The cold German winter is approaching. With fall in temperature, we can expect bigger waves of imported electricity from across the borders. In its wake, a moral question seeps in: what is a nuclear phase-out worth if the same country buys atomic energy from its neighbours?
Germany has long been exporting lots of electricity – not needing to import much due to the large amounts that its nuclear plants, as well as its gas and coal facilities, produced. That changed after the nuclear phase-out and the shift to renewables. In 2011, the country had to buy a third more electricity from France than a year before. It has ramped up on Czech supplies as well.
In the coming months, the output from wind and especially solar power is expected to be much lower than in summer. So during the last quarter of the year, we will need more electricity from across the borders again. With the kilowatt hours, we import a moral dilemma – because our neighbours use nuclear plants to generate large parts of their energy.
Nuclear imports from France and Czech Republic
In France, four out of five megawatt hours are made up of splitting up uranium. In the Czech Republic, about one third of the power is produced by nuclear plants – and these are much more dirty and dangerous than those that Germany so publicly abolished. We are exporting the nuclear risk that we deemed unacceptable in the aftermath of Fukushima. In the case of the Czech Republic to a much poorer nation, who could never afford the luxury of a nuclear phase-out.
We Germans may take issue with nuclear plants in our backyard – like French Fessenheim and Czech Temelin. But we happily take the power even from those facilities. The other old, dirty plants? Not quite on our nimby radar.
Should Germany only import Renewables?
Right now, electricity flows wherever it wants to, driven by supply and demand. Unfortunately, the markets are indifferent to our PC sensibilities. So should German utilities and traders only import power from renewables? Ethically speaking, probably. But is that a viable answer to the problem in a time of merging European markets?
Trumpeting an energy revolution might look avantgardish – but this is another example of the nuts and bolts Germany still has to get right. In the long run, setting up a market for coal and gas plants, which became unprofitable with the rise of green energy, will help reduce dependence on imports. Energy storages can, too. But even the storage technology that seems most viable – pumping water up when the energy is there and letting it down to produce electricity when needed – is far from being ready to be used on a larger scale. For now, Germany might just have to put up with buying energy from its neighbour’s dirty, dangerous nuclear facilities.
The new world Madness
http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/c50.0.403.403/p403x403/375401_395774897172444_1309574027_n.jpg
The new world madness
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2r4u85dCZ4/T8pkBblTYnI/AAAAAAAAAU4/UwjRrnrnFYY/s400/CO2.jpg
Foolish
http://www.sma.de/en/company/pv-electricity-produced-in-germany.html
Italian foolish
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4p2ef9J191o/UJ991G9gOPI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/XjiqcnjkD88/s640/AGW.JPG
Hey Florian,
nice blog! Got a total different opinion, am happy to discuss everything!
First, the net exports didn´t change THAT much after the nuclear phase out. Net export in Winter 2010/11 to Winter 2011/12, after the shutdown of eight nuclear power plants, varied by 0,07 TWh (about 11TWh in total; Variation of 0,6%).
Data here:
http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BNetzA/Presse/Berichte/2012/NetzBericht_ZustandWinter11_12pdf.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
We indeed bought more electricity from France than the year before, but just because of an all time low in 2010! Here is some data I put together:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7843717/PhaseOut%20and%20Imports.JPG
We are, as you stated, indeed ramping up on Czech supply, but for a longer time already and not due to RES. Peak was in 2004. The first nuclear phase out was initiated in 2000, but before 2004 only one nuclear power plant had to be shut down. “Kraftwerk Stade” with 672 MW Capacity, pretty small for a nuclear power plant.
So I don´t see your correlation on Imports and the electricity production from nuclear and renewable sources.
We are also not exporting the risk, we would, if we would rely on the imports from other countries to substitute the missing nuclear energy in Germany. I think we don´t do that because of the rising share of renewable energies. I know…fluctuating energy to baseload, not the same. We are importing nuclear energy and always have, a moral dilemma it is somehow. You´re also asking the question if we should only import renewable energy, that´s technically just not possible.
I also don´t think the Czech Republic will rise its share in nuclear energy. No nuclear power plants are being built there at the moment.
http://www.kernenergie.de/kernenergie-en/nuclear-power/npps-worlwide/index.php
And not even France is succeeding in building new ones.
Only in German: http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2012-12/frankreich-atomkraft-zweifel
Not talking about the total fail of Siemens and Areva in Finnland here…
Your point on setting up a market for coal and gas is very interesting too. It unfortunately wouldn´t help reducing the dependence on imports, we´re importing every energy source to a higher amount than we domestically produce it, except lignite, which shouldn´t be an option. Unfortunately, lignite is an option: http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/12068/rwe-power-ag/locations/lignite/kw-neurath-boa-2-3/
The only solution on lowering our dependence on imports is a higher share of renewable energies and more R&D in storage options! (and of course building storage options
)
I´m strongly in favor of renewables. The gross value added outweighs the costs by far and all over the world countries are interested in German expertise on them. We probably could have it cheaper, yeah…but there is no example on how to do an Energiewende yet, so let´s provide one.
Best,
Denis
Thanks Denis!
I posted something news about the market for coal and gas.
The storages are in fact the central question right here. And the renewables also have to be subsidized depending on how well they integrate into the system (also wrote about that on my new post).
I’m not against the Energiewende at all, I just think that politicians have to actually work on this problem and shed light on the details – and I think it’s up to the public to voice critical aspects of it.
Cheers
Florian
Come on, we in France and the Czech also earn a lot of money from selling you all that nuclear power. The Czechs are so happy from the arrangement that they now plan to go 50% nuclear instead of 30% : http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Czech_Republic_looks_to_more_nuclear-0911127.html
I’ll post more details on Karl’s blog but the detailed numbers from entso-e seem to strongly support the large nuclear electricity export hypothesis. According to this data, the countries Germany currently exports to are the ones that have little nuclear.
By the way, some nice curve of the physical exchanges are available on this, very critical of renewables, German site :
http://wilfriedheck.de/
There’s the curve for France in the 15.11.2012 “Wohin fließt unser Strom” entry, and the one for Czech Republic on the 16.11.2012 “Die deutsche Stromflut überschwemmt Polen” entry
I believe that F and CZ are happy about that arrangement!
But that does not change the fact that we are exporting a risk, does it? I think especially for poor countries this exchange of risk vs money, to which it comes down, must be very attractive. But from a German perspective, isn’t still morally questionable? I mean, a life is a life, right?
“In the Czech Republic, 25 percent of the power is produced by nuclear plants [...]”
Hier heißt es 33 % der Stromproduktion:
http://www.kernenergie.de/kernenergie-wAssets/docs/fachzeitschrift-atw/2012/atw2012_04_kernenergie-weltreport-2011.pdf
Stimmt, es ist offenbar noch mehr. Danke, ist geändert!
In Slowakische Republik not Czech Republic.
Hi Renzo, no, the figures are about Czech Republic.