It's so funny to read discussions of "whether or not renewables are viable for replacement of all or most of electricity needs in the U.S.". Here in Europe, we have it figured many years ago and are replacing fossil-fueled generation at a crazy rate, will probably push it to a niche use (gas peakers to fill void when there's neither sun or wind and before enough electrolyzers are put online), in less than 10 years.
"Utility Steag GmbH will add four hard-coal plants with a capacity of 2.5 gigawatts to the market within the next few weeks, while Uniper SE will prolong operations at its 345-megawatt Scholven-C hard-coal-fired power plant, the companies said on Friday. "
You left out the specific reason as to why they re-opened coal plants at the end of 2022:
"Germany is deploying about 3 gigawatts of coal-fired generation to ensure there are enough electricity supplies to make it through the winter amid curtailed natural gas supplies from Russia."
This was done out of necessity to ensure Germany did not run out of natural gas during the winter months as the gas imports from Russia have more or less dried up. I am not German nor am I up to date on their measures to transitioning their grid to renewable energy, but if anything this war is accelerating the transition for many countries in Europe. Even if this means they have to temporarily re-open fossile fuel power plants.
This could possibly have been avoided had the German government not shut its nuclear power plants down in the previous years, but that's another discussion.
You left out the reason why Germany was so dependent on Russian gas for energy: their out of touch with reality, (the conspiratorial amongst us might say fossil fuel company funded) plans to completely rely on fossil fuels until a transition to renewables can be completed in multiple decades.
All of this while they already have a viable green solution: Nuclear, which they planned on completely shutting down by 2022.
Oh please. Cheap Energy is what made Germany the industrial powerhouse of Europe. Getting gas from Russia was one of the best things Merkel did for her country and its citizens.
What????
1) It was Schröder (not Merkelh that started this entire gas thing with Russia (getting paid by Gazprom still)
2) Merkel decided in a completely irrational overnight move to just phase out nuclear. There was no strategy, just a personal preference by her ideological conviction
Energy in Germany has been significantly more expensive than in the rest of Europe for probably a solid decade now… The big challenge from what I see is somehow managing to “balance the ingestion of renewable energy which is very unpredictable and random” and the “actual need” which is rather constantly high and predictable.
> Merkel decided in a completely irrational overnight move to just phase out nuclear.
No, it was an almost unanimous vote where even the opposition agreed with the government[0]. Nothing irrational about it, they decided to go for renewable instead of nuclear.
The opposition agreeing - you mean like the Green party who wanted to end nuclear like forever? Merkel had essentially absolute power in Germany and was leading some major changes that are hard to believe now… 1) shut down nuclear, 2) abolish compulsory military service, 3) open the borders for an uncontrolled influx of male refugees, 4) completely ignore Corona at first and then bulldoze over our Basic Law.
You need a viable military in an advanced and wealthy society. If you disagree you are imho naive.
A military coup is one of the largest risks to any society. The “best” people to serve the military are the young people that stand to lose their country and have a million things that they get excited about - except going to war and fighting.
Coups always happen through a complicit or indifferent army. Having no army (except some small elite corps) seems the best way to prevent coups to me.
Also you don't need weapons and war to resist. It's much more effective to perform civil disobedience on a mass scale. Paralize the country and refuse to obey. Gandhi docet.
It's also what Ukraine should do instead of sacrificing entire generations of their men and women to protect some hundred square miles of land, destroying any value those lands might have in the process.
That'll work as long as the attackers are unwilling to simply murder civilians. Did you somehow miss Bucha?
They're not protecting their land, they're protecting themselves. If a significant portion gets shot either way it's better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
Wars tend to allow for this kind of tragedy to happen. Much harder to slaughter people during a civilian disobedience act that is globally covered by media. Brutal repression of demonstrations also causes much more outrage, basically backfiring if your intent is to stop them. Any dictator worth a shot knows this very well.
> If a significant portion gets shot either way it's better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
False dychotomy. People who protest the war in Russia are being arrested, not shot in the streets. So why do you think that would happen in this case? Because "Russians are Orcs"?
Another recent example is Myanmar. Started off as civil disobedience and protests but the military shot them up and it's now a civil war. Certainly the population would be better off had it not initially been a one-sided fight?
People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not shot because that's all it takes to suppress them. This is an argument against your point, not for it. Nor does it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.
Russians aren't referred to as orcs, only their soldiers.
Nobody in the west cares about Myanmar. Most people dont even know which continent it's in. Yes, we are hypocrites, but thats what would make the difference for Ukraine.
> People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not shot because that's all it takes to suppress them
But if as you believe Ukrainians care so much then they would definitely not give up after a few being jailed.
> Nor does it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.
Harder than bombing cities and destroying the infrastructure? Strongly doubt so. Doesnt seem like your way worked well for the Ukrainians so far. Unless all you care about is making Russia weaker, no matter how many Ukrainians it take.
Its already DST in Germany and these coal plants are still open. Let's actually wait and see if they are truly shut down this year. My guess is no - and my german colleagues believe they will still be open for the next several years - providing a third to half of Germany's electricity.
(But keep it hush-hush and lets not talk about this dirty fact on HN - it looks bad you know ?)
They will be required to cover the additional load from the nuclear plants we will shut down this year. Germany will produce more carbon emissions than probably almost ever…
"How did you learn about this and why do you care?"
Because my german colleagues were ranting about this whenever there was a break/issue in "Teams meetings". (which happens often)
Why do I care ? Because people are apparently not looking at reality when they make grandiose claims about renewables and electricity generation in Europe. Replace by renewables by all means - but at-least be honest about the data.
So Germany, a country that is well behind other European countries on renewables, had an over-dependence on Russian gas and was forced to reopen some coal plants when the price spiked. And you came to the conclusion that this was somehow a fault with renewables?
Because renewables (which I am personally fond of; PV on my roof) cannot cover Germany’s electricity needs/baseload but only supplement it.
Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot) and replaced it with gas from Russia (don’t ask me why). Now that Russian gas isn’t exactly on the table anymore and we not only depend on Russian gas for heating but also a great deal for electricity (nuclear was shut down, remember) we have no choice but ramp up to coal thanks to the Green party.
The fact that Germany’s “greenest” (carbon emissions-wise) day was still worst than France’s most polluting day speaks volumes.
Wind power and solar DO NOT suffice to cover Germany’s electricity need unless you go full-scale deindustrialisation (which the Green party certainly would favor). I’m all in for PV on everyone’s roofs, I have geothermal heating for my house, I built everything low energy - but please lets stop the ideological destruction of our economy and our environment by the Green party’s “vision”.
Germany already had Russian gas, by pipeline, the cheapest fossil gas with the cheapest delivery method. Plans were already in place for another pipeline with twice the capacity.
If this choice was actually made to please the greens, as the theory goes, that would have been a first for Germany, a country built on its close ties between industry and government. Not to mention that the greens aren't usually fond of burning fossil fuel.
Occam's razor should suffice to understand the political process that went down here.
> Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot) and replaced it with gas from Russia (don’t ask me why).
You have been misinformed. They shut down nuclear to replace it with renewables. They already used Russian gas at the time.
You cannot replace nuclear with renewables in Germany. You cannot shut down production if the sun doesnt shine or there is no wind. There is a non-trivial amount of electricity that needs to be available 24/7 and there needs to be a source of electricity that can be ramped up quickly when demands spike or renewable isn’t delivering.
1. night currently isn't a significant problem. there's usually lots of wind, businesses aren't open and people don't use a lot of electricity when they're asleep. this may become worse overtime with increasing numbers of EVs charging at night.
2. this is the hard part, but there is good news.
solar and wind over large areas are fairly consistent and with HVDC you can transfer power 1-2 thousand miles with low losses. there's also a small but rapidly growing amount of storage on the grid. right now, we treat hydro as primarily generation with a side benefit of storage, but it's shifting to primary storage with a side benefit of generation. doing so gives most grids a decent ability to scale up and down renewable generation at will. lastly, you can use fossil fuels when everything else isn't giving you enough. a fossil fuel plant that runs a couple times a year for a few hours is a lot better than 40% of the grid being fossil fuel year round.
there's also a decent amount you can do in terms of demand shaping as the grid gets smarter. electric hot water tanks can be used as batteries where you set them up to turn on when there's excess power. you can also do things like make agreements with energy hungry sectors (like ore refining) to throttle output when necessary (compensating them for the lost revenue).
3. this is easy. refill batteries, smelt aluminum, turn off generation.
Do you have any idea how enormous the electricity consumption of our industry is where 24/7 production just is going on and on?
Take a look here:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.
Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will strain it further.
So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a massive problem.
2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand shaping when we literally need a constantly high load (see 1)???
3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a continuous process.
You clearly have never been close to an industry complex, worked in anything remotely related to “Germany’s industrial backbone”. It’s ideological wishful thinking.
Why did you think its Germany alone ? It's Austria, France and the Netherlands as well. France and Austria both re-opened coal power plants. Even the Netherlands removed their cap on coal power.
What, France? The poster child for the nuclear fans had to re-open coal plants?
Well, I hadn't heard that. That's interesting.
It makes sense to me because they were all clearly dependent on Russian gas, which is what caused the price spike in electricity across Europe. It still doesn't make sense to me that you think it's something to do with renewables.
Comparing France to Germany in this respect is totally misleading. France reignited some coal power plants but the impact of this is negligible compared to the consequences of Germany's atrocious anti-nuclear stance.
There is a qualitative difference between an occassional need for some coal in particularly adverse situations, and relying on it for almost a third of your electricity needs.
… they probably had to ramp up to help out their German neighbors when their electricity grid was close to collapose because of a non-sustainable idealogically driven strategy authored by the Green part being completely oblivious of today’s reality.
No, they had to reopen them because their nuclear plants stopped working. Too hot, not enough water in the rivers due to climate change to cool down the nuclear plants - so they shut them off, and France was buying renewable energy from Germany. So you got your facts exactly the wrong way.
Maybe because it’s not a transition but an ideology driven f** up?
I live near the coal plants they are firing up again. I’m all pro PV (have one), I heat my house on geothermal, I spent a ton on energy efficiency for my house.
But this entire “renewable transition”, “getting out of nuclear” and coming up with other random ideas in a industry focused economy is just bogus in execution.
The German government did indeed messed up their transition. As has the French one (their nuclear park is in a dead end, while they are nowhere with new nuclear or new renewable). The French situation is in fact way dyer, but because they are "borrowing to the future" (for example, their electricity cost is low, but they are not building up the budget that will be needed for older power plants dismantlement, so they are heading for a very big crisis), people don't notice.
Not that the Germany is better than France. My point is that it s true that people who have a rage boner about Germany are not fair: if they really care about f* up, why they don't care about France?
I don't buy this idea that the German transition was an ideology driven f* up. The project was designed and supported by a lot of experts. They published their results, with their computations and all, and no real flaw was discovered. Sure, there were some pro-nuclear partisans who, like the anti-nuclear ones, would never accept that such studies were scientifically sound just because it did not say what they ideologically wanted to hear.
At the time, the project was scientifically sound. It did not work out because 1) the government did half of the things the project said it should do, 2) as every long-term project, it had some uncertainties, and it turned out some elements did not "aligned".
An alternative project of keeping with nuclear generation was also scientifically sound, but it is not scientifically correct to pretend that this one was "better", or "more rational", or even "less ideological". People who come here and say "it was an ideological f* up" are just people who see it did not worked out and are not smart enough to not think "obviously, if it would have be me, I would have done it way better, the only reason it failed is because they suck and are irrational while I'm wayyyy smarter than everyone and soooo rational".
Ok, you read the studies and are better informed than me. Just lay out how exactly this system would work, if:
1) Nuclear is phased out
2) Coal is phased out
3) We could at any time phase out gas as well because we semi-listened to the US that warned us we gave Putin the switch to our electricity grid
If I look at https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE and see patterns like 50 GW at 3 am and 60 GW at 1 pm I wonder: how can you ensure providing the base output 24/7 entirely with renewables? I have seen facilities within industrial complexes that literally required more electricity than a whole city 24/7. The demand of electricity that needs to be provided 24/7 is enormous.
There is in addition a huge challenge to manage loads in a grid (that was never designed for it) for regional variance and unpredictability in energy production (e.g., sunshine in the north and wind in the north but no need there) and the consumption (e.g., industry in the south).
In classical “German ideology” fashion laws are passed, one-way door decisions are made, “experts testify” that everything works and 10 years later the thing blows up.
So, why does it work out and I have it all wrong? What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea? Because I went all PV and geothermal heat pump and energy efficient housing. What have you done?
If you want to "understand exactly how it works", then you need to build a realistic digital twin of the whole grid, and run tons of scenarios.
Trying to conclude from such "high level" map is as ridiculous as trying to explain car mobility in a city by just looking at one unique number for each country.
When you do that, you realize several things:
- the electricity grid _before the move to go out of the nuclear_ was not sustainable: reducing emission implied electrifying, which implies local flexibility that the grid at the time was simply not able to provide. The "old" nuclear plants had to disappear in the mid-/long-term, and because of that, there were several possibilities. Idiots are assuming that if Germany would not have got out of nuclear, the situation would be perfect today, which is just plain stupid (the situation would be closer to the French one: everything looking fine on the surface, but heading right for the wall).
- the "no wind night" challenge is technically as "easy" as the technical challenge of developing a grid with nuclear plant. It's difficult to understand for the laymen, but the "old" nuclear plants were technically not to the level for a grid without gas and coal, and need to be replaced by new ones which will need to solve a lot of problems that are similar to the "no wind night" challenge. In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively. It may seem surprising, but in science, the conclusions of computations are way more reliable than the gut-feeling of laymen.
I understand it is frustrating to see that your naive understanding is contradicted by conclusions from proper studies, and it is very easy to just conclude "I'm smarter, I know it will not work, the only explanation is that it was ideology".
(not sure I get your point when you bring Nikolas Stihl: isn't this guy as much as an expert on grid simulation than you? Being an industry leader does not magically give them a pass on doing exactly the same mistake as you, which is: drawing naive conclusions from naive understandings and concluding that if experts have a different ones, the only explanation is that they are "ideological")
> What were the evil forces that sabotaged this very well thought through idea?
There are tons of ways to fail. Seeing something not working perfectly and concluding that the project itself was therefore stupid is just incorrect. And we should also keep in mind that the risk of failures was, at the time, according to science, as big if they would have gone in the "nuclear direction". Sometimes you may take the most rational decisions and it still does not work out.
> What have you done?
I really hope this is not one of those stupid argumentation panic "oh yeah? oh yeah? well, you seem to know better than me and have pointed out the stupid things I say, but how many push-ups are you able to do?" (but don't worry, I've done _a lot_).
Well, how should it be done then? You just explain what doesn’t work and explain that “nuclear for sure doesn’t work either”. You offer no viable path how to “go renewable”.
“ In simulation, it turns out that large distance grid connectivity (which is better for the resilience anyway) and some storage (which was at the time (and still today) way more room to progress than some nuclear technology) are fixing the "no wind night" challenge quite effectively.”
Not in reality it seems though. I take a look at April 3, 7 am: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE Solar was zero. Wind dropped to 20% coal was increased to 30%. April 2nd at 3 pm, wind stood at 37% and coal stood at 13%. So, where after two decades of “going renewable” is this even remotely speaking yo your ideological dream world? Let me reiterate: wind dropped by 50% and they had to increase coal by 100%. At night.
I want renewables to work. I put my money where my mouth is. But after two decades or so of “trying” we are only showing data demonstrating they can’t work for Germany the way people like you want us to believe.”
> Well, how should it be done then? You just explain what doesn’t work and explain that “nuclear for sure doesn’t work either”. You offer no viable path how to “go renewable”.
I'm not sure I understand your question. You are saying "the problem is that it did not work because it was ideological". I'm saying "it is incorrect, the plan was not an irrational crazy thing out of ideology, it was a scientific study and the choice was as rational as other possibilities". Then you are now telling me "well, the plan does not work, so it can only be ideological, unless you provide a plan that will work for sure". That does not make any sense. Nobody can come with a plan that works for sure. Saying "you don't have a plan that works for sure, so I can say whatever I want and I'm right" is certainly not a rational way of thinking.
> Not in reality it seems though.
What? You are saying that in a grid that the German government has botched, there is no capacity for compensate for "no wind night". How does that prove that the "no wind night" is an impossible obstacle?
Again, it is MATH! Math proves it is possible. The fact that the German government did not put their money where their mouth was is obviously not proving that not possible.
And don't get me wrong, it works both way: France messed up their nuclear park. It DOES NOT MEAN NUCLEAR CANNOT WORK. Based on our conversation so far, I doubt that if someone bring France summer problems to demonstrate that nuclear does not work, you will not, legitimately, say that it's a stupid argument. That's the same here.
And as long as there are idiots that are unable to discuss the situation by accepting the complexity and by accepting that, maybe, just maybe, decisions that don't fit their naive conclusions are not the result of "bad ideological guys", then, we will never progress.
> ... your ideological dream world ... people like you ...
I see. And you are criticizing the German government for being ideological.
For your information, I was part of a team that helped creating new nuclear project. But you are yet one of those m*rons who are incapable of not seeing the world in black or white. You criticize the German government, and yet, you fall 1000 times faster into the "oh my, this guy is bringing reality that I don't like, so I should convince myself that my church is the great rationality on earth and that he is an heretic". Pathetic.
Not sure how to put it: if you built a model and simulation that has proven something that claims a certain approach might work - but fail to include a realistic plan of execution and “real life” into it: it’s not worth anything and “science” is abused for ideology “look the numbers show it will work”.
Well, today it doesn’t and tomorrow it won’t either.
I’ve seen my fair share of “objective projects/engagements where the wanted outcome was communicated very clearly” by German government bodies.
I love the idea of decentralised and local energy generation; energy efficient housing/living. I spent $$$ on it.
But Germany has an industry that is so hungry for a constant supply of electricity that I see no realistic viable path in renewables for that. People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
> Not sure how to put it: if you built a model and simulation that has proven something that claims a certain approach might work - but fail to include a realistic plan of execution and “real life” into it
It is not the case. The model say: if you do A, B and C, it will work, but if you do A but not B and C, it will fail. The German government has done A but not B and C. What happened with Germany is CONFIRMING that the model works. Other elements of the models are applied in other countries, such as France or England (not the full deployment, but the elements deployed behave exactly as the model predict).
> People like you have claimed for two decades there is - yet, here we are: running coal full steam at night.
Yep, running coal full steam in France when the nuclear power plants fail. So, according to you, nuclear is not working, renewable is not working, ... What's your plan? Whatever you give me, I can easily find places where it failed, which, according to you, is enough to claim that the whole strategy was "ideological".
The thing you are unable to understand is that failure is part of the reality: there is no obviously winning strategy, and rejecting a whole path based on failures that you are not even understanding is ridiculously obtuse.
> Idealists like you destroy our planet.
You are right: idealists LIKE YOU destroy our planet. I'm a pragmatic, I don't care if the solution is nuclear or renewable (but apparently you are totally unable to realize that, which just reinforce the conclusion that your analysis is disconnected from reality). But you are an ideologist: you have decided what is the "correct" solution without knowing the real situation, and you invented excuses to confirm what you have in your head is "the good thing".
But whatever, it does not change the facts: you may think the move was "ideological", but the facts are still there: it was not. You may insist and cry about it, it is very clear that you have no idea of what was the situation (you've even mentioned it yourself). Honestly, if you really want to help the planet, just stop saying useless things and accusing wrongly people of being "ideological" just because it does not fit with the naive model you have created from your superficial understanding of the situation.
Germany was at the forefront of the European push for renewables, though. Sure, they never produced as much electricity from renewable sources as countries with really great hydroelectric resources, but those countries' experience isn't that relevant to everyone else since the countries which could do that generally already did so before renewable energy even became fashionable in the first place. In terms of wind and solar they were way out in front of everyone else (they apparently had the highest installed capacity of solar in the world for a while, and they still have the third-highest wind turbine capacity behind only the much larger USA and China).
its 100% relevant, the belief in return from renewables (which they don't actually offer much) comes at the expense of making the rest of the world poorer, and making europe more vulnerable to energy shocks
putin took advantage of this, europe put their neck in the guillotine for him
Is this why we were having energy shortages during the winter time and there was a rush to get the nuclear reactors back online in France ? I don't consider that having, "it figured out". If you want to discuss prices.. my place of employment is paying millions more euro this year than last. The increase in energy cost is also leading to increase in water costs.. I could go on, but you get the point.
That's some rewriting of history considering it's less than a year old. The scramble to get France's nuclear plants back online was because they completely failed in the first place, and at a critical time. Half of the fleet was offline most of the year, and half of those were completely unplanned and difficult to fix [1]. And it's still happening [2]. This failure was one of the biggest reasons for the electricity crunch and high prices - the expected output of France was missing and they themselves became net importers. [3]
I don't know how anything I said was re-writing history. The fact was over half the reactors were down due to corrosion and need of maintenance, yes. There was indeed a push to get them back online. I am happy the nytimes and reuters gave you such an informed perspective. The fact is we needed the nuclear reactors back online or we wouldn't have had power in sub-freezing tempetatures. So, sure.. thank God for the renewables.
It's the framing that we were having energy shortages because of renewables and that renewables were somehow responsible for the high prices. That is clearly not the case.
1) the shortages stem from the failure of France's nuclear power to deliver
2) the high prices were partly because of shortages, and the wholesale prices were the highest in France all year
I am too lazy to post prices for lst year, but they can be easily verified - besides you are not really interested in facts you don't like. Another thing that can be verified is that those coal plants that were put on emergency stand by had a very very low capacity factor and all the coal that was stockpiled early in the year was basically left unused. Because for all the talk of base load and reliability, when push came to shove, renewables kept the lights on.
The high prices are not so bad overall, there is and was a big incentive to build more capacity fast. Next years will be transformative, and it will all be led by renewables.
The point is that Europe does not have energy in general figured out. If I am being told I can be fined for having my thermostat higher than 19C (true for children school also), than we are far from that statement.
I love the idea of clean energy. But the energy "sobriety" we have been experiencing this year in France particularly has been painful. TF1 educated the population on the nightly news on how to block our door jams to not lose energy and warmth. Villages were creating centers for people to go and stay warm. Boulangeries have been shutting down because they cannot afford the still increasing cost of energy. Whatever the plan is, it currently isn't working.
Forget global warming. Of course it will not be stopped. All fossil fuels will be burnt till full exhaustion of reserves, until the remainder is completely uneconomical to extract. But then the nations that were the last to start switching will find their economies too inefficient and expensive to run with the fossil fuels while everyone else is using much cheaper renewables, and will probably no longer have money for the switch, ending up in a major predicament.
One way or another, it will definitely be stopped. At some point, civilization collapse would end the burning of fossil fuels at scale. The question is at what point it will stop and whether any tipping points are passed which accelerate the process out of control.
It's far from obvious that all efforts to limit carbon emissions will fail and to say otherwise is deeply cynical. Measures are being taken already. They are not enough to reach the claimed goals and the claimed goals will probably not be reached, but that's very different from saying warming will not be stopped at all, let alone "of course". More measures will follow once the adverse effects get worse in industrialized countries (e.g. deaths and economic damage due to changing climate and weather events).
As climate risk increases demand for renewables, we may actually see a decline in price for fossil fuels, at least for a time, resulting in prolonged bimodal consumption.
I think we've been in this artificially low fossil fuel price environment since the beginning though: the externalities aren't priced in.
> But then the nations that were the last to start switching will find their economies too inefficient and expensive to run with the fossil fuels while everyone else is using much cheaper renewables, and will probably no longer have money for the switch, ending up in a major predicament.
If all the fossil fuel is burned, we will probably never reach that point ; society breakdown will happen sooner.
Was limiting warning below 2° ever realistic? I can't understand why 1.5° when it was clear to everyone that there was no way in hell that is happening. Why not set a realistic goal and try to figure out the best way to deal with the consequences?
It depends on what you call realistic. If your objection to realism is that it's hard to convince politicians to act on this topic, then 2° is still not very realistic, and the future is likely going to be very bleak.
If it's about having the understanding and technical means to define new targets for our economy in order to reach that goal, even if it means reducing our consumption, then yes, it was a reasonable goal back when we started considering the issue seriously.
I don't see how reducing consumption is a realistic goal considering the economic and political fallout from pursuing such reduction. What political parties would be suicidal enough to put such policies into place? When would a majority of the voting public support such goals in most countries, particularly the biggest polluters? Are governments going to keep such policies going once mass protests break out when unemployment hits record highs? We got to see how much people were willing to put up with during the pandemic, and the answer is not that much reduction for very long, at least not the kind that would seriously curb emissions.
We've known about climate change for at least fifty years now. Every goal we set since then has been "realistic" with considerable effort. Unfortunately we never even attempted to reach them, so we raise the goal by a degree or two every decade or two.
Realistic means it's likely people will put considerable effort into achieving said climate goal, not whether it's possible. Everyone on earth could join hands and achieve world peace or governments could decide to pour trillions into terraforming Mars. But neither is likely to happen.
If you want to lose weight, just setting a goal is insufficient, you have to change your habits too, no matter how unambitious your goal is. It's the same with climate change.
this conveniently leaves out how much renewables fluctuate, as well as how much more inefficient it is to transport energy coming from renewables if these fluctuations happen over large distances.
