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Hauke Hillebrandt's avatar

Continued reliance on outdated nuclear technology might not have the same crucial global technology spillovers as investments in other clean energy (including advanced nuclear). Since the best path towards global decarbonization is through global technology spillover into emerging economies, the actors that have the best emissions score may, surprisingly, not be the most effective actors at reducing the global rate of emissions in the future. This has some counterintuitive implications. Consider that Germany has higher carbon emissions than France even though it has invested more heavily in solar than its neighbor, which uses much more nuclear. Should advanced economies like Germany leave their nuclear plants running? Perhaps, but it will not make a very large dent in global emissions because 75% of all future emissions will come from emerging economies, which will not adopt the kind of (non-advanced) nuclear power currently in use in Germany. Consider that German citizens environmental footprints are currently less than 4% of the global total, a share that is on the decline.

At one point, German subsidies drove ~⅓ of the global solar adoption, ~86% of which occurred outside Germany (6x) - see https://founderspledge.com/stories/changing-landscape#fnref1

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rex's avatar

Regarding the hypothetical that Germany should have first shut down its coal fired power plants, that could have created perverse incentives similar to what we're seeing in France, where the nukes require more and more money for emergency repairs and maintenance thus sucking up funds and opportunities from other projects. Political power (and funds) is limited, there's only so much you can do before you have to wait until the next elections/funding cycle.

Despite the limited success of the Energiewende, Germany now has only one way forward -- toward a renewables based energy system with flexible demand and supply. Compare that to France where edf is drowning in debt, gen. 3 reactors are unbuildable, old reactors are failing left-and-right, and at the same time the nuke interests are fighting tooth and nail renewable projects at every step.

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