Germany's clean energy drive fails to curb dirty brown coal

[FBaggins]

7. As usual... you've got plenty of spin in there.

Germany has been on the course of rapidly increased renewables penetration for several years now. Just as any new coal capacity coming on line this year was planned prior to 6/2011, very little of the new renewables generation in, say, 2012 was the result of the 6/2011 shift.

Germany produced about 6 TWh more from wind/solar in 2012 than in 2011. How much of that would have been there anyway even if the 6/2011 policy shift had never occured? Come on... be honest. How much?

By contrast, the amount of generation from nuclear power was down more than 40TWh from the ten-year average.

So look again at what their expectations were, say, three years ago. If they planned to receive one or two TWh less than what they ended up getting from solar/wind... but 40+ TWh of nuclear power. What portions of the market would have seen a decline if not coal/gas?

And since coal prices have fallen relative to gas... there is no possible conclusion but that Germany would have had quite a bit less coal generation than what it ended up with. They would still have built the newer "cleaner" (sic) coal plants, but everyone (including you) expected them to be burning LOTS less coal over the next few years.

And let us not forget that they've only shut down about 1/3rd of their nuclear generation. The next 90+ TWh/year of renewables (more than everything they've built in wind/solar to date combined) will do nothing but tread water.