Quote from: Mark001 on March 17, 2024, 21:49:01Germany, the country that does invest in coal power plants while telling others to go with PV/wind.
Not exactly, in the early 2000s, Germany was pretty big on renewable energy. Come 2010 and switch of political parties, the fossil fuel industry working with Putin derailed renewable investments up to 3x fold for the decade. Still, Germany's coal usage has been dropping even then in 2010 Germany used 262.89twh of coal and by 2019 that was down to 171.45twh
Many of the coal increases the news covered was pretty much after the 2020 shutdowns which took coal down to 134.60twh in 2020, which then started recovering in 2021 and 2022. It also didn't help that in 2022 half of France's nuclear reactors broke down forcing Germany to burn more coal in 2022 to 179.98twh, which is slightly above 2019 numbers, but still way below 2018 numbers
Come 2023, with France less dependent and renewable investments going back up, coal usage dropped to 135.35twh which is near covid levels and 2024 is likely to go down even more, first 2 months of 2023 was 29twh of coal, while first 2 months of 2024 was down to 19.86twh so at this rate coal usage in 2024 is likely to fall below 100twh, even maybe below 90twh
Of course Germany has a lot of catch up to do for the lost decade but they are getting their act together finally