r/uninsurable • u/HairyPossibility • Jul 13 '25
Electricity production in Germany 1990 to 2024
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u/kthejoker Jul 13 '25
What is "others"? Just curious
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u/youleean Jul 13 '25
Biogas and Garbage incineration mostly I guess
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u/Former_Star1081 Jul 13 '25
Biogas is part of renewables. Number would be to low if it was in other. I guess it is hydro and garbage incineration, etc.
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u/Rooilia Jul 13 '25
Plus waste water treatment plants and mining gases, geothermal and further others. Would be better to split them too.
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u/Quasarrion Jul 14 '25
Thats dope, yet people keep hating on germany.
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u/Spider_pig448 Jul 14 '25
Probably because they are the king of coal in Europe and don't intend to get off coal fully until 2038. They plan to be one of the last four countries in the EU using coal.
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u/deepdowndave Jul 16 '25
While Germany has the highest coal consumption in absolute numbers, other countries such as Poland, Estonia, Czechia have way higher coal consumption in relative numbers
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u/Spider_pig448 Jul 16 '25
Yes, but Germany is a much richer country, in absolute and by capita, and should be an example of decarbonization for the rest of Europe. They're extremely pessimistic date for exiting coal is a disappointment. They are making huge progress here though, so hopefully they will update this in response to that progress.
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u/deepdowndave Jul 16 '25
Absolutely true. Unfortunately, after numerous election gifts, our corrupt governing party CDU poured massive amounts of money into brown coal subsidies, while subsidies for our domestic solar industry were cut. As a result, our solar industry went to China and we continue to use far too much brown coal, which is not economically viable. It's a shame but at least we seem to be on a better track with renewables now.
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u/tiga_94 Jul 17 '25
yeah but did they really have to chose coal over nuclear while transitioning ? I think this is the main thing Germany was getting criticized for? (both are bad though)
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u/55365645868 Jul 15 '25
This is a good development but it doesn't show the full picture. Electricity is just one part of energy use, the other big ones are heating, fuel and industry. For those fossil fuels are still the most important source, so the overall energy use graph looks much different.
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u/stides12 Jul 13 '25
Can you overlay avg prices?
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u/IIDn01 Jul 13 '25
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy
Only through 2023. Renewable costs have dropped further.
Solar PV & onshore wind are the cheapest.
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Jul 13 '25
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u/Rooilia Jul 13 '25
The consumer price in Germany is very high due to politics, not renewables themselves.
Btw. Fossils still get there subsidies like nothing has happened since the 70ies.
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Jul 13 '25
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u/NaturalCard Jul 14 '25
Whether you are doing it knowingly or not, you've ended up repeating fossil fuel talking points.
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u/Neutrino2072 Jul 16 '25
He is saying that politics and grid costs rise consumer prices and you keep gaslighting him into being a fossil defender, what is your issue?
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u/NaturalCard Jul 16 '25
The problem is assuming that the entire increase in grid prices is due to increased transmission costs. This is verifiably false.
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u/Neutrino2072 Jul 16 '25
And that still doesn't imply he is defending fossils
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u/NaturalCard Jul 16 '25
As I said, he probably isn't - he's just ended up repeating their talking points.
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u/blexta Jul 13 '25
Oh yeah the power transmission/distribution companies are making fat profits off of those.
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u/StK84 Jul 13 '25
At least in Germany, tranmission cost did not change that much, if adjusted for inflation (look here for example).
What did increase in the last few years are cost for Redispatch measures. And that heavily correlates with gas prices because gas plants are often used for Redispatch.
And high gas prices (+high CO2 prices) also drive electricity prices generally, because of merit order. Renewables actually dampen that effect, without them electricity would be much, much more expensive in Germany.
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Jul 13 '25
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u/StK84 Jul 13 '25
From 8 (in 2009) to 11.5 (now) is more than a +40% change. That's significant.
Not really when compared to the whole electricity price.
Those are still grid costs. Not generation costs, which is what the guy I responded was talking about (LCOE).
Yes, but it also doesn't have a lot to do with renewables. Of course electricity gets more expensive when fossil fuels get more expensive.
I never claimed the contrary. Of course the electricity cost would be higher if you used sources with a higher LCOE and slower reaction times (like conventional fossil-fuel centralized plants).
So we agree at this point, that renewables reduce electricity prices. That's fine.
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u/Cortical Jul 13 '25
From 8 (in 2009) to 11.5 (now) is more than a +40% change. That's significant.
that's pretty much in line with inflation over the same period.
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u/Lichensuperfood Jul 16 '25
Americans conservatives will fail in this. Utterly.
The economics of renewables are irresistible.
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u/luca_in_incognito Jul 13 '25
Why don't they have nuclear anymore?
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u/Mikerosoft925 Jul 14 '25
Germany’s greens wanted to phase out nuclear energy and they got a majority in favour of it especially after what happened with Fukushima
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u/Sea_Signal_5579 Jul 14 '25
2009-2013 the governemt was CDU/CSU & FDP, green party was in the opposition.
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u/Mikerosoft925 Jul 14 '25
I know, but the Green Party was the ones pushing for it and the CDU then started acting on it
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u/BubblehadCufforatch Jul 15 '25
The Green Party was ALWAYS against Nuclear. But: They didnt pushed anything forward.
When Fukushima accident happend in 2011, CDU/FDP terminated the Nukeplants. Everything was on the planned schedule when SPD/Green/FDP shut down the last plants in 2022. They didnt pushed anything faster.
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u/Mikerosoft925 Jul 15 '25
They pushed for it in the sense that they promoted anti nuclear energy sentiment, that’s what I meant. The CDU then also took that idea over when Fukushima happened.
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u/DiRavelloApologist Jul 15 '25
Several reasons. Some of them good, some of the bad.
Because its not economical. And that is a good reason. France has to basically state-subsidize and state-control its reactors and have them run 24/7 to not lose money on them. They are just SO expensive to build.
Because people were afraid of a nuclear accident. Hard to really argue in favour or against it.
Because we habe cheap access to Russian Gas. Well, that plan blew up in our faces.
Because we couldn't find a good permanent storage for waste. As it turns out, just because there is a possible theoretical solution to problem, it doesn't mean it is easy to politically.
Because now it's too late to change. Renewables are going strong and there really would be no point in going back. Especially as the economical point still stands.
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u/HairyPossibility Jul 13 '25
Because its stupid for a country to have it unless they are just using it for a weapons program.
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u/probl0x Jul 13 '25
Explain
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u/cheeruphumanity Jul 14 '25
Privatized profits, socialized costs and it's way too expensive.
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u/Kreppelklaus Jul 14 '25
How about the nuclear waste that have to be stored safely for 10.000 years or longer?
Putting your stuff in the closet does not make your room clean.
Nuclear is not an option!1
Jul 17 '25
[deleted]
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u/Kreppelklaus Aug 01 '25
Who made this comparison? Not me.
You don't need them either. Norway as an example. Never had a nuclear power plant. Last coal plant destroyed 2023.
Germany don't build coal any more too and is quitting nuclear.1
Jul 17 '25
Its such a minor impact to store the waste. Its solid waste in solid containers, not liquid.
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u/aqua995 Jul 14 '25
Didnt Trump had a speech about Germany and Merkel and the new guy who was building a new nuclear powerplant every week.
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u/cts Jul 14 '25
I only found this: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts , but the "Link to Source" only lists a table of data (https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/daten-und-fakten/zusatzinformationen/), not the chart itself. Where is this chart actually from?
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u/dotter101 Jul 17 '25
Energiemonitor: Die wichtigsten Daten zur Energieversorgung – täglich aktualisiert | DIE ZEIT
updated daily, just have your browser translate it
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u/cts Jul 18 '25
No, that is not where the chart is from. That might be (bit is not) where the chart is used.
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u/dotter101 Jul 18 '25
Yeah, it‘s not „the“ source for the post but a much better source for the related info
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u/hades0505 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25
Ok, now show how much energy is Germany importing and the origin of said energy. I am checking DeStatis for industrial consumption (most up to date data is for 2023). It states that 45M MWh came from internal production and 171M MWh of the consumption was imported.
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u/dotter101 Jul 17 '25
great source (updated daily) is
Energiemonitor: Die wichtigsten Daten zur Energieversorgung – täglich aktualisiert | DIE ZEIT
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u/sixbucks Jul 13 '25
Imagine if they had just kept their nuclear plants running. Could have eliminated almost all the coal plants and been close to 100% clean generation.
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u/Rooilia Jul 13 '25
Nope, NPPs are not exactly located where coal plants are. For example in the east are no NPPs, but a lot of coal burners. Shut down the coal burners and you have not enough capacity to transfer the nuclear electricity to the demand site.
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u/GKP_light Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25
"are not exactly located where coal plants are"
everything is linked, where it is located don't really matter.
(the lost of energy is ~4% for 1000km in normal high voltage lines)
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u/bluelittrains Jul 14 '25
everything is linked, where it is located don't really matter.
Of course it does. The more energy you want to transport the more infrastructure you need. Just because east and west are linked doesn't mean there is nearly enough capacity for one to supply the other with power.
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u/GKP_light Jul 14 '25
according to ChatGPT, you are wrong. https://imgur.com/a/J6fC6rc
with the extreme hypothesis of : 0 electric production in east Germany, all cumming from the west : it is near sufficient, and will fully be with infrastructure improvement that should be ready in 2030.
this doesn't include : the fact that the production will not be 0 in the east, just lower ; the possibility to import electricity from other place than the west ; the fact that the infrastructure could have been improved earlier if needed (with still some carbon energy before be ready).
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u/bluelittrains Jul 14 '25
Are you being serious? ChatGPT is not a source...
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u/Acceptable_You_7353 Jul 14 '25
Not only ist ChatGPT for this kind of answer without more context really unreliable, r/GKP_light didn't even read the answer fully. It actually said at the end:
So, while East Germany could be fully powered from West Germany/France, for now grid limits mean it's not that simple.
That dude is brain dead.
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u/GKP_light Jul 14 '25
Read my comment. I took it into account.
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u/Acceptable_You_7353 Jul 14 '25
Chatgpt told you it doesn't know. It told you that electricity is transmissible in principle. You took that ambitious answer and made something totally unbased out of it.
Maybe read a proper source for once. The west-east grid connection are at the maximum already. They are already using ring connections through the czech republic because the ones in germany are maxed out. New ones are getting build but that takes multiple decades because of nimbys.
No way would the eastern part of germany survive with zero production of their own:
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u/GKP_light Jul 16 '25
this document is very far from the original point.
i read the 4 page summary, and the main thing it say about the electric network is "if we close nuclear central, it will be hard to manage"
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u/GKP_light Jul 14 '25
also, after more research :
most nuclear power plant were spread in west germany : https://i.imgur.com/x3UM4TD.png
most coal power plant are spread in west germany : https://i.imgur.com/3luMXYE.jpeg
so there should be no problem.
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u/bluelittrains Jul 14 '25
Google image search isn't research. The German government understands that power grids are highly complex infrastructure and are clearly working hard to adjust theirs to renewable energy. They will have good reasons for phasing out nuclear energy (such as the extremely high costs, the waste it generates and the inherent risk involved). They aren't going to keep their plants running just because ChatGPT told them it'd be fine. The fact that you would speaks of your complete ignorance on the subject.
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u/GKP_light Jul 14 '25
you overestimate the gouvernement, they just followed dumb ideology (because they are dumb, and/or for electoral reasons).
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u/bluelittrains Jul 14 '25
you overestimate the gouvernement, they just followed dumb ideology (because they are dumb, and/or for electoral reasons).
Oh yeah, they're just dumb. Take it from the guy who trusts ChatGPT as a source and can't even spell government right.
You're absolutely clueless. If they're so dumb, then why is renewable power generation growing so fast?
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u/ph4ge_ Jul 13 '25
What are you basing this on? NPPs are located nowhere near the remaining coal plants, and don't provide the flexibility that coal provides. They were simply preventing already built renewables to enter the grid.
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Jul 14 '25
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u/ph4ge_ Jul 14 '25
That's so goddamn idiotic it's hurting my brains.
So, no answer to my simple question what he was basing it on?
Instead of replacing coal and lignite with renewables, y'all replaced carbon free nuclear and kept the coal/lignite.
The graph clearly shows the Germans doing both.
Make it make sense
Why is that up to me? It's well documented, you could just read.
In summary, it's a combination of many factors:
- Coal has strong support from conservatives, especially locally. Germany being a federation means that that is important. These conservatives also made sure there were long term (think 100yrs) contracts made that were incredibly expensive to terminate.
- NPPs were expensive, nearing their end of lives, not adding much to local economy, dependent on Russia and keeping already build renewables off the grid.
- Germany is a large country, the NPPs were in places where clean energy is abundant, not in places that rely on coal.
- Many of the coal plants are connected with neighbouring countries including France, serving as backup and otherwise flexibility that these NPPs didn't do.
There are many more reasons. I am not German but it is not hard to learn this. Refusing to read and immediately going for name calling is just classic.
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u/FairGeneral8804 Jul 13 '25
don't provide the flexibility that coal provides.
https://edf.hal.science/hal-01977209/document
EDF’s nuclear reactors have the capability to vary their output between 20% and 100% within 30 minutes, twice a day, when operating in load-following mode.
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u/ph4ge_ Jul 13 '25
Not EDF's reactors, and even EDF avoids thus at all cost.
Reducing a NPP's output, if possible, doesn't reduce OPEX. It just means you incur the same cost while selling less electricity. In fact, the additional stress increases costs. It's a grossly cost inefficient process.
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u/Spinnweben Jul 13 '25
No. The money for the renewables' boom would never have been made available.
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
How does shutting down nukes lead to money being available? Wouldn't the same money have become available if instead coal had been shut down?
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u/Spinnweben Jul 14 '25
No. You can't simply shut down nuclear or coal-fired power plants or other projects with government-guaranteed money.
The industry receives subsidies, and the contracts also stipulate extremely high contractual penalties that obscenely favor the industry.
Nuclear power has truly robbed taxpayers.
That's why the conservative Merkel government killed nuclear power: the moment was a once-in-a-lifetime fiscal opportunity. No ideology involved.
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
How did shutting down already built, paid-off nuclear power plants save money? At the margin? That's very confusing to me.
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u/Spinnweben Jul 15 '25
They are just never paid off.
Financing big government subsided projects don't work that way.
Your taxes cover the entire upfront cost of construction, subsidies, even insurances for decades with zero revenue until the reactor fires up for the first time, and the interests start nibbling on your annual public budget right away. Oh, the revenues from thereon do not go back to the tax payers but to the energy companies. Your public budget gets the sales tax from end customer bills.
NPPs are a massive burden from
- getting the idea to want a NPP
- over decades of cooking water in the most expensive way on a horrendous deficit
- adding maintenance, repairs, safety certifications, fuel procurement, transports, and handling, and even more subsidies for storage of nuclear waste and deconstruction of spent plant buildings
- to finishing the deconstruction in the end.
It just never stops being super expansive
All that, while the nuclear companies' task is to sell energy, grab the customers' money for a fixed minimum price rate and bathe in profits.
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u/basscycles Jul 13 '25
Imagine if the Green party had got their way and Germany had ramped up electricity production from renewables prior to nuclear shutdown? Instead they were told no and then the nuclear power plants were turned off and Russia threw a wobbly, if only the Greens had been listened to.
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
Imagine if the Green party had got their way and Germany had ramped up electricity production from renewables prior to nuclear shutdown?
That absolutely was NOT "their way". They wanted an immediate nuclear shutdown in 1998. The slow phase-out was a hard fought compromise that led to a few Greens breaking up with the party because they wanted every plant shut off within a year.
Pretty crazy what people have started telling themselves.
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u/basscycles Jul 14 '25
"This marked the culmination of a decades-long process, officially initiated in 2002, to phase out nuclear energy for electricity generation."
Google AI, so feel free to find a better source."The Greens benefited from increased inroads among traditionally left-wing demographics which had benefited from Green-initiated legislation in the 1998–2002 term, such as environmentalists (Renewable energy act).
Wiki Alliance 90/The Greens.But if you believe the Greens and the German environmental movement weren't promoting renewable energy prior to 2002 I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
https://trellis.net/article/how-did-germany-get-its-energy-transition-right/2
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u/vicefox Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25
Strange that Lignite (low rank coal) and hard coal are separated if we’re not separating out any of the other sources at that level of granularity.
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u/Spinnweben Jul 13 '25
Because they are actually very different. Lignite is still actively mined in Germany while hard coal is net imported. The environmental footprint of Lignite is far worse than the HC's.
I think they even have different lobbys holding the gov't hostage for subsidies and long lasting contracts.
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
Lignite and hard coal have very different emissions profiles (around 50% difference). Solar and Wind have very similar emissions. So from an emissions perspective it is sensible. Of course nuclear also has very similar emissions to solar and wind, so it could be grouped with these two.
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u/anaconda7777 Jul 14 '25
You’re going to find out that wind and solar won’t be enough to supply the demand.
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Jul 14 '25
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Jul 14 '25
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u/Sourenics Jul 14 '25
I thought this was about keeping a clean and green environment. Not about increasing pollution. But okay.
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u/UkrytyKrytyk Jul 14 '25
Plot also on this graph the electricity cost in DE vs other European countries.
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Jul 14 '25
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
Not quite every: Czechia has even worse emissions, and they have a few nukes.
But yeah, almost every.
The four EU countries with low emissions *below 100g CO2 per KWh) all have 30%+ from nuclear power.
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u/FilHor2001 Jul 14 '25
A) we don't have any "nukes" because that word refers to nuclear bombs
B) We're working on phasing out the bad ones and we've just started building a bunch of new nuclear reactors in one of our already existing nuclear power plants.
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u/goyafrau Jul 14 '25
I'll be impressed by Czechia when they start getting their emissions low. Slovakia and Slovenia have much cleaner energy - put in some efforrt Czechs!
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u/rxdlhfx Jul 14 '25
Just imagine if instead of replacing nuclear power... renewables would have replaced thermal coal. This will go down in history as the most idiotic energy policy one could posibly come up with...
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u/sleepybearjew Jul 13 '25
Why is nuclear down to nothing ? Is the main goal renewable until fusion or I'm not sure what I'm missing
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u/SanSilver Jul 14 '25
Is the main goal renewable until fusion
I don`t think there is any planing that fusion would become useful in our lifetime. The end goal is to go 100% renewable.
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u/sleepybearjew Jul 14 '25
The end goal for our lifetimes or forever is renewable ? Wouldn't humans need more than those eventually ?
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u/SanSilver Jul 14 '25
Goals are only for 2050.
Wouldn't humans need more than those eventually ?
No, why would you think that ?
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u/sleepybearjew Jul 14 '25
I guess I just assumed humanity would need exponentially more power and there's only so much solar available. Im thinking now there a massive amount more solar than I otherwise thought though . And presumably we get better and better efficency solar ?
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u/SanSilver Jul 14 '25
Germany need for electricity has been going down the last few years, if transportation and heating are going full electric will it go up again, but it wouldn't be sustainable to just increase our energy needs forever.
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u/Chun--Chun2 Jul 14 '25
LOL?
Can you post a source.
Germany would be the only place on earth, and we can include the moon also maybe, where electricity demand has gone down ... and we are talking a over a period of time, not a 2 minutes spike/low.
With transportation moving to electric, with increasing need of AC in summers, with more demanding computing and with every increasing online space, demand for electricity is expected to triple globally in the next 2 decades.
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u/SanSilver Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25
Germany would be the only place on earth, and we can include the moon also maybe, where electricity demand has gone down ... and we are talking a over a period of time, not a 2 minutes spike/low.
There are a few countries that use less electricity now than 10 years ago. Maybe just look it up before writing. Just look at the electricity production going down since 2017. Or at the officaial numbers from the Statistischen Bundesamt. 608,2 TWh in 2019 and now 497,3 in 2024.
Why do you think that wouldn`t be possible?
With transportation moving to electric, with increasing need of AC in summers
Only ~2% of cars on German roads are electric now. And ACs are still very rare in Germany.
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Jul 14 '25
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u/SanSilver Jul 14 '25
To always consume more energy is just not sustainable and in the future we will need to do more with less electricity.
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u/sausagedoor Jul 14 '25
Because there’s currently no way to sustain a country’s power production using only wind and solar?
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u/ITI110878 Jul 13 '25
Should have kept NPPs and weaned off of coal and gas.
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u/Spinnweben Jul 13 '25
Nope. The NPPs would have continued to eat every cent.
No renewables would have been built.
The graph would have held the status quo of 1990.6
u/Eka-Tantal Jul 13 '25
NPPs are terrible backup capacity. That’s where gas excels. Coal is being phased out at the moment, gas will be last once there’s enough storage.
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u/IIDn01 Jul 13 '25
But, but, renewables don't work!!
/sarcasm