cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/52096709
Germany’s coal phase-out is on track to happen through market forces well before the legal 2038 deadline, regardless of current energy market turbulence, says Hauke Hermann, a researcher at the Institute of Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut). Carbon price trends make an exit as early as 2031 or 2032 likely, Hermann told Clean Energy Wire. Refiring old coal plants in response to the Iran war’s energy market shock to cut power costs would distort investment signals and is unlikely to happen in practice, he added.
Soaring energy prices have triggered calls for slowing Germany’s coal exit. The country’s coal exit law, agreed in 2020, provides for the step-by-step decommissioning of coal power plants. It also stipulates that coal-fired power generation must cease by 2038 at the very latest. Germany’s western coal region aims for an earlier phase-out by 2030, but delays in building new gas-fired power plants as a backup for renewables make meeting this earlier deadline increasingly unlikely.
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Nuclear could prevent that, but Germany closed even their functional NPPs, let alone planned new ones when it should. How come France emissions are incredibly low and state is self sufficient, even exports a lot…
Germany closed half a century old plants that were over or close to their maximum design lifespan.
France is still having Russia of all places process a large part of the needed uranium 🙄 And the nuclear power plants are causing huge debts for the operators.
Germany npps roughly started operating from 1970-85, in Slovenia we have one NPP that began in 1983, still works perfectly fine and we are extending its life at least until 2043 if not beyond. So, tell me again about maximum design lifespan…
What’s the price tag on avoiding global warming? Also uranium can be found and processed elsewhere and it sucks that they use Russia (both imports and processing). But I guess this is just typical EU hypocrisy when it comes to Ukraine war.
Yes, that is half a century, and no, explanding their life time is irresponsible from a safety standpoint as any operator will tell you. At most you can add new reactor blocks and decomission the old ones. Furthermore it is also uneconomic to operate vintage npps as necessary repairs become much more expensive.
And no, investing into white elephants that don’t produce any electricity for at least 15 years does not help with climate change. It is actively harmful, as during that time the fossile fuel plants continue to operate, while necassary investments into the grid and renewables can’t be done because all the money is stuck with building prohibitively expensive npps.