Germany currently receives around 23% or approximately 31 GW
of its electricity from nuclear production (CNBC: Germany dims nuclear). Its
total electricity production is around 133 GW so stopping the electricity from
nuclear power will leave 100GW. The demand for Germany is approximately 80-90GW.
There are already calls to keep the availability of one or more of these
reactors operational from the head of Germany’s federal network agency no less.
(Spiegel: Calls for nuclear). This is because variability in the solar and
wind network could easily see that 10 GW safety margin disappear (As a follow-up which came some time after I wrote the above
we see that Germany will rely on dirty coal and imports to power itself (Platts: Nuclear not needed)). Germany is no longer an electricity exporter).
Indeed despite apparent success in the renewable energy
sector (The renewable sources act), the real story of the last five years is the
boom in coal plant construction as indicated by the Business week: Coal boom report. This expansion
under the new revised timeline for nuclear departure is likely to increase with
increased reliance on coal and gas (Businessweek: Russian gas for Germany).
Despite the promise of clean coal, the only major project in Germany is
Vattenfall’s project and this pales in comparison to the size of typical plants
(Vattenfall clean coal pilot plant, Clean coal).
Not only that but initial estimates show that the process consumes nearly 30%
of the energy that it generates leading to the use of even more raw material.
The politicians cannot guarantee that the
climate goals that they have set for themselves can be meet while keeping
electricity as cheap as it is now. However in a quote from the CNBC: Germany dims nuclear article, there is a
much greater threat
This winter, Amprion predicts its grid will have 84,000 megawatts of electricity at its disposal, to provide 81,000 megawatts needed for consumption — an uncomfortably slim margin of safety, Vanzetta said. In prior years, electricity was readily available for purchase on the European grid if the price was right. But exported German power is what helped keep France glowing in winter.
There is the chance that there will be blackouts in both
Germany and France due to the slim margins. Indeed considering that margin and
that up to 6% of the electricity generated in a grid is lost (ABB: Efficiency in the power grid),
one might even believe that meeting the demand is impossible without imports.
The poignant message is that German politicians are either
lying to its electorate or are illiterate on energy issues. Increasing
renewables will cause massive cost increases to the German taxpayer due to the
high feed in tariffs needed to keep these energy sources competitive (competitive
for the producer, not the consumer). Subsidies for solar and wind (see the
renewable energy sector link) are approximately 10 times the industrial spot electricity price (EU industrial energy prices).
As the share of renewable power increases, electricity prices will start to
rise and meet the feed in tariff cost. Indeed change over to gas will also
increase electricity prices to a certain extent.
My opinion on the issue is quite simple. Merkel has simply
bowed to pressure from the ill-informed electorate to stop nuclear power due to
fears after Fukishima. This was the incorrect choice and such issues should not
be decided by political pressure. There is an easy choice that should have been
offered to the German consumer. They could accept stability of supply by
keeping a large part of the nuclear power online or they could have been shown
that electricity production without nuclear is extremely fragile. In that light
I think that the German consensus would have been to reduce rather than do away
with. However that would have required some political will.
