Europe Abandoning Hydrocarbons: Closing 30% of Gas, Coal Plants in Favor of Green Energy

By | Jan. 5, 2014 |
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(By Zachary Shahan)

Following up on a Credit Suisse report stating that ~85% of US energy demand growth would come from renewables by 2025, we thought it would be good to take a look at the energy trends in Europe as well.
Europe’s Fossil Fuel Exit — 30% Of Fossil Fuel Power Capacity To Close By 2017, UBS Analysts Project (via Clean Technica)

Following up on a Credit Suisse report stating that ~85% of US energy demand growth would come from renewables by 2025, we thought it would be good to take a look at the energy trends in Europe as well. Actually, one of our readers pitched this idea…

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Deutsche Welle English reports: “Green Power: [Fossil Fuel] Energy companies to close electricity plants

This post was republished using Repost. Please read it on Informed Comment directly: https://www.juancole.com/2014/01/abandoning-hydrocarbons-closing.html

Posted in Energy,Environment | 10 Responses | Print |

10 Responses

  1. Germany will close almost all its remaining nuclear capacity in just two years, in 2021-2022. The current nuclear production is 3-4 times that of solar PV in Germany. This means any fossil reductions between now and 2022 should be viewed as temporary.

      • Germany has some 25% renewable electricity today and plans to have 35% in 2020. Please see:
        link to en.wikipedia.org

        The increase, e.g 10%, is clearly not enough to replace its 17% nuclear power scheduled to be decommissioned in the 2020-2022 timeframe.

        • By your rationale, the presumed increase in fossil plants around that time can also be viewed as temporary, since the steady growth of renewables is not planned to stop in 2020. Moreover, Germany has consistently exceeded its growth targets for renewables, and continuing advances in production efficiency and storage tech will only make it easier to keep doing so.

  2. My brother in law, living in Barr, south of Strassburg in France, told my wife today that he is going to install a generator of some sort since the local (nuclear) power plant is closing down, sometime soon. Not at all clear, but believe me when I tell you that Alsace isn’t going to generate a lot of either solar or wind power. It is at least as cloudy there as it is in Ann Arbor, maybe more. Jean-Charles tends to some exaggeration, but he is an engineer (trained at ETH in Zurich). I didn’t discuss it with him, but something hard is going on there. dan

    • Solar works just fine in Ann Arbor, though obviously better in the non-deep winter. Strasburg should have loads of wind and if it does not, nearby Switzerland does. It is a matter of laying wires, as Portugal and Germany showed.

      Nuclear plants generate tons of toxic waste that cannot be disposed of safely.

      • The waste can’t be safely disposed of, but the few who profit from nuclear utility monopolies and other scams can tie a nice bow on the cannisters and piles and leave them for our offspring to “fix.” Just like so many other bags of poop excreted by externality-exempt kleptocrats who have suckered and back-doored us into the current set of messes.

  4. This seems to be a harbinger of whats going to happen in much of the world, as the most economic solution is shown to be renewables. Because of expensive natural gas, this is happening sooner in Europe than in the US, but the writing is on the wall.

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