Germany could have closed their coal plants decades ago and decided not to. Now it has decided to be a leech on France’s and Sweden’s nuclear. Yes nuclear is expensive, so I hope you won’t be surprised when France and Sweden finally put their foot down and let Germany try to run their grid on wind, or pay a premium on baseload.

And yes it sucks that the USA stirred up shit in Ukraine, throwing Europe and especially Germany under the bus. Luckily Iran is taking care of that.

Wait, is your claim still that EVs will form a significant portion of the grid? I thought that trope died sometime around 2020 when it was obvious that Elon is a megalomaniac.

Industries need massive amounts of energy, and reducing emissions necessitates a significant increase in electricity use (e.g. hydrogen synthesis which is required for many processes to go green is very energy intensive). EVs just aren’t going to feed that. Lithium batteries won’t feed that.

If we figure this out with batteries, it’s likely going to be sodium or some other storage method. So far large-scale storage methods have been utterly underwhelming and it often borders on sci fi.

Here’s the thing. I want to reduce carbon emissions now, not in 30 years. That means fusion is not under consideration, and it means that we need way more electricity. Solar and wind are, as you pointed out, cheap ways to add electricity to the grid, but there’s a reason why no grid runs solely on solar and wind for any meaningful amount of time, and that’s because it’s not physically possible. There’s not enough lithium on this planet to realize that fantasy. Sodium, yes.

So until we actually have an example of energy storage that can deliver to keep steel works and factories going, and that can scale, I’m gonna call bullshit.

Ok man good luck with that. Since the economy is so overwhelmingly in your favor, we should see battery capacity outpace energy need growth any time now.

Exactly this. And remember, Finland has some of the best water resources on the planet (highest concentration of lakes anywhere in the world). So most countries couldn’t do what Finland is doing even if they wanted to, and Finland is still building new nuclear.

That’s actually so fucked up. How can you encourage or even allow children to join activities that you know is going to injure them permanently?

German car manufacturing is doing badly partly because they suppressed electrical or even hybrid tech, but also because of high energy prices.

High energy prices are partly caused by an irresponsible energy policy. The war in Ukraine is the other part.

High energy prices also affect Germany’s two other staples, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering. The chemistry sector is flatlining.

For context, chemical separation methods alone account for roughly 20% of industrial energy consumption worldwide, and Germany is a major player in this field. So high energy prices have a very real impact which can not be offset onto the buyers forever - the factories will just relocate and once they’re gone, they won’t easily come back.

True, and if we can make cheap batteries (e.g. sodium based) at scale then it absolutely could become a thing over the next decades. I just don’t want energy transition to hinge on unproven tech. We can’t play around with this, climate change is way too serious.

For even more context, the annual growth in electricity output is about 5x the addition of battery capacity.

Bullshit. Germany and Denmark’s irresponsible energy policies are carried hard by their neighbors.

For context, global energy output is 30k TWh/year. That’s T for tera.

Germany’s energy policy is dogshit and it’s basically committing suicide. It’s great that Germany is finally displacing some of its coal plants but killing your economy in the process is hardly an example of a successful transition to green energy. Good luck with your chemical and mechanical industries on wind and batteries.

Maybe you should do your own homework before linking Wikipedia at me. Nuclear is safer than hydro in terms of human casualties per energy produced as well as per land mass destroyed, and if you want to make a counter-argument or add any other variable the burden of proof is on you.

Who are “we”? Because Scandinavia didn’t just start.

Yes, like those. Your three examples show how benign nuclear power is, factoting in the absolute worst of circumstances and most ridiculous levels of incompetence.

I’m sure batteries will play an important role in the future, but it’s not significant today and I don’t see any indication of this changing rapidly in a meaningful way. I’d love to be wrong though.

Regarding the issues with nuclear power, the ecological impact is far better than hydro and health impact/deaths is also significantly better. I’m not trying to badmouth hydro here, but I think it’s important to be fair and acknowledge that on those two issues (ecological impact, human health) nuclear has a better track record.

Irrelevant.

This is conspiracy level misinformation. You can’t do 100% wind+solar with batteries, many countries have tried and failed. Germany and Denmark are great examples of highly industrialized nations with high population density that has tried to do what you’re suggesting, and they’ve proven that it’s a fantasy.

Completely false. Many countries have nuclear power with no nuclear weapons. Most of Europe, much of Asia. Africa is about to build many nuclear power plants too.

Solar+battery is not an actual thing. We’re talking society scale here, not remote cabin.

Hydro, although great in many ways, causes immense ecological devastation and is not suitable for all places.

Nuclear also has issues but a mix of wind+solar on a base of hydro+nuclear is probably the ideal.