(just like the Czech Republic). We’ll supply you with gas now too.
France starts sending natural gas directly to Germany – Technical adjustments were necessary as the single pipeline between the two countries was originally intended only to deliver gas (from Russia) from Germany to France.
If you haven’t noticed, Germany’s Green doesn’t stink.
Fun fact for you CO2 fans out there: The Germans generate 10 tons of CO2 per capita per year (some call it the “Carbon Footprint”), the nuclear-friendly French only do 6.
Just kidding. Hardy, har, har. Everybody knows Germans don’t have nuclear power plants anymore. Well, not many. One less now for sure.
Former German nuke plant towers demolished in morning blasts – The two cooling towers of a former nuclear power plant in southwestern Germany have been demolished in a pair of early-morning explosions whose timing was kept under wraps to prevent crowds from gathering during the coronavirus pandemic
The rising electricity prices that “Germany” caused in the first place, you mean?
Well, not quite. The “German taxpayer” will have to protect consumers from these rising prices, as usual. It’s a brilliant business plan that only governments like “Germany” can think up. The consumer/taxpayer pays twice, see? It’s not like anybody has to ask them.
Germany is planning to protect consumers and manufacturers from the impact of abandoning cheap coal-fired power, which Berlin is looking to ditch for environmental reasons, according to a government body’s draft paper.
The Coal Commission, which is tasked with organizing the exit from coal, said in a 133-page draft document seen by Reuters that companies and private households should be spared from heavy price increases.
“The necessary funds must be made available by the state to finance the recommended measures.”
It would seem like a major step toward Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent of 1990 totals by 2020. But German utilities just can’t seem to quit burning coal. Some power plants are switching to cheaper imported black coal from the United States, Russia, or Colombia. And at the same time, Germany is also digging more lignite, or brown coal. Lignite is 50 percent water and yields much less energy than the shiny black anthracite. But lignite is easy to bulldoze from massive strip mines that dot Germany’s northwest and eastern border with Poland. Among Europe’s power plants, Germany’s brown coal stations constitute six out of 10 of the worst polluters.
But who cares, right? There’ still Luft nach oben (room for improvement). Germans are only number two when it comes to paying the highest electricity bills in Europe (only the Danes pay more).
Germans already footing the second-highest electricity bills in Europe may face even higher costs from the country’s decision to exit nuclear power early next decade. While there’s no risk of blackouts, costs could rise if transmission gaps emerge, according to Germany’s Bnetza regulator. Europe’s biggest power market is closing its last atomic plants in 2022 and is counting on a mix of mothballed lignite plants, wind and solar power expansion and grid stability measures to keep outages down…
Consumers this year may pay about 24 billion euros ($26.4 billion) in compulsory clean-energy-support fees, levies that are added directly to power bills.
“The lights will stay on. Yet there are two risks in bridging power gaps, namely redispatch and intervention in the market to drive generation up or down that may be cost factors.”
And green power must be short for greenback power, right? Only they have to pay in euros here in Germany.
You’re never going to believe this: Energy prices will be rising dramatically again next year in Germany (same procedureas everyyear). It has something to do with this little thing they call the “eco-power levy” here (levy sounds better than tax). It’s going up another 8.3 percent. But it’s for the Energiewende so that’s a good thing, or something. Hey. It’s not easy being the world’s leader in renewable energy but somebody has to do it. And you still don’t mind paying for it… And you still don’t mind paying for it… And you still…
And here you thought the Germans shutting down their nuclear power plants after an accident in Japan was hardcore enough (and it was). Now they’re going to outlaw internal combustion engines (albeit not until the year 2030).
Amazing Scheiße, I find. It does make me wonder what they’re going to be outlawing next, however. I would have bet on the wheel but it’ll be pretty much taken care of as soon as the internal combustion engines go so I’m now going to put my money on fire itself. Do you have any idea how much CO2 cooking your food releases into the atmosphere? Me neither, but you can be sure that it’s way too much. At least in Germany.
Being a subscriber to Mad Magazine, when I first saw the title of this article at Gizmodo recently, I assumed I’d mixed up my bookmarks and gone to the wrong site. “German Lawmakers Vote to Ban the Internal Combustion Engine.” Oh, come on, man. That can’t be right, can it? The home of some of the higher performance engines in the history of fine cars can’t seriously be talking about this, can they? Well color me embarrassed because, with a few caveats, it turned out to be true.
While going in the wrong direction. With lots of wind in its face.
At one point this month renewable energy sources briefly supplied close to 90 percent of the power on Germany’s electric grid. But that doesn’t mean the world’s fourth-largest economy is close to being run on zero-carbon electricity. In fact, Germany is giving the rest of the world a lesson in just how much can go wrong when you try to reduce carbon emissions solely by installing lots of wind and solar.
After years of declines, Germany’s carbon emissions rose slightly in 2015, largely because the country produces more electricity than it needs. That’s happening because even if there are times when renewables can supply nearly all of the electricity on the grid, the variability of those sources forces Germany to keep other power plants running. And in Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear plants, those other plants primarily burn dirty coal.
Nor will it be any time soon. It must be artificially maintained in order to justify the German Energiewende, you see.
Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, it has become clear that radioactivity might be less harmful than originally thought. Some researchers even believe it may be beneficial in small doses.
That is a surprising finding. Three decades ago, half of Western Europe was contaminated with weakly radioactive precipitation. The public at large was taught to view the ubiquitous radioactivity as particularly insidious.
But now, apparently not everything that gives off radiation is bad after all. The body seems to be able to cope with low doses of radon. “We are continuing to search for damage to the genome,” says Fournier, “but so far we aren’t seeing anything.”
Who would voluntarily breathe in radioactive gas? These days, there are people who do. They swear by the notorious noble gas radon, created by the decay of uranium: They inhale it deeply.
Germany is a superpower when it comes to setting ambitious goals. But it’s even better at burning coal.
Germany aims to generate 80% of its power from renewable sources by 2050 with nuclear being fully phased out by 2021. But given the costs associated with renewables and the challenge of replacing nuclear power efficiently, it is not clear that Germany will succeed in either of these goals…
The Germans have increasingly turned to coal as their power generation source of choice, especially U.S. coal. Today coal power plants are responsible for generating nearly half of Germany’s power, and numerous new plants are scheduled to come online in the next few years.
Overall, the increase in coal is likely to create a significant increase in airborne pollution and potentially stoke tension between Germany and its neighbors. But at the same time, if Germany wants to phase out nuclear power, coal is the only realistic option; a fact which some German politicians are starting to admit.
Observing Hermann 