this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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BERLIN, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Germany is likely to generate more than 50% of its power from renewable energy this year but needs to ramp up the speed of its transition towards the end of the decade, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Monday.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So 25 years ago Germany decided to "phase out Nuclear," why didn't they decide to "phase out coal" instead?

Also if you are doing 50% renewables and 50% lignite, you aren't really helping since total consumption will be growing, thus consumption of coal will be growing more and more every year.

[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because the actual plan was to build-up solar and wind, then phase out nuclear and coal.

But the conservatives intentionally sabotaged solar power and wind (see here and here) and also blocked grid imporvements and extensions to keep their beloved coal alive. After more than a decade we should long be past the point to not need coal anymore (Just look at the graphs and extrapolate the amount of solar and wind without their de facto destruction of the solar (2012) and wind (2016) industry via overregulation), it's still a big chunk of the produced energy.

Nuclear was simply phase out because the existing capacities were rediculous low (~5% of the production top), the shutdown was already decided and planned for years and keeping them few reactors alive would have costed rediculous amounts compared to their value. And completely restarting nuclear basically from scratch makes zero sense today, when you won't need it in 15 years anymore.

This is pure and simple the result of corrupt conservatives pushing coal and their propaganda (killing 100k jobs in solar production to protect 10k coal miners for example). And instead everyone now eats up their propaganda again and blames the current government, not only for the problems but also for a nuclear pahse out that was actually decided and prepared since a decade ago.