- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
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next up: zero teslas.
if germans chose a route, they, walk. (ww2, manufacturing cars, end of nuclear power…)
so fuck you elon. we hate you so much.
One of the nicer upshots of cutting the cord with Russia is the sky high price of electricity incentivizing big investments in renewable energy.
For anyone who is interested in a detailed view of these stats worldwide in real time and cross-border with carbon intensities and individual breakdowns by electricity source: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h
WTF is Australia doing? Aren’t they aware they have plenty of sunshine and an insanely long shoreline?
Australia is just an oil company, a coal company, and a mining company disguised as a trench coat. The Liberal party (essentially just American Republicans opposed to guns) spent 2 decades killing any green energy initiatives in favor of fracking the Outback
IIRC Australia mines a huge amount of coal
Shame, innit? They could be the n1 Solar panel producers per capita and panel exporters…oh well. This is why the charge against fossil fuels has to be led by net consumers (in the name of defense against geopolitical risk) and the producers will inevitably reduce extraction for export…but local consumption of coal probably will never disappear completely unless locals complain about air pollution and lag in exportable tech.
Australia likes its coal like america its guns.
The sun doesn’t shine at night. Have a look when it is daytime there and you’ll see upwards of 60% of their electricity is solar.
Or use the EM site and check for past statistics.
The sun doesn’t shine at night.
Wind blows at night at the shoreline.
Have a look when it is daytime there and you’ll see upwards of 60% of their electricity is solar.
Well, over 12 months it’s not that rosy, except for Tasmania:
I thought you’d at least have a chuckle when you realised that it was night time when you made your dumb comment.
Over the last 12 months it is 25% solar and 13% wind. The population centres on the east coast are worse than WA, SA and TAS in that regard.
Yes, 45% of coal generated electricity is awful, but you were still incorrect in saying Australia is doing nothing.
A collosal solar farm and transmission cable to Singapore is under construction which is will be a great achievement when complete.
you were still incorrect in saying Australia is doing nothing.
Except I did not say that. I asked what’s going on and that things aren’t that rosy. You must me have confused with someone else.
Really cool. Thanks for the share. Also quite depressing, most countries (even rich ones who have like triple responsibility) are barely even trying.
Meanwhile, the USA is 24%-ish renewables and 60%-ish fossil fuels. Damn fossil fuel industry and anti-progress politicians.
*state dependent. ;)
Biomass may well be renewable, but I still don’t think it counts as green.
Why not? Doesn’t creating the biomass require sequestering carbon?
Coal is sequestered carbon.
Difference is timescale. Coal “sequestered carbon” over millions of years, and released over a few decades.
Biomass gathers and realeases on the same timescale
Then you’re saying biomass is not really sequestering carbon, essentially.
Neither is solar or wind. But they’re all net-zero or near-zero carbon emissions when considering the entire lifestyle of the energy and machinery production.
I just feel that if you’re growing a load of trees, it’s slightly more environmentally friendly to just let them carry on growing rather than chopping them into bits and burning them.
I mean I get it, it’s a way to use those old coal power stations for something, but it should be something else we need to phase out.
I love it, I like it like my new contract they send me with new prices for electricity (44% up)
You should change your provider. I do it every year because thats how you can save lots of money.
Frustrating that these private energy companies can charge whatever they want (cough market rate is a scam cough) and you need to chase teaser rates year to year if you want to keep your electricity prices down.
Shame Western Europe lacks state owned municipalities obligated to sell at cost, rather than a colidascope of private firms looking to maximize the margin on every kWh sold.
Like others have mentioned, change your provider. Prices are going down again, as there have been advancements on installing renewables. Energy prices at the end of 2024 were 30,5% cheaper than at the start of 2023 (Source. This is the case even though we are paying more for the modernization of the grid, because renewables are that much cheaper than other sources.
Sounds off, because renewbles are typically cheaper than the alternatives.
Any chance you got a ‘fossil only’ contract?It sounds strange, but that’s how it is, and it’s Ökostrom. Luckily, I can change my provider when they raise the price, so it won’t increase that much for me, but it will still go up, and I’m not the only one in my area because some friends of mine received the same ‘greeting.’ (To those who give dislikes, that won’t change the facts no matter how much you would like it to.)
Buy a Balkonkraftwerk. It’s cheap right now in Wintertime. If you take one without battery, it has a return of invest of 1-2 years. Just 2-4 solar panels for your balcony or somewhere else and you plug it into your power plug (schuko stecker). It‘s worth, easy to install and allowed without applying the landlord in Germany.
Are you sure that the investment will be recouped so quickly? I’m not a local here and I’m not familiar with all the rules, but I’ve been told that I can’t put anything on the balcony that will change the appearance of the building until I get permission from the Rathaus.
That was until 2023. In 2024 the regulations were changed and kow it can’t be stopped. Neither stopped by your landlord, by the city, nor the local power company. Just buy it for around 400€ and install it (no Deye inverter though). You’ll get 2 or 4 solar panels, an inverter and a cable with schuko plug to connect inverter to your flats power network.
You plug it into your power plug and as soon as the sun glares, your little power net in your flat gets cheap power. If you adapt your behavior accordingly - start laundry, dryer, ironing at noon - you can save some bucks.
I have no quick start guide in englisch. May be you google around a bit. If you live in an older building, you should read about old power cables as well and start with low wattage- 600w inverter. It’s really that easy now 😋
renewbles are typically cheaper than the alternatives
But firms will charge market rate regardless of the source of energy. This is a problem we have in Texas under ERCOT.
Green power can come in at such high rates that local power is practically free. But because the energy is bundled and auctioned with coal and gas across the grid at large, and because electricity is priced at the maximum auction rate, a shortage in one municipality that’s filled with high priced fossil fuel power raises the retail price of energy into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars a MWh.
I wonder how long it takes to bundle renawables only with batteries and sell that without subsidising fossil based electric energy.
May the fossil burners go bankrupt rather sooner than later as it’s a more reliable way to get them out of the mix than regulation is.bundle renawables only with batteries and sell that
Significantly less efficient than a green grid. Roof solar isn’t going to practically compete with industrial scale solar or wind, much less state subsidized gas.
May the fossil burners go bankrupt rather sooner than later
The demand for energy is only increasing. I don’t think anyone is going to go bankrupt selling electricity into this market.
why would market electricity prices have any relation to what you pay on your power bill? turns out that companies will charge whatever they know they can, regardless of the cost of acquiring something to sell, should the cost of something be more than they know they can sell it for, they just won’t sell it.
The idea that market prices influence what you pay for something is basically one of the main lies of supply side economics.
In Germany, from 1st of January each local power provider has to offer a flexible contract that gives through the market price. But I think it’s too early right know as it has some peaks. Otherwise choose Tibber, Voltego or others. Once you can load your car at night, it’s worth to take a flex tariff
I mean, that’s assuming you can afford an electric car, being poor is expensive
In general an electric car is cheaper than a combustion car. Being it the petrol vs electricity or purchase price. Today, western car companies produce high end electric cars only. That’s why the costs are high. Wait for the Chinese low end cars.
Are you sure its the actual cost of the electricity or the fact that many other costs are often bundled into your bill?
Obviously, you don’t live in Germany or the EU, and it’s questionable whether you’ve ever paid a single bill. Because the electricity bill is always separate from other bills and is a special contract.
Prices mainly go up due to things like transmission fees.
lol. well I dont live in the EU thats true. seems like you’re the misinformed one. its pretty common for ‘electricity usage’ and ‘delivery’ to be separated. hence my question. dont worry if you struggle understanding your bill we can help if you want.
Original chart source: https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2024.pdf
Slide 17
I love that chart you can’t read.
Original chart source: https://www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2024.pdf
Slide 17
Ty
Yeah that sucks, they haven’t shared the source, only what site it’s from.
This is the closest I could find: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&source=public
But this includes all sources, where the chart shown only includes renewable sources. I can’t find it on the site, but I’m kinda dumb so maybe somebody else can find it.
Electricity imports also rose to 24.9 TWh, driven by lower generation costs in neighboring countries during summer.
For the love of God, please just build nuclear instead of virtue signaling with solar panels while you import your energy needs.
All our nuclear plants are shut down and weren’t maintained for further usage, than that few years ago when they were shut down, for decades. They are basically trash. Now just take a look at UK or France how cheap and easy it is to build new ones (when you can’t sacrifice workers and environment like China). And then take a look at France’s nuclear power production in recent heat summers. And finally take a look where that sweet little uranium is coming from when imported (Germany has none). And now give me a single good reason why investing in nuclear is better than investing in dirt cheap, decentralizeable renewables to cover future electricity needs.
Btw French Nuclear Power Company went bankrupt last years. Because of this cheap Nuclear. It’s owned by the Government now. In South Corea the Nuclear company is due 150 Billion dollars. Bankrupt very soon. Sellafield the British nuclear dump expects costs of 136 Billion pounds until 2050. Already owned by the Government.
It’s so fucking cheap this nuclear.
Just imagine how ‘cheap’ it’d be, had they included all calculatory costs for severe incidents (typically not possible to get insurance for them, so the public has to bear the costs of those incidents) and long-term storage in their operating costs and energy prices, repectively.
Economically it makes no sense to prefer nuclear to renawables.
Only the transformation is somewhat strenuous.
The “just use nuclear” crowd is so dumb. They make it so obvious they have no idea what they are talking about. Which I would not mind on its own, but they always think they are the smartest people in the room and that’s infuriating.
There’s no sense in spending limited public funding on nuclear now - renewables and storage is winning on all fronts.
Shutting down what nuclear existed was a costly mistake, but going down that path again is an even worse one
UK for comparison (Average over year)
GW % Coal 0.18 0.6 Gas 8.31 27.7 Solar 1.52 5.1 Wind 9.36 31.1 Hydroelectric 0.41 1.4 Nuclear 4.36 14.5 Biomass 2.15 7.1 Edit: Imports are the remainder
The sum of those percentages is 87.5%. So what’s the rest, maybe import from France or Norway?
Yes it’s imports. Norway / France and Netherlands mainly.
Well, we’ve a single cable coming over from France that makes up about 3% (I think) of our total electricity supply. So “French Nuclear” should be a bigger entry in that table than coal, solar, hydro or bio. That’s not the only import, either, so it’s not completely impractical for the missing percentages to be imports.
There are other cables as well. One of them runs through the chunnel. The UK regularly gets upto 10% of its supply from France (seasonal, time, cost dependant)
That’s an incredible amount of wind power.
Germany has the EU’s highest energy prices. Just saying.
Norway has one of the lowest. And they don’t have only 62.7%.
99% of their energy comes from renewables.And in the USA, some of the states with lowest prices have the highest % of renewables.
To be fair, Norway and those states rely heavily on hydro, which is great if you have the geography for it, but it’s not a route that can work for every region.
Excluding hydro renewable sources tend to cost more if you include storage currently, though that premium has been and is coming down.
Iowa and South Dakota rely mostly on wind and are amongst the states that have the cheapest electricity in the USA - https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/Others/24-08-Letter-Vance.pdf
List of countries and states and their % of renewables: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSBook/Countries100Pct.pdf
It’s certainly true it’s easier when you have hydro though.
Exactly. I grew up in WA, USA, and power was always quite cheap due to how much comes from hydro. Now I’m in Utah, and it’s only cheap because we use coal and natural gas (and produce a ton of the latter), though we’re replacing a lot of that w/ solar (turns out deserts get lots of sun) and prices are remaining pretty low.
Renewable energy will certainly look different in each region. I don’t know what would work best for Germany since I don’t know the geography very well, but comparing Norway to Germany isn’t going to be a productive conversation.
Norway regularly has very high energy prices… in fact, they’re so high they want to cut exports.
The reason they’re high is because of the grid in other countries being hit by low wind or grey sky days, pushing up the minimum pricing that they’re also subjected to by being part of the same grid.
Seems to be a recent thing, as I was looking at data from Feb 2023, and unrelated to Norway’s use of renewables.
Interesting article nonetheless.
They should definitely cone to a different pricing agreement with Norway as to not negatively affect them.
And it will be even less of a problem once those countries properly ramp up their installation of more renewables and storage.
deleted by creator
“This single thing is more expensive in this country” is a stupid way to compare prices from countries.
Norway has some of the lowest in Europe. Less than a third of Germany’s prices. Norway is producing more (hydro) energy than it’s able to use.
That’s why it’s exporting some of it to other countries today. Before Norway did this their prices were even lower.
Norway has thermal energy sources and lots of oil they can sell to subsidize other things.
Sure just saying, not trolling at all.
Solar drives energy prices down, not up. In the summer the energy price regularly goes negative because there is so much solar available.
And it isn’t even remotely true, other countries have higher energy prices than Germany within the EU. The Netherlands for example has crazy high energy prices. And that’s in absolute numbers, not even corrected for things like GDP.
Why is that?
IIRC it’s because there is a pseudo monopoly for the power lines which can increase prices for using them and the price for electricity orients itself on the most expensive form of electricity (coal I think), so the price benefits of renewables only benefit the seller and not the buyer
Same in the US… I don’t have any choice on where my power comes from. Though the government tries to go after them for price fixing/gouging, it’s always way late and a smaller penalty that nut should have been while they’re currently making money hand over fist.
Because the price we pay is determined by the most expensive source, that’s to ensure low costing energy like wind and solar make the biggest profit and get expanded further and faster.
Because Germany is not at 100% renewable yet. Soon.
I wish I knew.
It does seem awfully like you’re implying a connection to the topic at hand.
It’s the coal they’re burning.
Remember Berlin has a latitude of 52.5°. That puts it far north of the 49th parallel border.
My friend is dumb and doesn’t know the significance of the 49th parallel. Can you explain it to them?
US/Canadian border from roughly Vancouver to Winnipeg. Berlin is further north than Saskatoon, Karlsruhe is on the 49th parallel. The lot of mainland Europe is north of Albuquerque. In fact much of Tunesia is north of Albuquerque. Miami is on about the same parallel as Bahrain, Orlando on the same as New Delhi.
True, but climate in Central Europe is different to the US-Canada border.
I’m thinking solar is hard.
Sure, but Munich is south of the 49th parallel. I’m not sure how amenable it is to solar down there, but surely there are some areas that would work, no?
If baveria wasn’t one of the worst NIMBY hell holes in the (known by me) world.
Wasn’t Germany that weird one where ‘gas’ was labeled as ‘renewable’? Or was that something diffrent?
No, that was France labeling Nuclear as Renewable. Because, because it doesn’t emit CO2, I guess. Don’t know what „Re-New“ translates into French and I‘d be surprised if it is „Split Atoms“.
Fuck off, France did this in reaction to Germany trying to pass gas as green (not renewable!)
Wasn’t Germany that weird one where ‘gas’ was labeled as ‘renewable’?
Biogas from decomposition is renewable. That definition is accepted internationally.
Doesn’t mean it’s ecological. There’s a difference.
Depends on whether you grow crops specifically to turn into fuel or ferment waste that would otherwise ferment in the open.
The main point on the European level revolved around whether construction of gas plants should get access to some green fund or the other, to which the answer is yes because they’ll always carry some on-demand load, and seasonal storage is bound to include syngas because we’ll need that stuff anyway as chemical feedstock.
No, worse, they labeled it as green. Naziland never fails to be on the wrong side of history
Yes it was, but I can’t find the sources now. It was some time after the recent invasion of Ukraine by the eastern hordes; titles were something like "Germany reclasified natural gas as renewable’. My memory fails me, so it may have been different gas and different purpose than electricity. Anyway, it came as a very poor taste.
In other news, Germany imports quite some percentage of its electricity from other countries, like nuclear-produced electricity from France. So, in a sense and to a degree, it outsources the emissions to other countries.
Edit: sources of both claims below.
In other news, Germany imports quite some percentage of its electricity from other countries, like nuclear-produced electricity from France. So, in a sense and to a degree, it outsources the emissions to other countries.
That is simply not true. You might get an update of the actual state of energy production AND imports vs exports here: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/03/germany-hits-62-7-renewables-in-2024-energy-mix-with-solar-contributing-14/
My memory fails me, so it may have been different gas and different purpose than electricity. Anyway, it came as a very poor taste.
Even this is not true or just blabla at least. It’s Biogas, gas made out of animals poo, plants and other degradable things.
I strongly suggest that you either check sources before posting a comment. Or just stay quite instead „there was something I heard somewhere…“
Found the source (if wiki can be considered):
It was NOT bio gas, it was Natural gas (i.e. russian gas).
Natural gas is seen by some countries as the bridge between coal and renewable energy, and those countries argue for natural gas to be considered sustainable under a set of conditions.[47] Germany in particular was a strong supporter towards its inclusion in the taxonomy, moreover advancing a request to the Commission to further ease environmental restrictions on its use.
Now piss off with the revisionism.
Electricity imports also rose to 24.9 TWh, driven by lower generation costs in neighboring countries during summer. France (12.9 TWh), Denmark (12.0 TWh),…
True.
