134
Germany's coal exit quietly progressing, likely completed by 2032 – researcher
(www.cleanenergywire.org)
Fucking hell that is slow. Germany, wtf?
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
134 points (99.3% liked)
Climate
8858 readers
259 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Faster than I expected, what with the CDU in power and all
Only like a decade after they said they would. That's pretty good still going to cause untold ecological damage but less than say openai or the invasiam of Ukraine
The invasion of Ukraine forced Europe to lower fossil fuel consumption and now Ukraine is also destroying a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure in Russia. Even the destruction of the Kakhovka dam seems to turn out rather wild ecosystem. The Baltic countries are also recreating massive wetlands on the border to Russia.
Do maybe Ukraine is ecological break even and american invasion if Iran might be good who do you think we can make China and India invade to fuck up fossil infra
LOL we're getting wildly expensive environmentally disastrous fracking gas from the USSA, shipped in diesel tankers.
And why? because these terrorists blew up Nordstream causing a huge environmental disater by itself.
Quit your BS
Laughs in American
Then cries
Fucking hell that is slow. Germany, wtf?
Sorry, our current head of government is kind of a slug
I'm guessing they'll get to 90% very soon, and that last 10% is what takes the most time
they were quick to exit NUCLEAR power.
Not really. It took about fourty years of discussion, strife, protests, civil desobedience, and no less than five widely reported major nuclear accidents - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the three plants at Fukushima - to get there. And renewable energy is a child of the quest to get better energy sources, thst stsrted in mid-seventies, and started to become mature with megawatt wind power plants in the early naughties. We would not have these without the antinuclear movement. I know all that well because I studied applied physics and renewable energy in Germany since 1988.
The decades old logo of the antinuclear movement
.... shows a fiery sun for a reason.
"but someone else will do worse" is not a valid defence.
Not really a defense, just saying that they are nullifying our efforts.
But you haven't made an effort
"Our efforts" lol, lmao even. The west - Germany and the US in particular - are not even trying.
Yes of course, decommissioning coal power plants instead of building them rapidly is bad apparently.
You are absolutely clueless on the matter. I will not engage in a conversation with someone fighting surface level stuff, bye.
So are their renewable installations...
That's like saying a chain smoker is turning healthy by starting to brush their teeth, while increasing their cigarette intake..
60% of China's power capacity at this point are renewables, and even if they're building coal, they're building renewables much faster.. Long term, it's clear they're still phasing out coal.. The power plants are there, but they probably won't be running much in 10-20 years time
So what? Germany is also at slightly above 60% renewables with 80% by 2030 being a goal, and we don't build new coal power plants!
As an addition: In its report, The Global Coal Exit List 2025: Troubling Trends Towards Chemicals and Captive Power, the NGO Urgewald identifies India, China, and the U.S. as the main obstacles for a coal phase-out.
China is a surprise to me, didn't know they use that much coal for non energy production. At least they are scaling down when it comes to energy.
According to the Chinese Communist Party's recently released 15th five-year plan: compared to the 14th five-year plan, China’s goals for non-fossil energy additions would see China’s annual green energy additions fall by more than half in the next five years, while at the same time, fossil fuel energy consumption would increase by 8-10%,
China is not on track to meet its 2060 carbon neutrality goal, according to climate think tank, Carbon Action Tracker.
Interesting. How come nothing is written about their nuclear power plants?
They will burn the question is whether that fire comes before or after there's any benefit to be had from any of it Americans are already turning off power to people without shutting down the plants or making anything what's the actual down side of burning it all down
Replacing it mostly with gas, which still produces global warming? Gas is better, but still problematic from environment, price and dependency point of view 🤷
What are these graphs saying about the future coal phase out?
My read of those graphs is that coal (and lignite) have both been going down and will likely continue to do so. Natural gas has been constant, it does not appear to replace the reduction in coal.
Usage of both can go down only to some extent. Then what? Germany has no nuclear, where will energy come from during windless nights/cloudy days? France?
Last year there were 78GW of battery grid connections approved in Germany. That is with 720GW pending for approval. So safe to say that segment is growing quickly. Add to that trade with other countries. Europe is large enough, that the weather is very different across the continent.
Oh and also, there always is some wind at least. The worse week last year was at 12.8% of electricity consumption from wind and average is 28%. That week also had pretty good solar.
Shouldn't that be GWh? Anyway, that's peanuts if you want to rely purely on renewables. You also can't look at average wind, you have to cover energy demand all the time. If there is no wind for minutes in such case, you have big problems.
Shouldn’t that be GWh?
No, grid connections are measured in GW.
Anyway, that’s peanuts if you want to rely purely on renewables.
These batteries usually are planned to have two hours of storage. Some more some less. So 158GWh would be enough to power Germany through sunny, but windless days. 1440GWh are more then a days worth of electricity consumption of Germany. Again there are no days with absolutely no wind and solar and Germany needs more of them to even charge those batteries up anyway. So it is on the lower end of what is needed to run a country like Germany without fossil fuels.
At that point you can talk about some weird forms of storage like hydrogen or use a bit of biomass or something like that. You might even get away with carbon capture and storage, because the amount of fossil fuels needed for that grid are so low.
Long duration energy storage is necessary for a purely renewable grid.
I think you need more than one day of energy's worth, plus there is a problem with short and cloudy winter days where you'd struggle to generate enough energy let alone store it. I'd be really curious if there are some actual studies that observe past years and calculate all this.
no nuclear, where will energy come from during windless nights/cloudy days
Nuclear can't be used for that either way. Nuclear power plants are notoriously expensive, so they need to run at a constant 100% output to be remotely economically viable. That means you can't just dial them up to fill a gap in renewables since they already are at max output.
Even if we ignore economic concerns, the old reactors we had weren't build to operate in load following mode, meaning you couldn't just ramp their output up/down if you wanted to. New reactors are often build with that capability in mind, but that would've required pretty much a full rebuild of the reactor chamber and the control system. With the already required maintenance it would've been easier to just build a new reactor at that point.
If the two options are a new nuclear reactor or investment in renewables, than the latter option is faster, more reliable and cheaper. The gaps in renewables could easily be solved with more water reservoirs and battery stations as power storage. The main problem is that germany, like always, introduced so many diplomatic hurdles in the process that no one wants to do it. You can thank our totally not corrupt politicians for that.
Yep, Nuclear is all you listed above. But OTOH they are reliable and predicatable 24/7.
If the two options are a new nuclear reactor or investment in renewables, than the latter option is faster, more reliable and cheaper.
You sure? Nuclear is reliable, renewables aren't because they depend on weather.
The gaps in renewables could easily be solved with more water reservoirs and battery stations as power storage.
"Easily". Besides corruption, the sheer amount of energy storage required is enormous, there are nowhere enough batteries available nor pumped storage hydropower. Perhaps in the future where sodium and other batteries appear in mass production, but not today.
Edit: also you can't look at average consumption but at peak daily consumption which might be quite higher during winter than summer.
Other parts of Europe that have wind and battery storage. That isn't rocket science and improving the grid makes way more sense and is cheaper than building white elephant nuclear reactors (that will not be online before way into the 2040ties anyways).
So, let's just put another cable to the grid and everything is solved then?
In combination with enough renewables distributed over Europe yes.
Yes
Germany is very much opposed to nuclear, but when it needs it, it has no problems with importing it? That's a bit hypocritical and not really self sufficient, isn't it. Besides it might happen there is dr~~a~~ought plus/or huge energy demand and France won't be able to export energy.
A bit hypocritical to think nuclear could prevent that when it takes 15 years under optimal conditions to build a reactor.
Nuclear could prevent that, but Germany closed even their functional NPPs, let alone planned new ones when it should. How come France emissions are incredibly low and state is self sufficient, even exports a lot...
Germany closed half a century old plants that were over or close to their maximum design lifespan.
France is still having Russia of all places process a large part of the needed uranium 🙄 And the nuclear power plants are causing huge debts for the operators.
Germany npps roughly started operating from 1970-85, in Slovenia we have one NPP that began in 1983, still works perfectly fine and we are extending its life at least until 2043 if not beyond. So, tell me again about maximum design lifespan...
France is still having Russia of all places process a large part of the needed uranium 🙄 And the nuclear power plants are causing huge debts for the operators.
What's the price tag on avoiding global warming? Also uranium can be found and processed elsewhere and it sucks that they use Russia (both imports and processing). But I guess this is just typical EU hypocrisy when it comes to Ukraine war.
Yes, that is half a century, and no, explanding their life time is irresponsible from a safety standpoint as any operator will tell you. At most you can add new reactor blocks and decomission the old ones. Furthermore it is also uneconomic to operate vintage npps as necessary repairs become much more expensive.
And no, investing into white elephants that don't produce any electricity for at least 15 years does not help with climate change. It is actively harmful, as during that time the fossile fuel plants continue to operate, while necassary investments into the grid and renewables can't be done because all the money is stuck with building prohibitively expensive npps.