Germany’s net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1), despite having no active nuclear power plants anymore. Around 60% of their domestically generated power currently comes from renewables (up 8% from last year). I don’t think it’s abundantly clear.
If the goal is decarbonation, using wind+solar is alright (renewables are a bigger part of the mix in Germany) but burning gas and lignite when there's no sun or wind is not.
In Germany the problem is coal (lignite): it remains a huge social and political 'asset'. Many jobs, low-priced electricity, no dependency towards fuel shipped by a foreign nation...
After Fukushima most German citizens didn't want nuclear reactors anymore:
Which political parties switched most of the nuclear plants off since Fukushima?
CDU/CSU: 14
FDP: 11
SPD: 9
Greens: 3
(source: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561 )
Ah, the well loved trick of playing with statistics to make something look good.
The current carbon intensity per KWh in Germany is 526g, vs 50g for France.
The average yearly carbon intensity per KWh in Germany, is 354g.
So, either the rest 40% of domestically generated power are hyper-polluting, or the other statistics don't hold up.
Either way, with such a high carbon intensity, there is nothing to brag about.
And that's before entering the discussion about how the repercussions of the poor long-term German energy plan is currently killing their economy, and, indirectly, their social fabric.
Where do you find the current value? Since it's rather different from the yearly average, it sounds like it's (close to) live and I've been looking for live production stats (more granular than "what was it yesterday") but couldn't find it
> net power grid imports are less than 5% (17% imports vs. 12.5% exports in 24H1)
depending on when those happen. If they import French electricity whenever the wind is taking a break from blowing, that prevents craptons of pollution (including, but far from exclusively, CO2) from the massive German coal plant I live near to. If it's more random, say if it's just helping with some peaks when everyone's making bratwurst and coal currently doesn't cut it, then it's not reducing them from running
There are also times where we hear electricity prices are negative or near zero for a time, afaik usually caused by too much wind-based production. Exporting that may balance the thing out so that the net value is near zero
I'm sure it'll be some mix of those and other scenarios, but I'm not sure that looking at the net result says very much about whether nuclear electricity exports helped reduce emissions in surrounding countries like Germany. I'm more inclined to say the claim of the person you're responding to is likely correct (though I'd say "helpful to be" part of the mix, rather than "needs to be")
Net balance over long time periods isn't very interesting: it doesn't tell you what happens on the market and who needs the trade to happen. What you need to look at is whether these exports are correlated with peaks in production or peaks in usage.
