Show me just one major country that has renewables as their main source of energy (not counting Iceland that is a unique situation)
Their decision to stop nuclear was stupid.
Sorry Flossie I don't think any developed country is ready yet, to implement a sensible energy policy.
The German energy policy is to ensure that 80% of the country’s electricity will be supplied by renewable sources by 2050. Efficient, high tech coal plants are a temporary stop gap until then, preferable with carbon capture. Subsidiaries for coal are being phased out, which will bring power from coal up to its natural market price. All coal mines in Germany will be decommissioned by 2018.
The energy policies in Germany are very much designed to address AGW. You have been badly deceived by reading Wattsupmynose as though it is news. The very intention of that blog is to deceive people who are simple-minded and ill-informed. If you want to know about the German energy policy, read the German energy or at least credible news sources.
Well first this article is 28 months old and isn't news. it has been brought up here numerous times. Being a small country, Germany is concerned about Nuclear plant leaks, and that is why they are reverting to fossil fuels to replace the 8 reactors which have been shut down.Germany still has a goal of producing @ 40% of it's power via alternative energy by 2020.or 2025
What are you talking about "nail in the coffin of AGW" It anything CO2 levels worldwide will increase making AGW even more irrefutable than it is now. With the Chinese putting up beaucoup coal fired plants, I think CO2 could reach 415ppm by the end of 2015 putting nails in all of our coffins.
Your article was from 2 years ago. Most recently , from the same source, emissions from brown coal use or lignite has caused broad emissions to increase by 1.6%.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/2...
The reason it did not increase higher was due t improving energy efficiency. Germany continues to have very strict environmental targets though and they will have to increase both efficiency and green energy to meet them. One of the ways hypothesized is a tax on lignite and they are already shifting away from black coal.
Plans to build the coal-fired power plants actually predate the phaseout of nuclear power. Of the ones that were on the books only a handful of them are being built. Here is a map of those that were originally planned and those that have been blocked.
http://www.bund.net/themen_und_projekte/...
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/i...
Flossie: If you read the articles I posted you would see that what they are doing currently follows the plans laid out in the articles. It is false that renewable energy resources can not act as a backbone to energy demands. Many countries the wold over have renewable energy as their primary source of power. Here is a wikipedia link, by country, with renewable energy as a percentage of total power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou...
If you are actually interested in this make sure to check the sources. What is being put out by these blogs and new companies is false.
Climate Realist: Any country in the world can produce electricity through renewable resources as a primary source. It's cost vs. production that is standing in the way. Drive the market in one particular direction and the prices will follow.
Kano:Scroll down. The lower table has a column labelled "% of total generation"
MAJOR countries that have renewables as main source: Canada, New Zealand, Norway, to name a few. And I didn;t include Iceland thanks.
Germany has abandoned the fight against global warming, but it is not because of any scientific flaws in the science of global warming; Germany has been taken over by people who promote a hysterical fear of nuclear power. This fear has no basis in science. We receive 300 times more radiation from nature than from nuclear power. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/...
Natural gas and coal more harmful than nuclear power
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs...
Jeff M
Is there one country on Earth that does not rely on hydrocarbons or nuclear power as a backup? OK! There are places which use hydroelectric power, which is renewable, including British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec. But if Germany were in a position to supply its electrical energy with just renewable energy, it would not be building coal plants. The alternative to nuclear power is not wind, or hydro or solar; it is coal.
From your third link.
"Opponents of renewables in North America are pouncing on the news of a new coal plant in Germany."
An ad hom. Most people pouncing on the news of new coal plants are pro-nuclear and/or, what anti-nukers call, "global warming alarmunists."
"Germany has a target of 35 percent renewable power by 2020, rising to 85 percent by 2050 – meaning that 65 percent of its power supply will be conventional in 2020, and the country will still have 15 percent conventional power by mid-century. Obviously, Germany needs to build some new conventional power plants to reach even that ambitious goal for renewables."
These new conventional power plants could be coal or nuclear.
Or will Germany's citizens (who are the richest on average in Europe) have to pay a lot more taxes to offset the demon that is carbon when they choose to keep their electricity on? The jury's still out.
It's a 2 year old ANALYSIS, not news, aka wishful thinking for climate science deniers.
Since the analysis was written, Germany's green energy production share rose 2.4% (to 22.9%).
Not only is your whole premise factually wrong, up-to-date data shows the contrary is happening.
But please keep on misinterpreting news-articles and posting about it; it is most amusing to see you getting even the most basic stuff wrong over and over again.
Why would it be a nail in the coffin? Using more coal would increase AGW
The "shackles" that you talk about are nonexistent.
Ha! Ha! The UK has gone one better. They have gone to wood chips.
burn more coal, burn more oil, burn baby burn
Germany to revert to coal as a reliable power source, another nail in the coffin of AGW?
Or put another way, now at last a developed country is to throw off the shackles that the AGW myth has placed on it.
Good, now we're getting somewhere?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/20/us-germany-energy-idUSTRE75J42J20110620
