One would think people would learn from the disastrous results of the German Energiewende, where this has already been tried, but no.
The problem is that the issue of intermittent energy generation is unsolved. It is currently not feasible to use batteries for base load needs, it would be insanely expensive. Some day perhaps, but not yet.
There was never a technically solid plan to solve this issue by the German Greens, just wishful thinking. They undertook this massive project without having the faintest clue about the underlying physics and financials, which is hard to believe but true. The overwhelming majority of green party members are from the humanities, not STEM.
So you either have a lot of pumped hydro, in which case great, or you don’t, which is the case nearly everywhere but the nordics and perhaps Switzerland.
Solar is much better than wind btw, wind is simply a costly mistake as it is a lot more intermittent than solar. The math doesn’t add up.
> It is currently not feasible to use batteries for base load needs, it would be insanely expensive.
The CSIRO report says that nuclear is almost 2x more expensive than renewables even after factoring in all costs of storage and interconnects.
> Solar is much better than wind btw, wind is simply a costly mistake as it is a lot more intermittent than solar.
That depends on the location. Insolation and seasonality vary depending on distance from the equator, among other factors. Also, solar and wind are negatively correlated on both seasonal scales and intraday scales, so it often makes sense to mix the two if you're in Europe, rather than pick a simple winner.
Unlike solar, power wind makes very little sense even if storage improves. This is true even in first principles so technological progress is unlikely to overcome these limitations.
This is a very uneducated take. Wind absolutely makes sense in plenty of locations.
I myself am located on the west coast of Scotland and we get most of our energy from wind. Solar panels make much less sense here we tend to get much less light than most places in the world.
What's with the utterly uninformed takes on energy on HN?
Wind makes extremely good sense and has been making good sense for 30 years or more now depending on where on the globe you are looking. There is a ton of FUD about it but it is practical, affordable, available and relatively fast to deploy. Moreover there is readily financing available to take care of the capex.
Sorry, but you are not arguing in good faith. There 1.1+ TW of installed capacity producing approximately 30 to 35% of that installed capacity continuously. Turbine payback time is less than a decade.
You are in the most literal sense tilting at windmills here.
In what way was the energiewwende disastrous, give actual numbers.
German electricity production is increasingly dominated by renewables, in the first quarter of 2025 (which had unfavourable weather conditions) 46.9% of electricity was produced by renewables (mostly wind). Coal and gas has been declining steadily and Germany regularly exports electricity to nuclear focused France. Currently on average Germany is a net importer from France, but that does mean little because of the way cross border trade is an integral part of the European grid (note that Germany also is a net importer from Denmark whos grid is largely wind based).
End consumer prices are utterly unusable to determine success or failure of the Energiewende. They are also utterly useless to compare across nations, as they are made up of very different components - e.g. in Germany only 40% is determined by market factors, in France the price is held artificially low by massive subsidies https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/04/21/france... and so on.
50% of the price in France is also taxes and network maintenance fees so your argument does not make sense.
The retail price is so high because it is a failure of both technology and politics. The taxes are that high because politically they decided to over-invest in a bad technological choice; pretending otherwise is an extremely bad faith argument.
All kinds of fees (e.g. for the grid) and taxes, yes. It differs by year and depending on which surcharges were added/removed through laws. E.g. one part was for renewable subsidies and that's been removed in '22.
Consumer prices are now down to below 0.30 €/kwh again for new contracts (takes a few clicks for anyone) - they were mostly high previously because of Russia's war. This influence on electricity production was removed.
"Disastrous" by what metric? What are you even talking about? Germany went from >50% fossil fuel (mostly coal, not even gas!) to >60% renewables for electricity within the last two decades.
I don't think it's a huge success, considering they're unable to meet their own demands for electricity, instead driving up energy prices in neighboring countries as well.
The problem of meeting demand is in industrial use and residential heating, both of which aren’t typically electrified in Germany. The problem has more to do with an active war and an industrial sector built on cheap Russian gas.
This. Germany has been strong arming policies around electricity in the EU for quite a while. Forcing their neighbors to sell their electricity for cheap when it is the most expensive in the market while assuming none of the costs and risks.
And they are disrupting neighbors' energy production economics when they offload their overproduction precisely when nobody wants it.
That's German superiority complex in all it's "glory".
None of the European countries meat their energy demands by themselves. All of them regularly import and export electricity from/to their neighbors. That's a good thing and is driving down electricity prices not up.
The reason countries buy electricity from their neighbors is because it's cheaper not because they couldn't meat the demands themselves.
Now Germany is by no means perfect, heating is largely gas based which increases emissions. Ironically the law that was trying to change this, had a big counter campaign that likely contributed to the change of government.
So while the greens energiewende are often blamed for Germanys dependency on gas (although the dependency had been going for much longer), it's the conservatives who likely had a much bigger impact on Germany sticking with gas by preventing to move heating to electricity.
It depends on how you measure success… Has that change improved the economy and well-being of the Germans?
I do not know, I’m only pointing out that change to renewables does not necessarily mean “success”.
First: This whole reneable thing was done to reduce negative externalities from pollution and CO2 emissions that were simply not paid for previously.
Arguing that "the economy would be better of without pollution/emission limits" is a bit like arguing that dumping trash in the next river is cheaper than proper disposal: Sure, your industrialists are gonna save a few bucks right now, but someone will have to pick up the bill regardless-- with interest.
Sure, but people's rent and bills are due now and if they can't pay up, you can't gaslighting them with "your sacrifice is necessary for the future of the environment" which is a luxury belief.
Why haven't shareholders of energy companies also made sacrifices to save the environment? How come only the consumers have to?
Do you understand why people are pissed off with the switch?
Source? Because EU pollutes less now than before, but my groceries are even more expensive so your point is moot. So why should I accept to be spit-roasted like this with no return on my sacrifices?
Maybe greedy corporate profiteering is the real culprit here squeezing people and not people using the AC or driving to work?
You're dodging my question. I asked why hasn't our economic sacrifice to save the environment resulted in a reduction in grocery prices, if environmental damage is what's causing them to go up? We reduced the economic damage but prices are still going up. So what gives? Is it environmentalism or corporate greed?
Because there are lags in the system? Because we are not doing enough? Do you always expect immediate feedback on everything you do? If that's the case I guess you never invest in anything because that's by definition a bet that it will make things better (or less worse) in the future.
So your proposal is to further delay making anyone pay for changes, because previous generations profited? So at the end of the chain (which will likely not be very long anymore) some generation will be completely screwed.
The environment consists of natural resources. Those resources have value and are "owned" by the people. You can save money by not changing the oil in your car, right up until the engine seizes up. Preserving the value of valuable assets through proper care and maintenance isn't exactly a high concept abstract concept.
> Sure, but people's rent and bills are due now and if they can't pay up, you can't gaslighting them with "your sacrifice is necessary for the future of the environment" which is a luxury belief.
My point of view is that "we have to curb emissions now before consequences grow too dire" is not a "luxury belief": the actual luxury is/was consuming fuel and fossil products without ever paying for the externalities. It was a luxury we could not actually afford at any point, basically just got it on credit in the past, and all that credit is coming due within the century.
> Why haven't shareholders of energy companies also made sacrifices to save the environment? How come only the consumers have to?
Because overall most of the benefit did go to consumers. People basically got a gallon of gas for 30 cents in 1960 when it probably needed to be a dollar or more, but companies like Shell only ever saw a small fraction of that retail price, and there is absolutely no way you could claw back that difference (or anything close, really) from them.
> Do you understand why people are pissed off with the switch?
I do understand the feeling of getting things denied that you took for granted, but I have little sympathy for selfishness.
>the actual luxury is/was consuming fuel and fossil products without ever paying for the externalities.
Then why do current generations have to pay for the profits that the previous generations have banked?
>but companies like Shell only ever saw a small fraction of that retail price, and there is absolutely no way you could claw back that difference
YES, nothing we can do about the corporate overlords who screwed us, let's instead claw it back from the current generation of people instead of from Shell shareholders, that's will go down well politically for sure and not cause extremist rise to power. How is this not a luxury belief?
>I do understand the feeling of getting things denied that you took for granted, but I have little sympathy for selfishness.
It's not selfishness to afford necessities for a decent life especially when more and more of your paycheck goes towards taxes and necessities.
>Then why do current generations have to pay for the profits that the previous generations have banked?
Life isn't fair and time travel doesn't exist. We are stuck with the world we have now and have to deal with the realities, including suffering the consequences for things not your fault. It isn't fair that a son gets cancer because his mother smoked around him all his life, but he is still the one that has to go through chemo.
This argument can be used to justify whatever actions you want. You know that, right?
For example, I'm gonna take your house and when you ask why, it's because "life isn't fair".
However, various forms of fairness to balance out past wrong doings can always be achieved if desired, but it usually requires force or democratically if over 50% of people can unite on it.
>This argument can be used to justify whatever actions you want
Yes, which is why I wrote more than 3 words. It is why I used the cancer analogy. This generation is left holding the bag, and it has to be dealt with. Stomping your foot and saying it's not fair does nothing to cancer, nor does it do anything to climate change. I’m not saying a specific policy decision is right or wrong. I’m saying this generation has to deal with it, regardless of fairness.
> Then why do current generations have to pay for the profits that the previous generations have banked?
Because the vast majority of "profits" (externalities that were not paid for) were not banked, they were simply not paid.
Even if every person that enjoyed cheap fossil products in the past had the price difference on some separate bank account, taking that to fund environmental policies would be very difficult in western countries because of democracy and demographics (very difficult to get majorities when working against the interests of elderly voters).
> YES, nothing we can do about the corporate overlords who screwed us, let's instead claw it back from the current generation of people instead of from Shell shareholders, that's will go down well politically for sure and not cause extremist rise to power. How is this not a luxury belief?
Again, the Shell corporate overlords only siphoned off a very small fraction of the gains, even taking the whole corporation would be completely insufficient. The main beneficiaries in the past were not Shell and BP, but the end consumers instead.
Just heaping blame on corporations or past generations is not helping anything. You could certainly nationalize the whole petroleum industry and confiscate pension funds, but approaches like that have very detrimental side effects.
> It's not selfishness to afford necessities for a decent life especially when more and more of your paycheck goes towards taxes and necessities.
I would argue that if you discover that a past lifestyle was financed by unsustainably pushing the hidden costs of energy elsewhere (and into the future), then still refusing to pay those hidden costs after the discovery is the very definition of selfish.
It's cheaper for the current generation to deal with climate change than to ignore it.
You're effectively advocating for some small subset of that generation to try to disadvantage another larger subset, at a net loss to society, and hope they don't damage themselves in the process.
While complaining about selfishness of previous generations.
Depends on the country, but overall I'll say the opposite is true: cheaper is to ignore it. Climate change will not stop even if Germany switched to 100% renewables. And globally it is also not a top priority.
Basically this.
But he is probably rich enough to not care because the effort that will be asked of him will be small relative to his purchasing power.
So, he can pretend to be "good" for doing the right thing, while more unfortunate people will pay the real cost without any guarantee that the climate situation will improve and that their children will have a chance at a "better life". Not that they care that much because children are becoming unaffordable for much of the lower class.
The problem with the green ideology is that it's a global problem and clearly global fossil fuel use reduction isn't happening.
And the countries using it don't care because not using it is much worse than the promise of a better world in the future.
If your life is shit right now (compared to the rich world) the promise of a better world far out in the future is just propaganda.
Unsurprisingly you got downvoted. It is a very unpopular opinion on HN.
But I agree with you, the math does not add up. I have looked at the data and it makes no sense. Germany still needs to build a shit ton of wind turbines (150GW) and they are already decommissioning the first install, which is costing them a lot of money and is requiring them to think about the recycling, which will cost a lot of money.
At some point we will know the true cost of wind power at least, I hope.
Germany's electricity price is almost twice of its "dirty" nuclear neighbor (France). Proof is in the pudding as they say. But most here seem to be unwilling to even look at the pudding, let alone eat it.
The problem is that the issue of intermittent energy generation is unsolved. It is currently not feasible to use batteries for base load needs, it would be insanely expensive. Some day perhaps, but not yet.
There was never a technically solid plan to solve this issue by the German Greens, just wishful thinking. They undertook this massive project without having the faintest clue about the underlying physics and financials, which is hard to believe but true. The overwhelming majority of green party members are from the humanities, not STEM.
So you either have a lot of pumped hydro, in which case great, or you don’t, which is the case nearly everywhere but the nordics and perhaps Switzerland.
Solar is much better than wind btw, wind is simply a costly mistake as it is a lot more intermittent than solar. The math doesn’t add up.