Incredible

Definitely not the most optimal path. It’s arguably the result of terrible deals from the previous government starting with Nord Stream pushed by Gerhard Schröder directly profiting from it. It is sad how to see how individual greed has an impact on millions of citizens. Unless this kind of corruption has actual consequences, it will happen again. The effect here has been accelerated with the war in Ukrain. Hopefully Germany can find better compromises because this was a terrible bet. Interesting also to compare how Belgium handled a similar situation, namely reverting the decision to step away from nuclear.

€16bn buys you roughly half of a 1GW nuclear reactor these days. Thus, Germany spending €16bn on 10GW of gas capacity means getting ~20x as much capacity for the same money. And unlike nuclear, gas plants can be throttled properly, so it actually works well together with a large amount of renewables.

The fossil fuel expansion

It’s not actually a fossil expansion, because at the same time, coal plants are closing and renewables are being built. Renewables are also cheaper and thus prioritized in the grid. These new gas plants are essentially for backup only (no doubt their prospective owners would like to see them used more though).

Germany shut down its final three nuclear reactors last April, despite warnings that it would cause more fossil fuel to be burned.

And that didn’t happen. Instead the percentage of renewables in the grid has increased. In the past, inflexible nuclear plants meant that wind power often had to be curbed more often.

Last year, a report from Berlin’s own climate agency said the country was likely to miss its target of cutting greenhouse emissions by 65 percent by 2030.

And that’s not because of electrical energy generation, it’s because Germany is lagging in other sectors:

• Mobility is not electrified enough and there’s not enough public transit.
• Heating is not electrified enough.
• Germany produces way too much beef and dairy products.