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Edwynn -> RE: Germany pledges to end all nuclear power by 2022 (5/31/2011 8:19:07 PM)
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Regarding how long it takes for new building techniques to become workable, and as to costs, are you telling us here that the relevant professionals working on this for 5-10 years now are not aware of this? I bet they would be most grateful if you were to bring this to their attention.
Speaking of professionals, long term cost analysis is done everyday by any company or government agency dealing in long term projects.
As for public cost of alt. energy subsidies, they would have to be increased by at least one or two orders of magnitude to match the decades long government support for nuclear power. Thankfully that will never happen, and in many subsidy or incentive schemes I have seen there is an eventual phase out built into the plan. Prior to this latest announcement, Germany was actually having trouble with too much solar power coming online too quickly, and price support is being reduced much earlier than originally scheduled.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aQ4YdcDGz.S4
Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s Environment Ministry and the solar industry agreed to cut subsidies six months earlier than planned to slow growth in the world’s largest market for photovoltaic panels that turn sunlight into power. The above-market rates paid for solar power will be lowered in July by 3 percent to 15 percent for new installations if more than 3.5 gigawatts are forecast for this year, the ministry said today in Berlin.
Germany might install 6 to 8 gigawatts in new solar photovoltaic capacity in 2011 out of about 20 gigawatts worldwide, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecast Jan. 12.
“The fact that industry and government and opposition parties agreed on these cuts so rapidly illustrates the urgent need to slow German PV market growth from an estimated 8-9 gigawatts in 2010 to a more sustainable level in 2011,” Francesco D’Avack, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said by e-mail today.
The Environment Ministry said it will implement cuts of 15 percent if capacity forecast for this year is more than 7.5 gigawatts.
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Of course that was in January. The subsidy cuts will continue, I just read about another 6% reduction yesterday though I've lost the story now, but I doubt there will be any otherwise further disincentive for installing new capacity, as was contemplated at the start of the year.
Germany enacted an energy conservation law (Energieeinsparverordnung [EnEV]) in 2002; the formulas are already there, awaiting any variables for energy source, energy loss at terminal usage, etc., and implementation commenced soon thereafter. I'm sure various timetables contained in the law have been adjusted even prior to this latest public announcement.
As I tried (apparently without success) to explain earlier; this isn't just some spur of the moment expedient they pulled out of a hat. There is no way to predict precise cost, precise usage, how much more grid expansion, etc., but I think it's safe to say that some very good minds have been working on it for 5-10 years already (using procedures for this sort of thing in place for decades), with enough data from the significant amount of the plan already in place for over five years now to be able to derive fairly reasonable estimates to come to the chosen target date. The energy companies already have the plan in place regarding how much power and from whom they are going to import for various 2-3 year periods throughout the transition. And no, some two year importation from France's nuclear plants in the interim would not be hypocritical, anymore than using Germany's own extant nuclear capacity. If that were a permanent part of the plan come 2022, then it would be.
Another item in the mix is the Nord Stream (Baltic) pipeline from Gazprom fields in Russia which will supply much more gas than the current lines running through Eastern Europe. One line is expected to start delivery later this year, and another in 2012. Germany already had six new gas turbine generators planned based on this as the first phase of replacing the nuclear plants.
There is much much more to the whole affair than even this brief 'spot check' overview, and hard as it may be to convince some, the professionals (especially the power companies, most of whom incorporate a good bit of alt. energy currently) have thought of a lot more issues than internet forum posters, the former having been to the task for a number of years already as opposed to the two days of idle thought given to it by the latter.
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