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.