Facts On Germany’s Nuclear, Fossil Fuel, & Renewable Electricity Generation Changes

July 30th, 2013 by Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz

This article was first published on Lenz Blog with the title, “Nuclear Decline in Germany Not Compensated 100 Percent by Renewable” (it’s relevant further down in the article).

One of the recent pro-nuclear talking points is the fact that there is still coal burned in the German electricity sector. For example, this tweet by Steve Aplin, retweeted by the enemy of renewable energy Rod Adams:

“Why is Germany burning more coal after closing nukes? Because coal = real electricity. Wind can’t provide it.”

I am not familiar with the term “real electricity.” It must be something having meaning in the fantasy world of Steve Aplin and Rod Adams, but I don’t understand what that is supposed to mean.

Anyway, the tweet in question points to a recent article on development of electricity from coal in Germany at Bloomberg, titled “Merkel’s GreenShift Backfires as German Pollution Jumps.”

Pro-nuclear voices love it when Germany’s CO2 emissions go up since they can point to that as an argument for their desire to play with plutonium.

In contrast, I strongly dislike this development. Let’s look at the facts (not given at the necessary level of detail in that particular article). If you want to know about short term developments on the German electricity market, you need to look at the Fraunhofer reports.

Credit: Fraunhofer

From those we learn that lignite was up 2.0 TWh for the first six months of the year, and coal was up 4.0 TWh. In contrast gas was down 4.6 TWh and wind 2.4 TWh. And the export surplus remains high at about 11 TWh.

So we have a movement mostly from gas to coal, and partly from wind to coal, which amounts to about half of the export surplus.

The decline of nuclear energy as a consequence of shutting down some plants after the Fukushima accident was in the order of 40 TWh (from 140.6 TWh in 2010 to 99 TWh in 2012).

That’s one order of magnitude more than the increase in coal use.

Anyone claiming that coal is replacing nuclear in Germany either doesn’t know these numbers, or is lying deliberately.

In the real world, the 40 TWh decrease in nuclear was compensated (last year’s numbers) by a 32 TWh increase in renewable electricity and a 16.9 TWh drop in electricity consumption.

Since fossil fuel still has a high share in the German electricity market, it would have been only fair to expect that renewable would get only the part of the 40 TWh new market caused by the nuclear decline (that’s NUCLEAR DECLINE) that corresponds to their market share, or about 10 TWh.

The fact that they have punched way over their weight, getting around 80% of that new market, tells us something about renewable energy in Germany. And it’s not that they are losing to fossil fuel.

To go back to my headline, no, renewable has not compensated 100 percent for the nuclear decline in Germany. There was something left for energy efficiency.

There may have even been something left for fossil fuel. Around 2 TWh for the first half of this year, mostly caused by less wind. That’s less than half a percent of German production. Rounding error territory.

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Tags: Germany, Germany Energiewende, Germany Energiewende co2 emissions, Germany Energiewende coal, Germany Energiewende emissions, Germany Energiewende fossil fuels, germany fossil fuels, germany nuclear

About the Author

Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz is a professor of German and European Law at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, blogging since 2003 at Lenz Blog. A free PDF file of his global warming science fiction novel "Great News" is available here.

John Tucker

So which is it with you ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_in_Germany.PNG

Explain.
Pieter Siegers

Thanks a lot for this article. Very good perspective is presented.
DillWeed7

I’m expecting to see an article on Siemens soon.
Steeple

Germany was foolish to close its nukes so quickly. Earthquake risk in Germany? They threw themselves into the arms of Gazprom. Not a very wise commercial stategy. Energy costs are killing a lot of German industry. Seems like they could have worked out a slower phase out of nukes to give other sources time to fill in the gaps if they were hell bent on shutting their nukes down.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  How about backing that claim up with some facts? Give us, for example, some data on Germany’s collapsing industrial base.
  
  And explain how Germany has shot itself in the foot via high industrial electricity costs. You can get 2012 industrial electricity prices here…
  
  http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=ten00114
  
  (Germany’s industrial electricity prices are 6% below the EU27 average.)
  - Steeple
    
    I work in the Petrochemical business here. I have had several conversations with German colleagues who are working to establish new production here in North America so that they can close high cost German capacity. Europe has to do something to free themselves from the grasp of Gazprom, or they will continue to be doomed to high energy costs. Wait until Russia can start exporting gas to China.
    - Ivor O’Connor
      
      Are you paid to read the article before you paste in nonsense and move on to another site?
      - Steeple
        
        Nope
        
        I’ve run trading books that trade in German power and natural gas. What is our experience in these markets?
      - Ivor O’Connor
        
        What is my experience? The ability to read the articles and understand them. The ability to do these two items puts me one or two steps above you.
    - Martin Vermeer
      
      “Cheap” fracking and tar sands?
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Inadequate response.
      
      Hand-waving should be restricted to parades.
      - Steeple
        
        So first hand information is less reliable than reading about it in a blog? We will have to differ there.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Let’s call it “trust but verify”.
        
        Show us something other than conversations you might have had that tells us industry is fleeing Germany because of their lower than average industrial electricity prices.
  - Steeple
    
    Or if reading about it makes it more credible
    
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/business/energy-environment/27iht-green27.html?_r=0
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      The NYT piece you link states that industry is looking to the US because of lower natural gas prices.
      
      The major example given is “Voestalpine, an Austrian maker of high-quality steel for the auto industry”.
      
      There is nothing in it about Germany’s electricity prices causing manufacturing to leave Germany.
      
      And the NYT infers that German industry pays renewable subsidies. ” In Germany, renewables subsidies are already adding 10 percent to 15 percent to bills, according to IHS.”
      
      In fact, industrial electricity does not get charged for renewable subsidies. Those are born totally by retail ratepayers.
  - Steeple
    
    Or
    
    http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-01/world/38182416_1_natural-gas-shale-gas-basf
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      “The sprawling chemical plant in this city along the Rhine River has been a jewel of Germany’s manufacturing-led economy for more than a century. But the plunging price of natural gas in the United States has European companies setting sail across the Atlantic to stay competitive.”
      
      “Among those most affected are energy-intensive industries such as steel and chemicals, because they use natural gas as a raw material and power source.”
      
      Natural gas. Again.
      
      Are you practicing spaghetti testing here? You know, grab stuff, toss it against the wall and see if it sticks….
      - Steeple
        
        Ok, I’ll slow down. Natural gas is the incremental high cost fuel for producing electricity in most of Northern Europe. Natural gas prices therefore set power prices on the margin most of the peak hours. Try producing any chlorine-based chemicals without prodigius amounts of electricity. And natural gas as a fuel itself is an issue too. It would be less of an issue if all of the volume being consumed to produce power to fill in for the power lost due to Nuke shutdowns. It’s all connected.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Solar on the grid reduced the wholesale price of electricity by approximately EUR 5 billion in 2012.
        
        http://qualenergia.it/sites/default/files/articolo-doc/RA-January-2013_Germany-Wholesale-Power-Report-3.pdf
        
        Germany is saving EUR 8 billion a year in fossil fuel import costs right now.
        
        http://cleantechnica.com/2013/03/17/germany-1-trillion-projected-fossil-fuel-import-savings-from-energiewende/#SeSqsbWCrdY4Pvbe.99
        
        From the link I gave you earlier. What is happening to the cost of industrial electricity in Germany, can you tell?
        
        EUR per kWh
        
        2007 0.0946
        2008 0.0929
        2009 0.0975
        2010 0.0921
        2011 0.0900
        2012 0.0895
        
        http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=ten00114
      - Steeple
        
        Well, oil prices were $140/bbl in 2008 and they are $105 now. Natural gas prices in the US were $12/MMBtu in 2008 and are now $3.50/MMBtu. Coal prices have collapsed as well. So US power prices are down substantially since then, thanks mostly to the nat gas move. You know that.
        
        Yet the price of power in Germany has only come down by a few per cent based on your figures? Looks like cheap nuclear power has been replaced by expensive nat gas fired power. And the delta between US energy costs and Europe just keeps getting wider.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        A moving we go,
        A moving we go,
        Heigh-ho, the derry-o
        A goal post moving we go….
      - Steeple
        
        CEO Steeple: Wallace, can you please explain to me how the Americans are crushing us in our chemicals business. I thought you said that our energy costs have decreased.
        Wallace: Yes sir! Our power costs have come down 3% in the past four years!
        CEO Steeple: But haven’t electricity costs in America declined almost 40% over that same period? And natural gas even more?
        Wallace: Are you moving the goal posts, boss?
        CEO Steeple: Wallace, I thought you knew by now that costs are relative and not absolute in manufacturing businesses. It’s not how much we pay, but what we pay relative to our competitors that matters. Got it?
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        So you’re admitting that you can’t back up your claim that closing nuclear plants has driven industry from Germany?
      - Steeple
        
        Doesn’t and can’t happen overnite. Doesn’t = see US Rust Belt in the late 70s and early 80s. Can’t = German labor laws which make permanent shutdowns difficult. There will be less German manufacturing in three years than today, and uncompetitive energy costs will be a major reason.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        ” Energy costs are killing a lot of German industry.”
        
        “Are killing” implies that you have information.
        
        Pufffffffffff…….
      - ThomasGerke
        
        US energy costs are not lower than German energy costs- despite the significant past & present price per unit difference.
        
        Besides electricity expenses are insignificant side notes for most industries (below 2% of product value).
        
        The few energy intensive industries that could actually go abroad without harming their market access / customer base, actually are paying very low rates. (like 0.05€ / kWh for steel mills or aluminium smelters)
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        I think Steeple confused the conversation by claiming that German industry was fleeing because of electricity prices.
        
        When he presented his scarce data it looks like some European industry might move some of their production to the US in order to access cheaper natural gas.
        
        I don’t think he’s yet learned the art of saying “Oops”.
MieScatter

The problem is that 40 TWh less nuclear is still 40 TWh of electricity you have to find somewhere else. And that has meant coal so far.

Sure, renewables and efficiency replaced the loss in nuclear. But I’d much rather that they had replaced coal instead; right now Germany is running with renewables in order to stand still in fossil fuel use.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Well, the citizens of Germany decided that they no longer wanted to live with the danger of reactors in their midst and I think we should respect their decision.
  
  Germany is much farther along than most countries in de-carbonizing their grid so it’s hard to throw rocks at them for not doing their share to stop climate change. Germany will likely be the first industrialized nation to zero out its carbon emissions.
  - Hervé Musseau
    
    They still have a very long way to go to catch up to France regarding de-carbonization.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      And France has a long way to go to catch up with Paraguay.
      - Pieter Siegers
        
        Do you guys have any links that backup this information? TIA
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        List of countries that get 60% or more of their electricity from clean generation…
        
        http://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=6525
      - Pieter Siegers
        
        Thanks Bob!
  - Pieter Siegers
    
    I fully agree.
- Ivor O’Connor
  
  Actually Germany is exporting this coal energy to other countries as the article says. Germany has this baseline capacity to handle energy emergencies within their own borders if they don’t get the renewable energy they expect. However if their neighbors haven’t planned properly and are willing to buy German coal energy at 4x the market value Germany turns on the coal plants and takes in the profits. Kind of hard to say no to that…
  - Pieter Siegers
    
    @Ivor Can you back up your statements please?
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    “willing to buy German coal energy at 4x the market value”
    
    ?
    
    Germany earns about 7% on its electricity sales to other countries over what it pays for electricity imported.
    - Ivor O’Connor
      
      You probably saw the article Bob. I think it was here on cleantechnica. Basically showing at peak hours Germany powers up coal plants to supply energy to the countries north of them. Peak hour prices being much higher. When I read that article, wherever that article is, I thought to myself Germany is really really smart by going renewable in such a strong way. They may be saturating their own country during the daylight hours and not passing it on to the citizens but.. They are also turning on their own coal plants and selling this plus the excesses to the other countries that have not gone renewable yet and hence still need lots of daytime power.
      
      This is another instance of me not keeping copious notes.