Good progress. Germany also shut down its nuclear sector and made up for it by burning crap tons of coal.

Coal usage in Germany has continued to shrink throughout the nuclear shutdown. It's at the lowest level it's been since the early days of industrialization.

I agree that nuclear should not have been phased out at the very least until coal was gone, but don't make up shit and say that they made up for the nuclear exit by burning more coal, that is untrue. Germany made up for it by building more renewables.

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k_g_b_ a day ago | parent | next [-]

This. Plus the fact that it would have been politically absolutely infeasible to get anyone except the Greens to agree on a coal before nuclear phase out at any point until at least 2018. SPD, CDU especially were and are very close to to the coal industry (voters, company boards, etc.).

In addition, without the Greens-pushed and initiated renewables subsidies, there would have been basically no big market worldwide for solar manufacturing to even be built out the way it was and all solar tech and industrialization would likely not be as good as it is now.

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myk9001 a day ago | parent [-]

> ... Greens-pushed and initiated renewables subsidies, there would have been basically no big market worldwide for solar...

Are you referring specifically to a German political party?

Because that's a lot of credit to attribute to a single party in a single country.

It might be well deserved, but seeing some supporting data would be nice.

	▲	k_g_b_ a day ago \| parent [-]
		https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-electricity-per-cap... The only other even slightly comparable country is Spain and they don't start until 2006/7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source... where the laws that kick-started that. Under a SPD-Greens government - it wouldn't have happened with the conservatives or (market) liberals, that's clear.

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myk9001 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> ... don't make up shit and say that they made up for the nuclear exit by burning more coal, that is untrue.

It's true, though. Emotions seem to be clouding your judgment. Renewables could've been replacing coal. Instead, they're making up for the lost nuclear capacity.

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eigenspace a day ago | parent [-]

Renewables are replacing coal and nuclear simultaneously. Coal usage was consistently dropping before and continued to consistently drop after the nuclear phase out.

I agree if coal was banned before nuclear, the new renewable capcacity added could have done more to replace a huge source of emissions faster. It was a failure of education, media, and political will that Germany phased out nuclear before coal.

That does not however mean that coal usage increased after nuclear was phased out, such a claim is just false.

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astrobe_ a day ago | parent [-]

According to [1], around 2022 nuclear was shut down, coal/lignite increased, imports increased, and consumption decreased - if I interpret those charts correctly.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

	▲	eigenspace a day ago \| parent [-]
		The slight consumption bump you see in 2021 for coal and lignite had more to do with overall energy consumption jumping in 2021 as the world economy came out of the pandemic. If you look at the wider trajectory from 2018 to 2025, coal consumption dropped a bit more than normal in 2020, and rebounded a bit in 2021, but the actual trajectory is clear. Yes, electricity imports increased, mostly from places with clean grids (including France, though less during the summer months where France had drought related shutdowns). I should have mentioned the increase in imports though, that was an important factor.