskasi". The Turbines were built by Siemens. The Wind Farm is owned by RWE, a private enterprise
So I suppose you have been against the closure of German reactors, right?
Clean? Ever looked at uranium mining and nuclear fuel production? Many countries still work with Russian Rosatom (even France), which has a track record for environmental catastrophes. Btw., with Russia military attacking a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. In Ukraine there is the constant danger of a second Tchernobyl, due to the Russian war against the Ukraine and its power plants :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla... .
If this thing blows up, then what happens?
> fact remains that it delivers reliable, cheap, and clean electricity
That's your opinion, it's not a fact. Don't think that your opinions are facts and thus automatically what other people say is wrong. Be honest in communication with other people, so that your opinions are just opinions. You can argument in favor of your opinions, but they remain opinions and are not facts, just because YOU believe in them.
> So I suppose you have been against the closure of German reactors, right?
I'm for closing of nuclear reactors. You ignore the other things I said: nuclear power plants work only in a political environment, where they got a state-support/owned monopoly. Who do you think insures them? Who do you think sets up the regulatory environment that the get a large part of the market, who do you think is setting up the environment for waste storage. Hint: it's the government. We have extremely costly state financed clean-up operations for nuclear waste storage. These are old reactors.
To massively reduce the world co2 production, there is currently only ONE way known: massive scaling of renewable energy. The contribution of nuclear energy is neither cheap, nor clean, nor safe. It also does not scale. Nuclear energy stagnates since decades. Remember: China is bringing new coal power plants online, each week there are new ones.
Thus the industrialized countries have the responsibility (and the opportunity) to develop and share renewable energy technology, to be able be much faster in deployment, with improving technology. It's the only cost effective way known, which also can make a sizeable contribution.
> nuclear power plants work only in a political environment, where they got a state-support/owned monopoly.
German nuclear power worked, and you decided to shut it down, you certainly didn't shut it down because it didn't work. Your arguments are self-contradictory.
Your comments are now indefensible, now you are self-contradictory, bring absurd arguments, and even deny facts.
"He added that some 90% of Niger's population has no electricity, and price exploitation means Niger today also receives too little income for its exports."
"Instead, say local and international organisations, uranium mining by foreign-dominated companies has caused environmental damage and health problems in the far north of the country."
"Niger is the world's third to fifth-ranking producer of uranium, producing over 3,000 tonnes of uranium a year. However, the UN Development Programme's 2006 Human Development Index considers Niger the poorest country in the world, where life expectancy is 45 years old, 71 percent of adults cannot read, and 60 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day."
These things don't look good, I would say.
> > If this thing blows up, then what happens?
> Ahahaha you have to study nuclear energy more.
You have to do that. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is a nuclear power plant, which is in the war zone in the Ukraine. Russia is attacking for months the electricity production and distribution in the Ukraine. If the cooling of the nuclear powerplant gets destroyed, then we have a possible meltdown or other scenarios. We already have a million refugees from the Ukraine in Germany. If a nuclear powerplant in the Ukraine gets destroyed (for example because Russia decides to bomb it), then we potentially will see millions more refugees.
So much for safe energy. There are nuclear powerplants in a warzone in Europe, and this affects us all. Direct or indirectly.
We have here former uranium mines, which were exploited by and for Russia. Google for "Wismut". It costs us many billions to clean up the russian legacy.
> Its cheap and clean, its a fact.
Selective data does not make it "cheap" and "clean". It also does not make it a fact. Consumer prices are also not "facts" about the complete cost structure of nuclear power. Consumer prices are designed by energy policy. Much of the costs of nuclear power are not payed by consumers, but by tax payers (Nuclear Power Plants can't be insured, unlike solar panels -> the tax payer will pay for these events -> for example a single Earth Quake in Japan causes costs the tax payer of several hundred billion dollars -> TEPCO, the owner of several damaged powerplants lacks the money to pay for that...
Reading what you wrote makes me feel a bit sympathetic. I can clearly see your illogical and blind fear in your reasoning.
You don't care about renewable energy, despite all the data confirming that it has significant flaws as a technology.
Your only concern is that there shouldn't be nuclear energy, regardless of how much it can reduce carbon emissions or how many lives it can save. For you, nuclear energy is inherently harmful.
And honestly, I feel sorry for you. I can only imagine the fear from decades of media misinformation and collective anxiety about incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, especially in Germany.
I care about renewable energy (for example for many years my electricity contract is from a local provider of 100% renewable energy).
Nuclear energy will save much less lives, than a rapid expansion of renewable energy, which is the only viable way to make a large impact on global CO2 emissions. I also think that Nuclear energy is inherently harmful in general, such that it best is avoided, especially given that it does not scale for the challenges ahead.
Here is a task for you: xy graph the following, on a time axis: share of nuclear powered electricity from the last 20 years and the yearly electricity production.
Then graph the yearly renewable energy installations and produced electricity over that period.
Then compare.
With a little math knowledge you can deduce that the situation to use nuclear energy for reducing CO2 worldwide is hopeless, renewable has been scaling much quicker and will accelerate even more in the current future.
The numbers you can collect are mostly facts and then you can find out for yourself which technology scales better. You would not fall victim to desinformation, if you collect reliable data and try to analyze it. There is only a little math needed.
Germany has big industries using coal for chemical reactions, unlike France. But they are working on switching to hydrogen for this, so maybe it will change at some point.
It's great to shift on renewable energy, but the end goal is to reduce greenhouse gazes, and mostly Co2. Regarding this, they are still doing really bad [1], compared to countries like France who kept nuclear plants. I think that shutting down their nuclear plants and shifting on coal is a weird move. In the end, they couldn't prove that shifting to renewables was efficient. They also still buy some nuclear power to other countries.
The goal is to use the technology which brings us world-wide fastest and cheapest forward. That's not nuclear, which stagnates mostly in building&deployment and is getting more expensive quickly.
"forward" doesn't mean anything, please specify ? But I'll complete for you, by "forward" you meant producing energy free of greenhouse gases (and ideally pollution), all-year round, and all-day round, and unless there are breakthrough in electricity storage, that's not solar, not wind power either.
one thing is to build, another thing is to keep what you have. The beauty of nuclear is the longer it works, the cheaper the avg energy gets since most of the cost is actually building the infra
That's not true. There are huge investments needed to upgrade nuclear power plants over their lifetime, which typically will need to be run long past its estimated lifetimes. A lot of upgrades are even not possible. The powerplant also ages. The steel ages. The pipes age. The software and computers are no longer in production. France now needs billions just to keep their old fleet running, which is based on outdated technology and designs. "Grand Carénage" is estimated to cost 50 billion Euros. EDF, the owner would be bankrupt, if the French government hadn't taken over the whole industry, where the tax payer now finances the losses.
Plus most nuclear powerplants don't cover the costs after a shutdown, incl. dealing with the materials and their radiation. We have often seen that the money available is not covering the costs of dealing with waste, spent fuel, etc. -> tax payer covers it -> the French government can't increase the state controlled electricity prices, without huge public protests.
It's true, nuclear energy costs more, but you're avoiding the elephant in the room and don't address the core issue that solar and wind energies are intermittent, and that you will anyways need to use some controllable energy source (batteries, coal plans, nuclear plans...) to offset this issue.
The part about public protests is kind of cliché, as a french myself, rising the electricity prices happened and people were fine. The protests happened mostly for the oil prices. One thing about french electricity, is that because of the European agreement "ARENH" [1] (will end in 2025), they are forced to sell at capped price to private actors, in order to boost the competition. If this wasn't the case, then maybe the nuclear power sector could be much less costly, or profitable.
> don't address the core issue that solar and wind energies are intermittent
I was under the impression that that problem is easier solvable than making nuclear cost effective and making it scale in a safe way. For decades nuclear power deployment stagnates, while renewable technology is rapidly expanding and getting cheaper by the day, with more storage options. Nuclear power already has difficulty keeping the current level of electricity production, while increasingly outdated and aging nuclear powerplants need to be replaced.
> rising the electricity prices happened
The state rescued the French nuclear industry from bankruptcy, it's now a full government owned monopolistic electricity energy landscape. If the electricity price would be high enough to pay for the costs of the nuclear landscape, that would not have happened. Why were companies like Areva such a commercial failure?
Like digitalization? Like Solar Panel building (in 2022 like 80% where imported)? Or like in the past about credit cards? ("we don't want plastic money" moment)
> Like renewable energy? 1st quarter 2024: 58,4% electricity from renewable energy. Up from 48.5% last year.
This is what happens when you shut down nuclear (which is carbon-neutral by the way), and start importing more. Total energy usage in Germany is down which is terrible news for your economy. The narrative that German energy policy under the current government has been anything but a failure is ridiculous, but some people just love to believe any garbage that comes out of Habeck's mouth.
I once took a tour through the VW HQ's manufacturing plant in Wolfsburg.
Those buildings are incredible, some packed full with robots all squeezed into the smallest possible space. Videos on YouTube [0] give you an impression of what it looks like, but being there, seeing and hearing all those machines, is yaw-dropping.
For those who have the opportunity to go, go! People like to go to museums to look at paintings and the like, this is no different, but you get to see what modern production can look like at its peak.
Biggest country when talking about economics is almost invariably in reference to population. And they appear to be talking about the EU, otherwise we would have to include Turkey, and another country we would rather not.
Where I'm from, when you say "biggest" country, it's by default population unless specified otherwise. Area really isn't an important metric here (unless your country is tiny), because the ability of economic and industrial output scales with population more than with area. The most logical comparison would be by GDP here, because we're comparing economy.
But for population, which is what I think about when specifying country size without any explanation:
Germany is #3 here. You'll see that Russia and Turkey are partly in Europe and bigger than Germany, but since they're mostly in Asia I think most people wouldn't consider them mainly European but rather mainly Asian. There's bound to be some discussion here since it really isn't very clear cut. I'll rephrase to "Germany is at least the third-biggest country in Europe".
Most of the population of Russia is in Europe and it was always considered European country, just like Britain, France, Spain or Portugal of the colonial period.
That's definitely fair. I just blurped it out that way because, at least in my experience, Russia isn't really considered a European country "colloquially". At least where I'm from, people would usually say it's Asian when asked what continent Russia belongs to (if they had to pick one).
But I agree it doesn't really hold up to more detailed scrutiny.
Chill... It's not like they're saying it publicly within earshot. Only the Finns, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Polish, Ukrainians and Moldovans do that.
It may be unintuitive to you, but "the biggest" in many cases means "most populous" and Germany is that - we don't count Russia (because it is not entirely in Europe) or Turkey (for a similar reason) really.
But the good Greeks did us a great service by shpwing us they couldnt afford those cars without taking loans from German banks. And by not being able to repay those loans, proved what a fucking house of cards the whole story about being a 'power house' is.
I guess that's a reference to the Greek government-debt crisis of 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis#G... "Critics have also accused the German government of hypocrisy; of pursuing its own national interests via an unwillingness to adjust fiscal policy in a way that would help resolve the eurozone crisis; of using the ECB to serve their country's national interests; and have criticised the nature of the austerity and debt-relief programme Greece has followed as part of the conditions attached to its bailouts."
I can't tell from the article if they count Tesla's Berlin factory as "German assembly line".
If not, the article should say that.
If yes, to say that "Germany’s automakers manufactured" 1 million EVs is misleading given that around 25% of that was Tesla's Model Y.
Tesla has a factory in Germany but it's a stretch to call it a German automaker, just like Toyota has factories in Mexico but we don't call it Mexican company.
Either way, to namecheck Volkswagen or BMW but not Tesla is just bizarre.
Ford also has a Germany factory. Probably most big auto manufacturers do. Foreign cars are big in Germany (I think I read 40%), as they are in basically every country.
Of course other factories should still count, why wouldn't they? You're only thinking of Tesla because its always in the news, but there are plenty of other 100% legit foreign auto manufacturers in Germany.
Germany is weird. They talk a lot about green, but sabotage and protest against Tesla factory, because 'reasons'. While being perfectly ok with Coal strip mining.
The mine is on the site of the ancient Hambach Forest, which was purchased by RWE in 1978. The company then cut most of the forest down and cleared it to mine. Only 10% of the forest area remains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
1) There's 80 million germans, some hold different opinions.
2) The 'reasons' are real, the factory is Grunheide is dumping all their wastewater into the water system, it's literally ending up in people's homes. As you can imagine, Musk thinks he can just wrestle and bend opposition, so they keep denying and refusing to fix the issue and create an appropriate waste system. Tribunals are slow in Germany, that doesn't help. Also, Tesla has required to expand the factory and take down 250 acres of forest, another thing that is disliked.
AFAIK the protest surrounding the tesla factory were more related to the horrendous work culture that is present at tesla and the amount of pollution that has reportedly been found dumped by tesla factories. 'Because reasons' seem to imply that allowing a tesla plant to be constructed in your country is a resounding net-positive for that country but I think Germany was correct in assessing that the "tesla mindset" isn't completely in line with (West-)European ideals.
Well, 1978 was a long time ago and environmental concerns weren't a big thing back then. RWE had all rights to do what they did, even the Green party acknowledged that when the Hambach Forest situation escalated.
About the Tesla factory thing, those protests are mostly done by a handful of environmental activists and - most importantly - NIMBYs from the surrounding area.
Perfectly ok? The protests against cutting down the Hambach forest were among the fiercest environmental protests in German history, activists camped out in the forest for years and it took hundreds of policemen to resolve that situation, one person died in an accident and the media covered this for many months.
And to be frank electric cars don’t solve the climate crisis, right now they’re little more than expensive toys for the affluent, it’s cool to drive around in a Tesla but don’t believe you save the planet doing that.
With "Perfectly ok" I think the commenter meant that the German Politics contradicts itself with its decisions, e.g. We want to become “greener” aka climate neutral in the long term and at the same time we are reopening coal-fired power plants because we need the energy in the short term.
> And to be frank electric cars don’t solve the climate crisis, right now they’re little more than expensive toys for the affluent, it’s cool to drive around in a Tesla but don’t believe you save the planet doing that.
Tesla's current range doesn't go low enough to replace all vehicles, but transport is one of the single largest greenhouse gas sources — electric vehicles may not be sufficient, but it certainly is a necessary part of solving climate change, given the scale of the problem.
> And to be frank electric cars don’t solve the climate crisis
If governments were serious about climate change they would invest heavier in public transport, not greener cars (which are only greener to drive, but definitely not manufacture).
If there was real seriousness. We would ban all sort of current sized cars and move everyone to slower, smaller and lighter cars... Less material and less energy expenditure in general. Same thing should happen to housing... If anyone was actually serious about whole process.
People want big things and climate only 'cares' about the emissions, so focus on the energy bill not on the size.
To the extent those are the same, the market forces work out the same anyway.
To the extent that they are different, focusing on the wrong thing means Goodheart's law will bite, and you'll end up with small dirty vehicles/homes instead of encouraging innovation that would allow big clean vehicles/homes.
Both the energy and materials required to manufacture and transport the car to the dealership are dramatically impacted by size. Between a light compact car and a huge SUV there is a way bigger difference in those costs that just weight would suggest.
There's also other factors such as microplastics: most of those on our planet are not coming from plastic straws but tire wear. Bigger cars require bigger tires which will wear more due to weight and higher stress.
We just can't pretend that the way we consume does not impact the planet.
I'm not against big cars. But they should get taxed more, as in many parts of the world, whereas in US legislation which focused on the ratio between weight and fuel consumption basically made it more efficient to just build bigger trucks.
1. Which was bigger, and which was the greater source of emissions: a Ford Prefect, or one of Columbus' galleons?
2. I own a 38 m^2 apartment in the UK, and am buying a 107 m^2 house in Germany. The big one has approximately half the annual energy requirements of the small one.
(That's raw power requirements, not CO2 etc., so it doesn't account for e.g. PV being used to supply that power).
3. Given the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99.9% in order to stabilise the temperature (because of how long CO2 stays in the air), if it was as simple as "mass ∝ greenhouse gas emissions", then simply downsizing cars would not be sufficient — we'd have difficulty wearing clothes at that ratio, as even just your shoes wearing out becomes significant given the kinds of changes we want.
It's such an enormous change that we can only solve it by a near total replacement for every part of almost all our industrial processes, and once we do that replacement, then we have to look again at what is possible, and decide from that what rules we need for houses and transport and everything else.
If all the steel and aluminium, all the batteries and plastics, are zero carbon at that point, then it doesn't matter how much of them you use — zero CO2 per kg is still zero total, no matter if the vehicle mass is 100 kg or 10,000 kg.
I've had a couple of German cars, and a few Japanese cars. I'll never own another German car because the maintenance costs (my experience and that of a family member) are crazy compared to Japanese cars.
German EV production is too expensive, they need to cut on additional options and quality of materials. Electric BMW X3 is just a joke in China on it's price point.
