But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem.
The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those that don't.
You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
i am pretty sure its not energy that domaines the move. eg skoda is now way more profitable than rest of VW. The cost of employment is way higher in DE..
Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy sources. This includes nuclear because it allows thermal storage of excess heat from nuclear energy. This kind of setup is supposed to be more stable for the grid and more reliable for storing energy.
That depends on what you need energy for. Converting heat energy stored during the day to heat my house at night is easy. Converting heat energy stored into light is much harder (as the other reply stated, it needs high heat and thus is a fire hazard)
Heat can't be converted losslessly to useful energy, but converting to heat to other forms of energy is extremely common. What do you think a steam turbine, boiler, internal combustion engine, etc. do?
But all the examples you give have a heat source of high temperature and dense energy, and a lot of energy is lost in it's transformation, as illustrated by the combustion engine. How can heat be a good energy storage if so much is lost when you want to use it?
I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe.
The amount of energy needed to test things is just intuitively huge. Boiling one liter of water takes the equivalent amount of energy as lifting 34 metric tons up a meter. Or to translate it to human scale: the same as walking a vertical climb of 1000m with a weight of 34kg.
It's a good news and a milestone to celebrate but if we count all energy and not only electricity and not only developed world then the progress is not as fast unfortunately [1].
Not a long time ago I've seen a post arguing based on the data [1] that renewables are irrelevant and should not be taken seriously and fossils will the main source for the lifetime.
Also interesting to look at the chart per country. [2] US fossil fuel is 4x entire Germany, while for China just coal is over 8x all of Germany. So good and relevant news at a local scale! But pretty irrelevant at a global one... A scale at which there is more talk than action in parts of the world, probably because it would be too economically painful if not unfeasible to e.g. limit or tax imports, outsourcing etc by emission source.
When looking at hat kind of graphs, it's good to keep in mind that burning hydrocarbons is relatively inefficient: only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Still a long ways to go regardless, but much less bleak. And also, exponentially growing deployments of wind and solar are harder to spot on this 2-year old graph which goes only up to 2024.
That is very much a it depends. The best combined cycle power plants get around 60% efficient. The gas engine in your car is in the ideal case around 45% efficient - but the way you drive in the real world is only about 20-30% efficient.
Indeed. That exponential has renewables being ~100% of electricity in the early to mid 2030s, and approximately ~100% of all power in the late 2030s to early 2040s even without the efficiency improvement from direct electricity use.
In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear.
So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear and coal was swapped, Germany could have reduced its emission generation capacity by an extra 66%. (Focusing mainly on coal, since that is (AIUI) the worst of the carbon emitters.)
The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.
No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.
> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
See perhaps:
> […] Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
(Meta: I understand some folks aren't a fan of nuclear. I disagree, but recognize people have different values and weighing of priorities. But I just find it fucking stupid that coal was left to keep running by people who claim that climate change is a priority. Certainly a discussion can be had about pros/cons of new nuclear, but why the fuck would you prioritize closing current nuclear over coal?)
And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.
The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.
Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas.
Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, batteries reduce the need for regular gas backup. By 2030, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour over 80% of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period, up from about 20% in 2025.")
i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.
> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.
> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.
There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:
> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.
> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.
I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.
Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).
I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.
I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.
What is not on the title:
For an entire year, that year being 2025.
Also, yes, absolute generation from fossil fuels is declining quickly. The total generation is changing way more slowly than that share.
But so is German industry - every day in the news either insolvency or workforce reduction and moving production to Eastern Europe - main reason often stated "expensive Energy". I wonder what are the stats for industrial production in 2025 or total energy consumption in Germany?
Discussion about nuclear reactors aside, energy in germany became expensive when they cut off russian gas and they had no good alternative. There was no other source of cheap fossil fuels for electricity production. If anything, renewables are promoted as a solution to that energy problem.
The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those that don't.
You make it sound like there is a causality here. I would be careful. German GDP is declining for other reasons, not for their commitment to renwables. Also, by all measures, living in Germany still means you get one of the most comfortable, secure and free lives on earth. I wouldn't give up on Germany so fast. They still know how to work and often work, even if there is no reason to work (i.e looking at their current regulations, which rather motivate you to _not_ work).
Looks stable:
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/industrial-production-m...
Of course, stable is probably bad here. But it's not declining.
U.K. energy is expensive because it’s all based on the cost of gas.
Onshore wind and solar is about £40-50
Offshore wind about £60
Gas about £120
That’s generation cost, before subsidies and levees
But we still haven’t put in an emergency legislation to make it easier to build cheaper energy.
There’s nothing wrong with creative destruction
i am pretty sure its not energy that domaines the move. eg skoda is now way more profitable than rest of VW. The cost of employment is way higher in DE..
Part of this is about a new way to store energy. In the Netherlands, they have started storing heat energy with sand, in Germany, they are using bricks. This has some advantages. It allows the direct use of heat for industrial processes and heating industrial and commercial facilities. They can either convert energy into electricity or use the heat directly. This technology can be used with a wide variety of energy sources. This includes nuclear because it allows thermal storage of excess heat from nuclear energy. This kind of setup is supposed to be more stable for the grid and more reliable for storing energy.
I think I have read that heat is hard to convert to useful energy. Can someone confirm? But the, if that's true, why use heat as energy storage?
That depends on what you need energy for. Converting heat energy stored during the day to heat my house at night is easy. Converting heat energy stored into light is much harder (as the other reply stated, it needs high heat and thus is a fire hazard)
Heat is really useful if the energy form you want is heat. If you want electricity or motion it's not the best.
Heat can't be converted losslessly to useful energy, but converting to heat to other forms of energy is extremely common. What do you think a steam turbine, boiler, internal combustion engine, etc. do?
But all the examples you give have a heat source of high temperature and dense energy, and a lot of energy is lost in it's transformation, as illustrated by the combustion engine. How can heat be a good energy storage if so much is lost when you want to use it?
Use it directly, see my silbling comment.
I know someone who runs a mineral water company. His biggest expense was the energy cost for washing the glas bottles. He now built a absolutely massive solar farm that feeds directly into heating a well insulated underground water tank. At the time he told me about it (ca two years ago) he said according to his research it is not unlikely to be the biggest such hot water storage in Europe.
The amount of energy needed to test things is just intuitively huge. Boiling one liter of water takes the equivalent amount of energy as lifting 34 metric tons up a meter. Or to translate it to human scale: the same as walking a vertical climb of 1000m with a weight of 34kg.
It's a good news and a milestone to celebrate but if we count all energy and not only electricity and not only developed world then the progress is not as fast unfortunately [1].
Not a long time ago I've seen a post arguing based on the data [1] that renewables are irrelevant and should not be taken seriously and fossils will the main source for the lifetime.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...
Also interesting to look at the chart per country. [2] US fossil fuel is 4x entire Germany, while for China just coal is over 8x all of Germany. So good and relevant news at a local scale! But pretty irrelevant at a global one... A scale at which there is more talk than action in parts of the world, probably because it would be too economically painful if not unfeasible to e.g. limit or tax imports, outsourcing etc by emission source.
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-source-bar...
When looking at hat kind of graphs, it's good to keep in mind that burning hydrocarbons is relatively inefficient: only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Still a long ways to go regardless, but much less bleak. And also, exponentially growing deployments of wind and solar are harder to spot on this 2-year old graph which goes only up to 2024.
That is very much a it depends. The best combined cycle power plants get around 60% efficient. The gas engine in your car is in the ideal case around 45% efficient - but the way you drive in the real world is only about 20-30% efficient.
Indeed. That exponential has renewables being ~100% of electricity in the early to mid 2030s, and approximately ~100% of all power in the late 2030s to early 2040s even without the efficiency improvement from direct electricity use.
Now they just gotta get the good ole DB to run on time.
Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear!
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/live/fifteen_min... Anyone is free to compare France and Germany here.
> Imagine how much better carbon emissions would be in Germany if they hadn't dismantled nuclear!
Germany has 15.4 GW of hard coal generation, and 14.7 GW of lignite, for a total of 30.1 GW:
* https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...
In 2010, before the shutdowns started, it had 21.5 GW of nuclear.
So if all the other rollouts (renewables, etc) had stayed the same, but the shutdown of nuclear and coal was swapped, Germany could have reduced its emission generation capacity by an extra 66%. (Focusing mainly on coal, since that is (AIUI) the worst of the carbon emitters.)
The Greens were not in Office when the nuclear exit was decided 2011.
The Greens actually prolonged their life time during Covid, after RWE, EON and EnBW argued that it does not make sense economically to let them run longer.
No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
> No insurer wanted to insure nuclear, and no energy company wanted to keep losing money on nuclear.
The German government(s) helped kickstart the global solar price drop by their subsidy programs in the early 2000s that allowed for economies of scale, so I'm surprised that—if they're really worried about climate change—they would not subsidize the alleged expenses of running the low-carbon generation of nuclear.
> Since nuclear is the most expensive form of energy generation, it makes sense to switch it off first.
It's so expensive that prices in France, which generates >60% of power with nuclear, are at the same levels (or lower) as Germany, while producing less carbon per kWh than Germany (a quarter from some articles I've found).
See perhaps:
> […] Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2...
Politically that would have been done how? I think in restropect removing nuclear powerplants that make awful targets in a conflict doesn't strike me as a bad choice either.
(Meta: I understand some folks aren't a fan of nuclear. I disagree, but recognize people have different values and weighing of priorities. But I just find it fucking stupid that coal was left to keep running by people who claim that climate change is a priority. Certainly a discussion can be had about pros/cons of new nuclear, but why the fuck would you prioritize closing current nuclear over coal?)
Who are those people that kept coal running but claim climate change is a priority? Because they are not the german green party, that much I know.
And Europe would be in even bigger black-out trouble right now as half of those 20 GW of nuclear power would not be running due to missing cooling water, just like is the case in the other European countries.
The german green part certainly isn't perfect, but they had a plan. A plan that included far more renewable energies than currently build. The ones that orchestrated the ultimate end of nuclear energy while shutting down build up of renewables are the conservatives. Blaming someone for a half executed plan is childish. Especially when it is from a party that supposedly had economic competence yet killed tens of thousands of jobs.
Those carbon emissions are tuition. Germany is now ramping battery storage, as most of Europe is, to push out more expensive fossil gas.
Ember Energy: Batteries and demand flexibility are ready to scale across the EU - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/batteries-and-deman... - June 24th, 2026 ("The EU battery fleet is projected to grow fourfold, from 37 GW in 2025 to 178 GW by 2030. As this growth unfolds, batteries reduce the need for regular gas backup. By 2030, EU batteries could deliver in a single hour over 80% of the power that all EU gas power plants combined can generate in the same period, up from about 20% in 2025.")
Largest battery storage in Germany set for partial commissioning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104584 - July 2026 (0 comments)
Germany's solar installations drop while new battery storage hits record - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019046 - May 2026 (8 comments)
They could have done all this without dismantling nuclear power and emitting more carbon than they otherwise would have.
i love the "but nuclear" crowd as they seem to gloss over that a nuke is a steam engine and needs water. water we don't have anymore. if you follow the news in europe you'll see every summer that country X (normally france) has to drastically reduce or switch off their nukes because no water.
Romania blasts rock to divert water from drought-hit Danube to nuclear reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158035 - August 2026 (0 comments)
What's happening in Hungary's power grid? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49154001 - August 2026 (0 comments)
Hungary to shut down sole nuclear plant as Danube falls to record low - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145531 - August 2026 [dupe]
EU considers emergncy meeting as nuclear shutdown leaves HU facing energy crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131244 - August 2026 (1 comment)
How Hungary became the best at solar [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49125682 - July 2026 (1 comment)
Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120120 - July 2026 (231 comments)
France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)
Europe's extreme heat is shutting down power plants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697170 - June 2026 (2 comments)
Commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands.
Europe's summer heat has broken the Bell curve - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158483 - August 2026
Bloomberg: Europe’s Key Rivers Are Drying Up as Extreme Heat Impact Widens - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-02/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/tVpQJ - August 2nd, 2026
> Europe’s biggest rivers, including the Rhine and Danube, are drying up after a series of heat waves, disrupting the transport of goods and boosting freight costs. Soaring temperatures are curbing power generation at riverside reactors, pushing up energy prices and straining Eastern European economies. The river disruptions are becoming a test of how quickly the region can adapt infrastructure to a climate where extreme low water is likely to be increasingly common.
Bloomberg: Europe’s Endless Heat Waves Imperil Once Reliable Power Sources - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-01/europe-s-... | https://archive.today/EvSSS - August 1st, 2026
> A series of heat waves has weakened some of Europe’s most historically reliable sources of electricity, forcing the continent to lean more heavily on imported fossil fuels and variable renewable energy. France’s river-cooled nuclear plants have suffered a record amount of heat-related outages this summer, and hydroelectric plants in the Alps and Nordic region have been hobbled by hot, dry weather. The heat-related strains coincide with a surge in natural gas and coal prices, and the disruptions are poised to push power prices even higher, leaving Europeans facing steeper electricity bills.
> France powers down several nuclear reactors due to extreme heat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48899232 - July 2026 (19 comments)
There's no technical reason why the reactors in question could not have kept running:
> "Due to the weather conditions and to comply with regulations on [cooling water] discharges, and thus to protect the environment," reactors at the Golfech, Bugey and Chooz plants, located on the banks of the Garonne, Rhône and Meuse rivers respectively, have been shut down, the EDF energy group told Agence France-Presse.
> The measure is an environmental protection requirement to avoid discharging too much hot water into rivers already warming from the heatwave. Power plants critical to the country's electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
> The Economy Ministry on Saturday issued an exemption to the temperature limits for the heating of the Rhône around the Bugey plant "to ensure the security of the power grid," valid until July 20.
>commercial nuclear generation is incompatible with a rapidly warming planet due to cooling demands
Well it's good that Germans chose coal over nuclear!
I live in France, and the nuclear power is working perfectly fine. France has about half the carbon emissions of Germany per capita entirely because of German neuroses about nuclear power. While occasionally, they have to turn off one or two reactors so the fish in a given river aren't too hot, it's hardly causing rolling blackouts or energy shortages.
Renewables also occasionally don't work as well, whether during the night or when the wind isn't blowing (before you retort with oh, but what about batteries, well, those would equally apply to reactors, in which case your original point is irrelevant).
I’m not sure it is that simple. Nuclear is expensive infrastructure to maintain, by shutting them down you free up resources (including human expertise) that can be used elsewhere.
I wonder if they had maintained their nuclear infrastructure, if that would have held back renewable build-out, because of economics.
They could've, but people and politics are hard and they didn't. It is what it is, can't change the past. We win or we learn.
That kind of fatalism could apply to literally any idiotic policy. The German government knew what they were doing when they made that choice.
You think voters had no role there? I don't see nuclear power enjoying some constitutional protection as such, so choosing against it seems ok.
"You can't change the past" really isn't fatalism