ElectricityMaps screenshot of Germany for 2023-11-22

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   kravietz 🦇 (kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)'s status on Thursday, 23-Nov-2023 03:22:41 JST kravietz 🦇

   in reply to

   @MattMastodon

   Renewables could be online quicker and cheaper.

   Germany has the Europe’s largest installed capacity in #renewables. Yet, it runs on coal and gas today, plus some imports from #nuclear France:

   https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

   Germany’s CO2 emissions intensity right now is nearly 10x worse than France, cost of electricity in Germany is 3x higher than in France, and they had to restart coal mines after Russian pipeline was severed. There’s a simple explanation for that: for most of the time renewables don’t produce electricity, but people want 24/7 supply.

   And where are we going to get fuel for them, from Russia?

   There’s like 30 countries on the global uranium market and it’s much easier to supply nuclear power plants: a single nuclear power plant consumes maybe 100 tons of uranium fuel per year. That’s around how much a single wind turbine weights, including concrete base, the tower and the blades, and you need hundreds of turbines along with hundreds of MWh in batteries to replace a single plant. In total, renewables consume 300x more mined resources (metals, concrete) than nuclear per MWh of electricity produced.