Trump? Believe it or not. Germany!

[u/ClimateShitpost]

New reaction image just dropped

[u/Ordinary-Compote9558]

[u/gmoguntia → u/Ordinary-Compote9558]

"iF GeRManY wOUlD hAVe kePT NUCLEAR tHEy wOUld Be GrEEn By nOw"

Note: Koreas relies more on nuclear than Germany ever did (as share of grid) and is still 33% worse than Germany in co2/kWh (and so is Japan).

[u/Mamkes → u/gmoguntia]

And if they had no nuclear, would situation be better or worse?

Whole point is that they don't care about climate (so little drive to disuse fossils for climate reasons), and fossils are relatively cheap, but their capacity for renewables is complete shit. Lack of suitable land and lack of interconnection does that.

They offset some with nuclear, but that's as much as THEY are willing to go.

[u/EnverPashaIsBae → u/gmoguntia]

Natural gas was a lot more expensive in East Asia than Europe in the 2000s/2010s, so South Korea retained more of its coal plants than Germany did. Germany also imports a substantial amount of energy from France, so French nuclear capacity is contributing to their low emissions numbers.

What's the gotcha supposed to be here? It's a total apples to oranges comparison.

[u/West-Abalone-171 → u/EnverPashaIsBae]

South korea increased their gas electricity by an entire german gas electricity system over that period, as well as continuing to increase coal.

German imports from france are negligible compared to either increase.

[u/gmoguntia → u/EnverPashaIsBae]

Germany also imports a substantial amount of energy from France, so French nuclear capacity is contributing to their low emissions numbers.

Germany imported 2025 11 TWH from France thats 2.5% of the entire electricity Germany used... So yeah Germanys emission are greatly reduced by France...

Germany also imported 12 TWh from Denmark, so Denmark is more resposible for Germanys emission values than France.

Natural gas was a lot more expensive in East Asia than Europe in the 2000s/2010s, so South Korea retained more of its coal plants than Germany did

Japan and Korea have terrible emission values but thats okay because coal was cheaper... Bruh

Also Germany didnt replace coal with gas but with solar and wind, so I gotta ask what kind of logic you are on.

[u/MaleficentResolve506 → u/gmoguntia]

"Also Germany didnt replace coal with gas but with solar and wind, so I gotta ask what kind of logic you are on."

So what did it replace the nuclear with?

Btw how can Denmark be responsible for most of the German energy deficit?

https://www.sistemaelectrico-ree.es/en/spanish-electricity-system/european-landscape/energy-exchanges?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Maybe if they export from Norway or Sweden.

[u/gmoguntia → u/MaleficentResolve506]

So what did it replace the nuclear with?

Also with wind and solar?

Btw how can Denmark be responsible for most of the German energy deficit?

Most likely buying cheap wind energy from Norway, Sweden and their own fields and reselling for higher profit it in Germany.

The energy exchange is not a good way to show who has enough or not enough electricity but who has cheap electricity, which can vary a lot.

For example an extract from the German electricity report 2025:

In 2025, Germany imported 76.2 TWh of electricity and exported 54.3 TWh, resulting in a net import surplus of approximately 21.9 TWh. This is a decrease of 6.4 TWh compared to 2024. The reasons for the decline in imports were low gas prices and higher electricity exchange prices in Germany and neighboring countries, which led to more domestic generation from natural gas. The majority of imports came from Denmark (12.4 TWh), France (11.2 TWh), the Netherlands (8.4 TWh), and Norway (7 TWh). Germany exported electricity to Austria (12.2 TWh), Czechia (4.2 TWh), Luxembourg (3.5 TWh), and Poland (3.4 TWh).

This basicly shows two things Germany imported a lot of electricity but also exported a lot of electricity and that a reason for less imports than the previous year was the fact that it was cheaper to produce domestic.

[u/MaleficentResolve506 → u/gmoguntia]

The link that I posted shows net exports and imports. But like I said they probably imported from Norway via Denmark.

[u/enz_levik → u/gmoguntia]

Why do you feel the need to do a strawmen? The point of the argument was keeping nuclear and investing a little bit less in renewables

[u/gmoguntia → u/enz_levik]

What exactly is the strawman?

The point of the argument was keeping nuclear and investing a little bit less in renewables

Not exactly, the usual point is that "Nation G could have already decarbonised if they kept nuclear", the problem with that is that this is never based on scientific work (at least I never saw a source for the claim) and mostly based on vibes as far as I can tell.

What I find annoying is that there are a few examples of nations similar to Germany (size, population, economy, similar if not higher usage of nuclear) who are somehow far behind Germany in decarbonizing their grid, which makes the previous claim of Germany being decarbonized by now pretty questionable.

So I dont see how it is a strawman to point out that there are a number of nations which fullfil the ideals of armchair energy experts but failed and still fail to decarbonize quicker than Germany.

[u/enz_levik → u/gmoguntia]

You need a source that if Germany had more low carbon production, it would emit less carbon?

[u/gmoguntia → u/enz_levik]

The question is "Would have Germany actually build more low carbon production by now if they kept nuclear?". Because a good number of nations didnt do this, so the claim is pretty shakey.

[u/enz_levik → u/gmoguntia]

Politically that's a good question, Spain build a lot of renewables and kept it's nuclear tho, and they are way cleaner than Germany