Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023

Electricity, maybe. Energy? I wish.<p>This headline would be more true if we had transportation fully electrified and all buildings heated with heat pumps, but last I heard the proposed law to require the latter transition to be <i>started</i> in 2024 was dropped again, and they&#x27;re also still debating about <i>starting</i> to require transitioning the combustion engine fleets to electric by, what was it, 2030?<p>I also still see stickers here, calling for the closure of a nuclear plant in Belgium. These people live near one of the biggest coal mines and power plants, but tihange is what scares them.<p>Looks like we&#x27;ll have to dig in our own pockets if we want to be part of the solution, government isn&#x27;t going to do it, even in a principalistic country as Germany. We&#x27;ll get to +3°C or something but at least you can tell the kids of 2060 that you at least did what you could...

Actually Germany recently shut down all of it&#x27;s nuclear plants and replaced them with the dirtiest fuel possible: lignite coal burning plants.<p>Statistics are a peculiar thing.

Grams of CO2 per kWh:<p>France: 43<p>Germany: 398<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abload.de&#x2F;img&#x2F;img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;abload.de&#x2F;img&#x2F;img_20230705_133511_84efdp.jpg</a><p>The reason? Germans hate nuclear and prefer coal as a stable energy source.

Right now, Germany appears to be 85% renewable [0], but is still pretty mediocre on CO2 emissions compared to many of its neighbours (Poland excepted!). That 8GW of coal still hurts, but the trend is pretty good.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.electricitymaps.com&#x2F;zone&#x2F;DE" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.electricitymaps.com&#x2F;zone&#x2F;DE</a>

Germany also produced a multi year net electricity generation low in June.<p>The rise mostly results from this reduction because of the nuclear phase out.<p>These are not the actual numbers but an example:<p>June 2022: renewables 15TWh, total 40TWh = 37.5%<p>June 2023: renewables 15TWh, total 30TWh = 50%

... and yet Germany looks awful on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.electricitymaps.com&#x2F;map" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.electricitymaps.com&#x2F;map</a> . Is that a measurement problem, or something else that we should know?

Germany is “green” same as California: high air pollution with most energy imports of any state in the nation. Blood diamond economics applied to energy. I predict that France will become an international leader in nuclear energy, while Germany will kill the most birds.

Retail prices still seem at a record 40c&#x2F;kwh or more. Perhaps tolerable with a C4 professor Fraunhofer salary, adjusted for inflation (unlike the salaries of the plebs).

Revisit this in December, please. This headline is a problem, not an achievement. The amplitude in output of renewables in good vs. bad weather makes it impossible to install photovoltaic panels in many places already now.<p>But yeah, Germany is handsome and awesome.

I think renewable energy disruption is happening faster than many can fathom. A few breakthroughs in storage technology and things might actually turn into optimism from Climate fears in 1 or 2 decades. Hopefully entrenched interests do not let free market disrupt them this time.

Living in Germany is leaving any big city and seeing loads of wind turbines everywhere.<p>I know very little of its economics, like that it typically takes 7 years to pay it back and lasts 20-25 years, but looks like a good way to generate renewable energy and will likely soon take Germany to 100%.<p>It&#x27;s a goal for the government and for many years it has been pushing forward. I dislike many things here, but I can&#x27;t say I don&#x27;t admire the country&#x27;s ability to execute on this and other subjects.<p>I really don&#x27;t get why the US and other strong countries don&#x27;t invest as much on it.<p>There is some environmental impact(birds etc) and downsides, but overall looks like one of the best ways to generate energy until we have fusion energy. Also creates many jobs.

The price of electricity has been falling in Germany since the beginning of the year, the share of renewable energies in the electricity supply has risen to 65%. The level of gas storage is 20% higher than in recent years, even though there is no more gas flowing from Russia. Nevertheless, the price of gas and heating oil is falling in Germany. It seems to me that the catastrophic news regarding energy blackout etc. in Germany of the last year were slightly exaggerated.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zeit.de&#x2F;wirtschaft&#x2F;energiemonitor-deutschland-gaspreis-spritpreis-energieversorgung" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zeit.de&#x2F;wirtschaft&#x2F;energiemonitor-deutschland-ga...</a>

Interesting development announced in the Netherlands last week.<p>We&#x27;re going to create massive hydrogen infrastructure where we produce it from sea water of the North Sea and then transport it inland using a pipe system to reach a low number of mega hubs, where high energy industry will plug in. Included will be some pipes crossing the border, surely into Germany.<p>On top of this, our king went to Portugal to secure massive deals with Portugal. Apparently it&#x27;s easier&#x2F;cheaper to produce Hydrogen in the Mediterranean. Some of it will be produced there and then shipped to Rotterdam, and then fed into the pipes.<p>We&#x27;re the gods of big infra and also very cheap, so you can be sure that this is going to work.

Sadly we&#x27;re far behind EV market penetration. If all cars in Germany would be EVs, we could store 2 days of electricity consumption.

Porche, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen. They are the German darlings. Hard to shake them to move to full electric since they are knee deep invested in ICE engines.<p>Germany also shot themselves in foot by shutting down all nuclear plants and started burning coal.

Can&#x27;t wait for the 150 smug comments saying &quot;But they shut down nuclear power&quot;.

Lol. If I&#x27;m reading the article properly, renewable energy production actually went -down- in 2023 compared to 2022: 97TW compared to 99TW one year earlier. But: non-renewable energy production in GE went down even more, due to, amongst others, the shutdown of nuclear plants.<p>Did GE then start consume so much less energy compared to 2022? No it did not. GE -produced- less energy, in particular less non-renewable energy. But to compensate, it imported more energy. And all this imported energy was non renewable; much of it was LPG that was imported from oversea.

Congratulations, Germany.<p>No doubt the entire discussion on HN will be about nuclear.

Germany should be shamed when it comes to green energy. They actively lobbied to make nuclear energy be excluded from green energies, and they have shut down their nuclear power plants to replace them by coal powered plants.

And Germany also achieved having one of the highest electricity prices in the EU

The deindustrialization has begun.

Funny propaganda<p>We are at the peak of solar energy And every night, germany imports electricity<p>The data from january 2023 is really funny, too

Germany&#x27;s energy consumption per capita has dropped about 20% since its 1980s peak and has been trending down fairly sharply since 2007 [0]. AfD is polling extremely well on the back of a &quot;stop this madness&quot; environmental platform.<p>German renewable energy policies have been a failure at securing human prosperity.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;grapher&#x2F;per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&amp;country=DEU">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ourworldindata.org&#x2F;grapher&#x2F;per-capita-energy-use?tab...</a>