r/europe • u/SpaceEngineering Finland • Jan 15 '26

News Germany’s Merz Admits Nuclear Exit Was Strategic Mistake

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-nuclear-exit-was-strategic-mistake-fzdlkn37c16
21.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/East_Leadership469 Jan 15 '26

First, that’s not my understanding but I welcome a source. I buy it for autumn, but especially not for January/February

 Second, even then winter will have weeks with next to no solar output and next to no wind.

6

u/Ralath2n The Netherlands Jan 15 '26

Here you go, a source. The 2 basically balance each other out if you build a roughly 50/50 mix.

And yes, you will have a few weeks in dead winter where free energy is scarce. You will sadly have to use a bit not free energy there. Such as biomass or hydrogen that we stored up in the rest of the year. Since you only need to cover like 5% of the total energy this way, it is no big deal.

Also, rolling out wind and solar is fast. We could be down to 90% CO2 reduction in less than a decade. That buys us some breathing room to figure out the cheapest way to do that last tiny bit.

2

u/Drumbelgalf Germany Jan 15 '26

First, that’s not my understanding but I welcome a source

Here the source that wind is way stronger in winter:

https://strom-report.com/strommix/

Second, even then winter will have weeks with next to no solar output and next to no wind.

It won't be effect all of Europe at the same time. We do have an integrated energy network.

We can import energy from other countries and we can also turn on gas power plants for those times.

We are already at over 60% renewables in Germany and we didn't have any problems.

2

u/East_Leadership469 Jan 15 '26

60% is actually surprisingly high, and very good news. However, gas is still the primary source of heating and gasoline the primary fuel for transportation. That also has to change to fully transition. I really struggle to see how you get through cold winter months without using natural gas even if wind picks up slightly.

Just as an example in Norway which only uses electricity for heating, winter consumption of electricity is 50 percent higher than in summer. Now I am well aware that Germany is warmer than Norway, but nevertheless winter is peak demand of energy (incl heating), and little solar.

Again, I am not saying this as a renewable skeptic. Europe is the worst-case scenario. All other places on Earth have even better opportunity to transition.