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pydryyesterday at 11:05 PM1 replyview on HN

>Why are you implying that Germany has decarbonized their grid?

I neither said nor implied that the green transition is complete. Green transitions take decades. Germany is merely transitioning the fastest and doing it without the overpriced and risky albatross that is nuclear power.

>shutting them down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable

It's unbelievable that the country some people are most furious at is the one that has decarbonized at the fastest rate.

Not the country next door to it that didnt even try.

They are seemingly obsessed with what was once ~8-12% of Germany's power output, but the actual environment? Not that important.

It's bizarre.


Replies

opotoday at 12:24 AM

>I neither said nor implied that the green transition is complete. Green transitions take decades.

Maybe you didn't intend too, but your words certainly implied it:

>>...it didnt prove conclusively that you could decarbonize your electric grid without any help at all from nuclear power.

Since you reference Germany later, the implication above was that Germany did prove you could decarbonize your electric grid without any help at all from nuclear power. Which might be true someday in the future, but Germany certainly hasn't decarbonized their grid yet. The one thing that Germany did "prove conclusively" is that thousands of lives were needlessly lost over the last 15 years because of bad policy.

>Germany is merely transitioning the fastest

Germany will certainly not be carbon neutral the fastest. I guess it will beat Poland though.

>Not the country next door to it that didnt even try.

You have a point - it is the responsibility of every country to decarbonize. I guess a big issue here is simply money - Poland GDP is much smaller than Germany and they have less available options. Though besides your claim, I've never heard anyone actually lauding Poland's efforts or thinking it was a good thing they are using coal.

>...They are seemingly obsessed with what was once ~8-12% of Germany's power output, but the actual environment? Not that important.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here.

Like I said, I find that those who actually want to decarbonize the grid, don't particularly care what clean technology is used and different countries will have a different mix of technologies they use. Unfortunately, there certainly do seem to be some advocates of solar/wind who would prefer to go decades (or maybe much longer) burning coal and killing people and destroying the environment when their country had the option to use a clean energy source.