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.
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.
In this case I think the renewables target is better. CO2 reduction is the goal, but having it as a single target can lead to lock-ins. Especially when the target is only low CO2 and not zero.
E.g. you could reach an 80% goal, while still expanding the use of fossil gas to replace coal and lignite. But we need a system that goes to 100% renewables by 2035. And first ramping up gas to then switch to renewables after is what got Germany in this mess.
But here is the fun fact: Basically all countries going for nuclear instead (with the exception of France, and even they need to scrap the bullshit about 6 new reactors and admit that the full set of 6 plus the 8 optional ones is their required minimum) are doing exactly that: having no actual plan for zero co2 emissions but just building some for symbolic reductions. If they actually had any workable plan they would need to plan and build much more (often by a factor of 10 even) just to cover the minimum base load for their projected demand in 2050+.
And no, what Germany got into this mess is intentional sabotage by conservatives to keep coal alive. Please look at these graphs and extrapolate the amount of renewables we would have if first the solar, then the wind power industry wasn’t destroyed intentionally via overregulation. Gas as a transition energy and switching the existing plans over to hydrogen used for storage is a perfectly well plan. Even with today’s gas prize as they -unlike other countries- don’t use gas for regular production anyway. It’s only used for short-term peak production to adapt to fluctuations. The actual problem is the screwed up European energy market that makes you pay the gas price for all energy, no matter how few (or much) you actually use.
Contrary to popular narrrative a potential gas shortage was never a problem for Germany’s electricity production. The problem was heating. And the bottle neck there is not electricity but the ability so get and install the amount of heat pumps needed alternatively (I have personally seen waiting times of nearly a year 5 years ago already…). We like do forget that Germany alone makes up nearly 20% of the EU in households.
It’s the other way around, first it was going after renewables and now due to the coal exit ahead, gas capacities will be ramped up by a targeted 25GW over the next years.