Coal and fossil fuel use in Germany at a record low for electricity in 2023

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2023

by locallost • 3 years ago

53 80 3 years ago

Wait, what? Whatever happened to all the coal fired power plants Germany is going to spin up to keep us all warm and toasty?

drewcon• 3 years ago

Yeah I have the same question.

My understanding is they had to bring more coal online to offset shutting down nuclear. What gives?

blkhawk• 3 years ago

well.. its actually a bit more complex than that. The TLDR is that the slack of nuclear was picked up by renewables (mostly wind). the slightly more complicated reason is that wind often was kept off in favor of non-throttle-able base-loads like coal and nuclear. Now with the latter out of the picture the slack has to be taken up my either expensive NGAS or wind. NGAS can be throttled somewhat quickly so if there is wind its now used.

This suddenly reveals the true capacities that were there all along.

pvorb7• 3 years ago

A huge problem with the German coal phase-out by 2038 ("ideally by 2030") is that the law doesn't prohibit exporting coal. So with every coal plant that's shut down, coal becomes cheaper and will be burned by someone else.

We're doomed.

cronix• 3 years ago

China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.
That's despite the fact that much of the world is getting off coal, says Flora Champenois, coal research analyst at Global Energy Monitor and one of the co-authors of the report.
"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

TheLoafOfBread• 3 years ago

They are not accounted for when they are not supplying electricity thus the headline. But they are still running in idle mode, consuming coal.

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

Could still be better. Having the same level of CO2e per GWh over the last 12 months as the USA is kind of embarrassing for an EU member state.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US

(You need to set the time period to last 12 months, not sure if you can encode that into the URL)

onlyrealcuzzo• 3 years ago

They phased on nuclear too early - other than that they're RAPIDLY moving in the right direction, as is the US.

kgabis11• 3 years ago

The fact that they phased out nuclear at all is astonishing and definitely not a move in the right direction. Politics and radiophobia won.

thiago_fm4• 3 years ago

It isn't a fair comparison as Germany has terrible geography in comparison to the US for energy generation, and certain energy sources like hydropower are very efficient, but not possible to replicate given the environmental impact.

Hell, even solar generation in Germany isn't anywhere as good as the US, where it can build solar parks in the south, meanwhile most of Germany has what, 6 hours of daylight during winter?

To me, it's absurd that the US has literally the best geography of any country in the world and yet isn't coal-free.

It has even a river that divides the country. It's almost as if it was hand-drawn by god. With mountainy regions, hot and cold areas, deserts and tropical areas, America you have no excuse and can do better.

whatshisface• 3 years ago

The US also has got enormous and inexhaustible (all together) coal mines, and oil fields of course. The price of natural gas is negative in some parts of Texas.

lispm• 3 years ago

CO2e per GWh over the last 12 months as the USA

Well, Germany uses half the electricity per capita.

yongjik2• 3 years ago

And by "record low", we mean "nearly six times that of neighboring France."

Compare: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...

kleiba5• 3 years ago

Unsurprising, given the countries' opposing views on nuclear power.

kleiba5• 3 years ago

However, in 2023, Germany has for the first time produced most of its electrical power (52%) from renewable energy sources [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-2023-renewa...

redder23• 3 years ago

Yeah because France uses Nuclear, Germany does not and energy is expensive AF there.

toomuchtodo7• 3 years ago

Germany renewable generation capacity is relatively new, France will have to pay the bill to replace their legacy nuclear fleet as it approaches end of life. France is coasting on old capital investments that will eventually come due. Cost of renewables and batteries continues to decline, the cost of nuclear does not.

Pencil out what it would cost to replace all current French nuclear generation at today’s nuclear build costs. It’s astronomical.

kgabis11• 3 years ago

Germany will have to replace all of it's solar and wind capacity long before most French reactors become EOL.

cheriot• 3 years ago

Seems like a misleading headline. Total energy used is at a record low:

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...

Much of the decline came from gas, presumably because they stopped buying so much from Russia.

darknoon2• 3 years ago

It's striking vs the France chart, though I wonder how this reflects electricity import / exports https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...

pvorb7• 3 years ago

And because of the mild weather in the winter season 2022-2023. Also, private households are saving on energy as much as they can because of high prices.

qayxc3• 3 years ago

Please explain how the winter temps affect electricity use. Heating only accounts for 4% of household heating sources in Germany [1].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1189752/household-heatin...

mahkeiro4• 3 years ago

it's not only winter but many industrial processes moved out of Germany because of high energy price. Large chemical plants are just running at minimum capacity: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/german-chemicals...

thiago_fm4• 3 years ago

Germany is killing it.

Since I've moved here I've been following renewable energy numbers and also what the government commits to, and it's incredible how they've managed to meet consistently the solar and wind generation goals.

Unfortunately, they haven't been able to meet other goals such as amount of housing built etc.

But coming from a third-world country where I wouldn't trust any kind of plans coming from the government, it's really surprising to me.

To achieve this, in a bureaucratic country like Germany, they need to align many stars like building permits, subsidies, companies that can navigate the system, capital. Yet, they still manage to do it.

pvorb7• 3 years ago

And that's in a current political situation with three parties in the government that disagree all the time. Imagine what could be done in more stable times!

The huge issue I see is that they fail to implement enough social balancing, which leads to more and more people voting for the extreme right wing party AfD, which will cause a lot of trouble after the next elections.

thiago_fm4• 3 years ago

Politics in a democratic regime end up reflecting the desire of the people, if somebody is to blame for this mess are the voters themselves.

This situation makes AFD temporarily strong, but also gives space to other parties to perhaps say yes again to atomic energy and other non-conventional ideas.

Also brings more power to CDU and other parties that resembles more stability. Politics is a self-balancing system, it's not so useful to care about it.

nforgerit• 3 years ago

German here. German middle class considers the current political situation (across all federal layers) the least trustworthy in at least 30-50 years. The majority of the people is frustrated AF because of government paralysis for no real reasons but political gambling.

It's that bad that >90% of my friends and acquaintances chose to not read the news anymore and go with ignorance and escapism. Germany seems to be going through some kind of identity crisis right now (we lack most competencies for 21st century and used to cover all problems with money and arrogance) and chances are not that low we'll end up with far right leadership.

(The only good thing is that the German army is that much underfunded and bureaucratic that a military coup is impossible. /s)

nomonnai2• 3 years ago

Fellow German here. I share your sentiment 100%. I quit consuming standard news early last year and replaced it with reading primary sources if the topic was substantial. Further, there are capable experts on Youtube. However, cutting through the noise and hyperbole takes time, and sometimes experts do not realize having left their field of expertise.

By now, I fully agree with Neil Postman's verdict that news primarily exists to entertain. Many discussions could be decided by looking at a chart if the discussion's participants had the will and competency to do so, which, I am afraid, is regularly not the case.

Regarding the production and consumption of electrical power, I find www.smard.de/home/marktdaten a great tool. Before using it, I had no idea of basics such as the order of magnitude of power production and consumption or the meaning of units like Watt hour. In effect, quitting news helped me to expand my horizons far more than I expected.

treprinum• 3 years ago

...and that's all because they take electricity from Czech Republic and France, leading to increased prices there. It's like with being green by dumping trash to Poland which regularly lets it burn in the open. "Solutions"

qayxc3• 3 years ago

Sources please. The trade was pretty even between Germany and France as well as between the Czech Republic and Germany [1]

The significant imports came from Denmark.

[1] https://energy-charts.info/charts/import_export/chart.htm?l=...

locallost9• 3 years ago

Thanks. The irony of that comment is that prices in Europe last year skyrocketed because of the failure of French nuclear. All of the neighboring countries were stuck with the bill of that failure.

derriz• 3 years ago

Unlikely given that Germany has been the biggest exporter of electricity in the world for 13 of the last 15 years.

https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/electricity

cl0ckt0wer• 3 years ago

The document says "generation". I though Germany imported a lot of their electricity. I can't tell if these numbers include the source of the imported power.

darknoon2• 3 years ago

Interesting context I would like to know

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

Germany had been a net electricity exporter for the last 2 decades.

I'm assuming that's still the case for last year or it would be bigger news. I did see one article fretting that they might turn into a net importer later in the decade.

nomonnai2• 3 years ago

No, Germany has been a net importer in 2023. Whereas in 2022, 27.5 TWh were exported, in 2023, 8.6 TWh had to be imported. The summer was particularly disastrous, with 5.5 TWh imported in August alone. Germany consumed 483 TWh in 2022 and 457 TWh in 2023.

Image of net export (2023) by month: https://ibb.co/jDkg9sF.

You can query and visualize these data on the official site of the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency): https://www.smard.de/home/marktdaten. It's a capable tool, you should check it out. Once using it I realized that news reports cannot replace looking at the time series data.

Symbiote• 3 years ago

You can see "Import balance" on the chart.

drchaos• 3 years ago

Technically true, but still misleading, as the total production has gone down significantly:

2022: 491,8 TWh 2023: 436,8 TWh

So Germany is not replacing fossil fuels with renewables, it just produces less electricity overall. Which might be caused by the fact that electricity is so expensive nowadays, that especially energy-intensive industries are getting less and less economical, so they lower their production or even shut down completely and move elsewhere.

ViewTrick10023• 3 years ago

How much of the production in 2023 were to prop up France's ailing nuclear plants?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

locallost9• 3 years ago

In 2023 nothing because the plants are back online, but last year a lot. Although Germany does traditionally export electricity to France in the winter because France doesn't have enough to cover electrical heating. Not sure what happened this winter.

locallost9• 3 years ago

Total production went down 12% and fossil fuel production went down 22%. So even in that sense fossil fuels are replaced with renewables.

The energy intensive industries that are affected mostly use natural gas. Energy prices for both gas and electricity have reduced significantly this year.

anonymouscaller• 3 years ago

What is the difference between "waste renewable" and "waste non-renewable"?

pvorb7• 3 years ago

I think it's differentiating waste that is burned in two categories: food and plant-based waste, which is renewable, and everything else that comes from non-renewable sources. But that's only a guess because those are typically the categories for waste separation in Germany.

cpr• 3 years ago

Yes, and Germany is in steep industrial decline...

legitster• 3 years ago

This is really misleading. They already have one of the largest "green" investments in the world and are still only getting pennies on the dollar back for it (Germany is not particularly sunny nor windy).

They still use massive amounts of coal compared to neighbors and the coal they use is lignite (aka Brown Coal aka the worst kind).

The only real change has been reducing overall electrical generation because of the shutting off of natural gas. A situation Germany is only in because of their steadfast refusal to adopt nuclear energy like their neighbors.

Coal and fossil fuel use in Germany at a record low for electricity in 2023

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