If Donald Trump wins the White House again, his love of fossil fuels and hatred of renewable energy could translate into an absolute catastrophe.
  • Amoxtli
    -7•7 months ago

    Germany will be highly reliant on other countries for their energy needs. Wind and solar are intermittent energy. With no cheap Russian piped gas, Germans would be paying higher for peaker plants and backup natural gas plants. Green energy isn’t reliable for heavy industry. This is a permanent deindustrialization. Wind doesn’t always work and some weeks there is extensive cloud cover. Sure, a desert would be consistent with solar because it has minimal cloud cover all year long, and you plan for that, but Germany is not ideal for that.

    • @[email protected]
      7•7 months ago

      Germany does not aim to be energy-self-sufficient, it aims to be integrated into a European grid, which is self sufficient.

      Wind and solar give plenty of energy, storage is the trick. The need for huge storage goes down in a European grid, because there are always parts with enough wind and sun.

      • @DelightfullyDivisiveEnglish
        2•7 months ago

        I would love to understand this better. I have worked in power generation before (writing maintenance software for a nuclear plant, so I picked up a few things). I don’t understand the distribution side at all, though.

        Can you suggest a book or article on the subject?

        • @[email protected]
          3•7 months ago

          This particular detail I picked up at a recent scientific conference on precisely this topic. It was a reoccurring theme across several talks. I am not aware of any general book on this, though.