📊 If you appreciate our work, please leave a comment, thumbs up, or both. Your help will improve the algorithm and allow this video to reach more people on TH-cam. 📌 Support GTBT on Patreon! www.patreon.com/GTBT ➡ Paypal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/GoodTimesBadTimes
~"Germany is highly pracmatic" is extrem far from the reality. Germany got over the last 2-3 decades extrem bureaucratic and slowly, in terms of Government implementations and laws.
Globalist using global warming to unify their control is the reason we don’t use nuclear. New age monarchs that don’t have to care about them longevity of their country or a people who know them and will hold them responsible.
Germany has oil and gas reserves, but refuses to exploit them. United States companies have the advanced technology to extract this wealth through advanced drill technologies and Fracking. German Laws and regulation make this 100% impossible, so Americans are happy to sell our oil and refined Diesel to keep the German economy going. That being said. lots of German companies are relocating their petrochemical dependent businesses to the USA. With Immigration, the Greens, low birthrates, etc., Germany is "Stuck on Stupid" and hopefully decides to fix itself while it still can. Hydrogen is stupid and dangerous and making it from Natural Gas creates more pollution than just burning natural gas. The entire hydrogen narrative is a ploy to save the car and truck companies that can't won't switch to electric cars and also want to sell part and maintenance, as electric cars require very little upkeep.
Thanks for the video and your hard work. If I was to criticise I would say this video is a very polish perspective video of Germany... But that is what you are❤. In Poland it's a good day when you have problems with Germany and a bad when you have problems with Russia. I would say you could improve your criticism of Germany (if you wanted the message to resonate more with Germans) if you were to remove some of the historical references because your fact base is very good. But you'll loose them by saying "Germans be Germans". For example why Germans have had this "atom Kraft nein danke" movement for so long is interesting.
German Scientist here: Your analysis of German strategic thinking of the past 150 years is stunningly accurate. It isn't very often that you see videos like this, even (or maybe especially) by Germans themselves. Great work on your research and also great work on your presentation style. Keep up he good quality!
@@mrwhips3623 it's the name of a profession. According to the oxford dictionary it refers to "a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences." I hope this helps. /s
@@mrwhips3623 Well, either he's a scientist in an unrelated field and deliberately omits this piece of information in order to use his profession as an appeal to authority , in which case....it means nothing. Or he does posses a relevant degree, in which case I'd have to wonder why he decided to leave out the only relevant information in the lead-in. Alternatively he's just really happy about his profession and just wanted to share it :D
It's even more frustrating when I learned about how Green parties across Europe and the UK received support from Putin's Russia. And one can see that the success of the greens has, for now, meant an increase in reliance on natural gas, which increased reliance on Russia. Now it gets shipped across the ocean from the US, which puts out a ton of emissions before it even gets burned. I wish there was a green party that was worth supporting but I don't know of any I've ever seen once since I started paying attention.
@BiggestCorvid I think at a national level a libdem-conservative coalition combined with left-wing municipalities give the greenest policy. At least, that's how we got so much solar energy and electric cars in the Netherlands the grid can't handle it anymore. I can indeed see the Germans going all-in on policies that don't work or are only working in Putin's favor. Inviting migrants to then spread them across the EU was such a gamble. Clean diesel engines also were a backfiring gamble. And now this silly gambit on green hydrogen. Here in the Netherlands the lobby remains strong enough to continue it while there are several alternatives ready to just make investing into hydrogen a waste of energy. But of course as always Russia has found a way to help Germany out by reusing empty gas fields for underground blue hydrogen generation. That's of course a solution too good for Germany to resist it, leading to the further Ruscistification of Europe.
@@BiggestCorvid The Finnish green's from what I recall happen to be explicitly pro-nuclear after some pro-nuclear scientist joined their ranks and was able to convince the majority of the green party in Finland to drop the nuclear-phobia
The ending of the nuclear power in germany when they already had plants working safely is a tragedy. The dangers of nuclear power are overblown, it resulted in higher emissions. The anti-nuclear element is one of the greens I resent the most.
Green politics is just fear mongering without any semblance of logic. They fear nuclear energy because 'Muh Chernobyl, muh Fukushima'. Then they get their way nuclear energy is off the table. Then they start panicking because of climate change and co2 emissions. When presented with the fact that nuclear energy is on the low side of co2 emissions, they cry again 'Muh Chernobyl, muh Fukushima' and then proceed to ramp up the use of coal and Russian gas. Then they destroy untouched lands and eco systems to build their wind parks. Funding solar energy in this oh so sunny country is just the icing on the cake...
To be fair only about 10% of Germany's power came from nuclear when the shut off. And 3 of the 6 reactors was to be shut down anyways due to old age. So Germany only lost about 5% of its totalt energy needs.
One thing everyone should take into account is that hydrogen is not an energy source, is an energy storage method. Due to conservation of energy it is impossible to recover more (or the same) energy from transforming H into H2O than it takes to transform H2O into H.
Yes, but you can say the same for batteries, electricity is converted to chemical energy and convert back to electricity again, you don’t get the same watts used to charge the battery. They are not as power dense. Burning fossil fuel convert chemicals to heat, turning turbines (kinetic) to dynamo(electricity) lost much more energy. Even combustion engine vehicles lost most of the fuel burned. Hydrogen is energy intensive to produce, but the fuel cells are very efficient in electricity conversion. That means the H2 can pack more energy than other forms of storage.
@@madsam0320batteries are just antenna. It's not being converted into chemical energy. Electrification of batteries (recharging) simply re-orients the microcrystaline lattuce of the electrolytes in the battery. Allowing them to function as a proper antenna for ambient RF frequency. Over time during use, the structure of the chemical antenna decays and needs to be reoriented
To skip the history lesson go to 50 minutes for the hydrogen part. Your should really start using the YT feature to mark video parts for longer videos like this.
One important thing to note is that the initial exit from nuclear power energy in germany was already agreed upon in 2000 under Schröder (SPD/Greens) and then later sped up in 2011 under Merkel (CDU/CSU/FDP). Edit: This is mentioned later on in the video, but at the start it is emitted, which confused me.
Also called the Exit of the exit of the exit. As Schröder wanted to phase it out. Merkel reversed that decision, just to reverse back after Fukushima happened.
Just like Japan betting on hydrogen, this has nothing to do with a green transition or powering clean cars. That's the propaganda. Hydrogen is both a form of energy storage and chemical input. If you're just viewing this from an energy perspective it doesn't make much sense--Germany's stubborn abandonment of nuclear energy comes to mind. However, nuclear power doesn't provide the molecules needed for fertilizer or weapons (bullets, artillery, explosives, propellants). Both countries are resource poor and need to maintain and expand industries to maintain their technical edge as much as their sovereignty. Both wish to pursue more independent foreign policy. They're also both threatened by either Russia, China, or both and the world is becoming increasingly fractured and unstable including supply chains. Even if H turns out to be very expensive and complicated, they will eat the cost if it means they are more or less self-sufficient in weapons production.
This. So much this. Hydrogen allows for substitution of almost all oil and LNG in chemical processing as well as the mentioned energy generation. It also allows one to use overcapacity efficiently to store up energy for later and does not require imports once set up. Once the hydrogen economy is up and running in the first place, almost all of the most important chemical precursors required for modern industry and civilization as well as the energy to run it become completely independent of imports, outside influences and thus effectively of supply. It's almost irrelevant how efficient or inefficient the creation and storage of hydrogen is, because at that point it just becomes a scalable problem; since you can just store up energy and use it however you want, you can effectively just build an infinite amount of production, because the resources you need to fuel it are for all intents and purposes infinite and thus free. Efficiency only determines the upfront cost you need to pay to get it running in the first place and the slope of your growth curve, once it's running, you can just scale to infinity and not care about the efficiency.
Some time ago I saw information that Germany had developed a method of storing hydrogen in the form of a gel. However, the Japanese Toyota used cartridges to transport this gas. There may be synergy and a change in the "ecological" approach in the EU ;-). This could help it continue to dominate the car market. Because the big yellow dragon set about devouring the car market.
There is no dichotomy between hydrogen as an industrial gas and nuclear power. Having nuclear power doesn't stop a country from producing hydrogen. On the contrary.
@@TimJBenham No one is claiming otherwise. That's missing the point though. Fission reactors are very expensive to build and maintain, require extensive security and have considerable very long term costs, while also being dependent on Uranium imports and geographically concentrated and thus vulnerable. Solar and wind power have none of those drawbacks; their chief and main drawback is the mismatch between supply and demand, which is solved by hydrogen.
@@TimJBenham I never said or implied any dichotomy between hydrogen and nuclear power, let alone hydrogen as 'an industrial gas' as you mention in one of its specific states. Perhaps you're answering another comment. I merely stated that hydrogen is not a source of energy but a vector/means of storage of energy with chemical/industrial properties that will be useful no matter the cost and that as a means of storage it has concomitant inefficiencies and energy losses at every stage of conversion and storage.
Sabina Hossenfelder a German physicist with a great science channel explains issues with hydrogen. Both Germany and Japan are going the hydrogen route, with the two of them teaming up what could go wrong? Honestly, I hope they succeed they are two of my favorite countries.
If they're using for plane i can get behind it because battery add alot of weight and unlike gas thye don't get lighter but everything else go electric for vehicles and any machine or nuclear and renewable for power hydrogen dont make sense to me
It makes no sense to convert green electricity into hydrogen. That process alone is only 85% efficient. And then combusting the hydrogen for transportation is at best 60% efficient with today's technology. That's a 55% loss compared to just using the electricity.
@@ChrisTaylor-NEP For sure. Hydrogen is only useful as a last resort. If it can be easily electrified, that's the first choice. It's simply more efficient.
Well it is oversimplyfied to speak about hydrogen only in terms of powering cars. There are plenty of uses where hydrogen is the only viable alternative to fossil carbohydrates: - Steel. Chemical reduction of iron ores via hydogen is the only viable alternative to using coke (coal). - High temperature processes. Glass, ceramics, cement, metallurgy etc. etc. is made at temperatures above 1000°C that cannot be electrified economically due to Ohm's LAw (higher temperature = higher resistance). You need a flame and the only viable alternative to natural gas is hydrogen. - Organic chemistry. Everything from plastics, sythetic fibres, medicine etc. etc. is made of organic compoungs e.g. hydrocarbons. Those chemicals are made of carbon and hydrogen. The only alternative to using fossil carbohydrates as base chemicals is to produce hydrocarbon from biomatter. But there's a limit to sustainable production without interfereing in food production and converting more land for agriculture. Everything beyond that would need to be produced via direct synthesis of simple hydrocarbons like methane, methanole, formic acid or formaldehyde via CO2 and hydrogen and build everything else with these basic blocks. - Ammonia production. Ammonia is also an important base chemical without which we wouldn't have fertilizer, explosives and dyes would cost a fortune. It needs hydrogen to produce. - Global energy trade. Not every place with an excess supply of renewable energy can be physically linked via cable to a place with a demand for energy. In this case a major alternative to trading fossil fuels would be to ship hydrogen or synthetic fuels produced with hydrogen. - Ships, planes and large machines. Imagine a plane taking five stops to recharge or a construction side being paused three times a day to recharge machines. Insane. You need synthetic fuels produced with hydrogen to keep the economy going. Conclusion: Hydrogen will be an essential component of a fossil free economy. There is simply no working solution that can cover all the listed aspects in one system. Germany examplfies great foresight in this field. I hope they will be succesful, they deserve it. PS: Steam engines are 10% efficient. That's the difference between a pre-modern agrarian and an industrialized society. Diesel engines are 30% efficient. That's the difference between the 19th century and today. 60% efficiency is absolutely fantastic. It means a golden future for humanity if we avoid climate catastrophy. NOT transforming the energy economy is the riskiest thing we can do.
Nah, we have plenty of idiots here - no need to invoke the Russians. If anything, they might have worked to strengthen or encourage already existing trends as they do in all rival countries. Shooting ourselves in the foot has been a German tradition since 1914 - no sign of us stopping anytime soon.
@@markotrieste Well documented that anti nuclear movement got support from Russia in the 80s. Look around. Afterwards the Russian did it more discreetely
@@michaelrenper796 I know about that. But that interference was Soviet, from the cold war era, and was aimed at nuclear weapons, not power plants, and had nothing to do with energy independence but rather with war preparedness. I thought you had information about recent anti-nuclear-plants propaganda under Putin supervision for energy dependency purposes.
Never has a channel earned my sub faster than this one. Even though I've been through German history in school a good half dozen times this perspective and analysis was still fresh and helped me understand my country's history on a level which I simply hadn't considered prior. Thank you for your amazing work!
@@MajinOthinus Natural gas has an odorant added so you can detect it by smell. You could add an odorant to hydrogen, but the hydrogen could leak where the larger odorant molecules could not escape, so it would not do much good.
@@vulpo That is only really relevant in the theoretical. Any "opening" that is small enough for that to occur is small enough to be entirely irrelevant in context.
Hydrogen also has the problem of making materials brittle. It's reactive and its atoms are so small that they fit into the gaps between the atoms in just about any other material. Expect the hydrogen infrastructure to eventually start having pieces of it break like glass.
The Hydrogen-Story is not so simple. First: The really big potential in green hydrogen is the possibility to store specifically photovoltaic power, PV is very efficient but has the major flaw of reaching its highest capacity in summer, when the least amount of energy is needed and almost zero in the winter, when energy consumption is highest. And batteries or pump-storage hydro-electricity plants can't manage that. So Green Hydrogen has this important place. And there is also white Hydrogen, thats naturally occuring and can be harvested. The problem here is that we only discovered it in the 80s and the process to understand how this natural effect functions is still in motion. So we don't know yet how to find more white hydrogen and also can't estimate how big the world reserves of it could be. On the engineering level it seems to be a very good solution for everything thats big and has to go far, like Ships, submarines and Trucks but not a solution for small city cars and Scooters
Good comment. White hydrogen got some hype around the beginning of the year with some major discoveries... but no update since then. However, you forget about the less speculative blue hydrogen (converting a mix of fossil fuels and water to a mix of hydrogen and CO2 and subsequently storing the CO2 in suitable underground reservoirs). Blue hydrogen is cheaper today than green hydrogen* and while financial analysts predict the latter to become cheaper than the former in a decade or 2, I think basic thermodynamic considerations give the blue variant a structural edge over the green variant... To bridge the gap between what thermodynamics suggests and the real world you need scientists that build machines that approach the thermodynamic efficiency limits in a cost-effective way and this may be where Germany's belief in technology decides like the video wants to suggest. *In fact, Biden's IRA seems to have the effect that blue (and opposed to green) hydrogen is about to boom this decade in the US, with the US becoming global hydrogen leader. This context could explain the big attention at COP28 for CCS. Blue hydrogen is usually associated with natural gas as the fossil fuel feedstock (CO2 can typically be stored in the same reservoir where the gas was extracted from), but the Germans are perhaps secretly betting on a variant with coal.
I like a lot both channels, in English and in Polish. I'd like to have a subtitled version for the polish channel (could be automatic Closed Captions even), it would help me to improve my polish significantly.
Think I’ve never understood recent German history better than I do after this video. Fantastic content and delivery accomplished here. Thank you for all of your great research and compiling of it. Great conclusions drawn.
You have misunderstood this if you think it will mean the highest electricity prices in the world. Most electricity will come from renewables, which are the cheapest electricity available. Only for intermediate periods will the stoed power (hydrogen) be used. All in all, it should still play out as a cheap and reliable green power - and even if unforeseen issues appear, they won't be insurmountable, and the prices will always be cheaper than with nuclear, which today, for new power plants IS the most expensive form of electricity production.
so you want to tell me that GER has cheap electricity. and that there are no energyheavy industries that are in the process of moving out? come on. but maybe its just politicians that fuck it up by not building offshore and long transmission lines... and of course nuclear is bad if you as a country has lost the skill like the brits who seem completely incapable of getting one plant built. the question that i honestly ask myself is: has nuclear always been the most expensive or is it a question of scale? has it really been a prestige project in every country all the time?
@@maxsk9074 No. I am telling you that we WOULD have cheap electricity (and WILL have it), had the conservatives of the past not done everything they could to strangle renewables (which grew nevertheless). Nuclear has become more expensive as experience with the technology grew and safety standards had to be raised. Of course, countries that want to have nuclear weapons would not care for that, since they need the technology for that other reason.
@@ianhenkso to summarise: politicians fucked up by making renewable expensive by burocracy, absurd zoning and environmental excuses they still manage to wreck solar production and politicians removed any prospect for future nuclear constrution by increasing "safety standards" and introducing more distrust to this i would certainly agree 😂 wheather nuc or renew is superior in the future...you very well might be right. i dont know and it does not matter as the path has been chosen at least 15y ago but just because its possibly cheap does not mean it will be it ceratainly cost more than one portion of icecream to switch
@@kommtzeitkommtradt5969 there is nothing unclear about it. Use reactors that consume waste and build storage inside geological structures. You see some rocks with layers and swirls? Rock flows, and some rock types trap and store materials geologically. With careful choice and some digging, you can build a storage warehouse where in 1000 years, the earth will have crushed and sealed it - water tight. Not all rock works like this, but salt domes work well and most of them are already dug out. These formations exist only in conditions of geological isolation on the scale of thousands of years as a requirement of their formation. Every salt dome is the perfect storage site.
@@kommtzeitkommtradt5969 at least, you have waste you can store somewhat. thats a major upside against fossil energy, which is the current alternative. and do we really want to calculate the prices against fossil fuel induced global warming? nuclear energy becomes more attractive if you think about it this way. (yes, in the end, everything needs to be renewable anyways, i know, but we're not there yet. and between coal/oil/gas and nuclear, nuclear is a very clear winner imo)
This is one of the better episodes on this channel. It's nice that the historical context was shown so accurately. As far as hydrogen is concerned, I would be happy if the Germans managed to perfect this technology so that it makes economic sense. Then the fossil fuel monopoly would no longer be relevant.
I just want to point out that Die Welt and Cicero are both right-leaning, at times populist, publications and that the nuclear phase out was decided by the conservative Merkel government. I’m not trying to defend intransparency and bad timing of the current government but we should try to understand the whole picture.
Yes thank you! While the current government certainly isn't perfect, they ti easily get all the blame for bad decisions by the previous Merkel Governments which reigned for 16 years.
Merkel and her gov was maybe right leaning 30 years ago, but not after that. They gradually became more and more left, and today its a center-left party
Brilliant analysis, a completely unique angle to historical perspective on technology and its influence on energy transition. You must do similar analysis on other EU states, but not necessarily on energy alone though.👍
3 cents are fake costs. These were calculated by assuming a superficial best case scenario with 100% workload 24/7/365 over the whole lifespan (30 to 40 years).
It is true, in Sweden we do it right now att that cost. Including demolition. The problem is that you need to keep the power plants for a verry long time
Loving the long form video. An interesting insight into a nation that is seen as so economically rock solid- decision making in Germany leaves a lot to be desired. Greetings from Spain
What I think is under discussed is the absolute GLUT of oxygen this implies. If electrolysis becomes the norm, oxygen co-produced is going to dwarf modern ASU production, which may make a slew of technologies relevant. Oxycombstion comes to mind, burning NG or Biomass in pure oxygen removes Nitrogen from the flue gas, which makes the products just H20 and C02, and its very easy to seperate water from a gas. In some places, that water might even be a valuable product, like SAGD in the oil sands. Also, Casinos tend to pump in oxygen to make you stay awake feel good and gamble all night. Maybe morally dubious, but I would be interested in seeing if boosting O2 during the mid day in retirement homes had a similar effect.
Surely it should be piped into factories and offices to boost productivity, not wasted on casinos and retirement homes. It would make more economic sense to pipe CO to those places.
Hydrogen has the huge problem of breaking backwards compatibility with hundreds of billions of dollars of existing infrastructure and vehicles. At least with EVs, they had the pre-existing power grid to lean upon. If they were to use hydrogen to make synthetic fuel, perhaps with captured carbon so they could call it carbon neutral, then it could use the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, which reduces a vast number of technical, logistical, and economic headaches of switching everything over. Something like synthetic ethanol, kerosene, or petrol for vehicles, and methane for existing gas power plants.
I should add here that the main use of Hydrogen would not be to power EVs. Its main use would be as a natural gas substitute for example steel plants. Afterwards would be Energy storage from renewables. And then maybe Hydrogen trucks. For some reason it is always forgotten, that not all Energy needs can be transitioned to electric.
Amazing, been looking forward to listening to your analysis after work since I saw it dropped today. So glad you're back narrating. I think the comments really appreciated you coming back. Unfortunately, some things can't be delegated. Would a BBC nature documentary be the same if it wasn't David Attenborough telling us about it?
Nuclear power is extremely costly and a crime against people in the future who will have to pay a large share of the expenses. It is multiple times more expensive than e.g. wind and only economically feasible when heavily subsidized. And the companies/people who profit from nuclear power plants will not pay for the costs of building them back and taking care of the nuclear waste in the future. There is only one single deep geological repository so far (in the US) and there have already been incidents and it is already discussed to be not a safe place to store nuclear waste at all. There is not a single deep geological repository that is likely to be a safe place to store nuclear waste for even a fraction of the time it needs to be stored. Nuclear power plants is like setting the couch on fire to grill a sausage on a stick and to "think about potential problems later" (when it is actually not your house and you plan to simply run away once the sausage is hot and leave the owners die in their burning house).
This video should be called "How Germany tries and fails to engineer its way out of problems." Hydrogen is a way to store and use energy. It is not a source of energy. They still have to mine for coal, oil, and uranium to power the reactors to create the hydrogen. Honestly, if the Germans were thinking straight, they would be investing in 4th generation fission reactors to hold them over while the engineers finish ironing out the kinks in fusion.
Funnily enough an option that is highly fesable would be to subsidize hydrogen or ammonia production in the maghreb, levant or arabian peninsula and then import it. Most of those countries are some kind of authoritarian though, making this politically spicy.
@@cahdoge Atacama desert in Chile has more solar irradiation than all those countries combined, Chile is a highly democratic, stable country with free trade agreements with most of the world
Germany is producing exceess renewables very often and currently have to shut the wind turbines down very often, since they cannot dliver the energy to the consumers properly. Here comes the idea to store that into hydrogen which then can later be used to produce energy in gas power plants when there is neither wind or sun.
@@mla2385 That is stupid logic. You could do the same thing much cheaper with HTC or pyrolysis. It is cheaper and easier to store. Germans are being stupid for the sake of an anti-humanist Gaia cult.
Europe : you know Germany, nuclear is simplier and reliable. Germany : i will not do nuclear. Europe : ok but it's also cheaper. Germany : I will not do nuclear ! Europe : But...developing new technologies will need time and a lot of money. Germany : I WILL NOT DO NUCLEAR !
@@jackdoesstuff9033 Gas is the most expensive one by a long shot (oil isn't really relevant but even higher), renewables are the cheapest. Nuclear is somewhere in the middle. Some studies even quote it at 5x the price of onshore wind and 1.5x coal. Just look at diagrams for merit order and market clearing price for germany, actual prices. Nuclear power plants also emit far more lifetime CO2 emissions than renewables.
Hydrogen is the way to go as there are already new effective methods to store Hydrogen without the use of pressure or low temperature. Powerpaste for example is a mix with magnesium that is very clean and only needs water to make it to hydrogen again. Being self sufficient in energy resources is always a good goal. As it means you do not have to bow down to others. If it doesn't work out it doesn't matter as it would just mean one is in the pre Hydrogen situation. I mean this time no one is going to war. Personally I would hope the energy for Hydrogen would be won by Geothermal Energy, modern technologies as from Quaise could make this possible at cost that are quite low.
Another long term infrastructure plan Germany should be celebrated is the electric highway. They have thousands of Km of what are basically trolley/street car overhead wires planned aling highways so the Transport Trucks can operate electrically. That would allow not just long distance electric trucking, but allow it with a small battery that only has to cover 50km to the hoghway, where it van charge as you drive, and then power you 50km to a destination.
Eh, there's a lot of concern about how practical those will be to maintain. Those overhead lines can wear out frightfully quickly if the ...pickups? on the vehicles aren't kept in good condition. They're also pretty expensive to construct. I'm not saying the concept it doomed, but it's a lot more difficult to electrify highways than rail lines. It might prove more practical to minimize the reliance on long haul road transport rather than going to such great lengths to make it green.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 "electricifying" freeways and spending billions and billions to do so isn't a good use of limited money when you could get much more milage with the same amount of money electrifying railways.
You have to differentiate between electrical energy and hydrogen. Most processes that need energy now can use electrical energy with more efficiency (think heat pumps and electric cars) then with the fosil counterparts. Replacing those with hydrogen would be really dump. But there are processes that need very dense energy (planes) or the act of redoxing something (steel). those processes need hydrogen. You also have to consider that we already have a surplus of green energy when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. This will become even more. Using this energy to produce hydrogen is practically free, you can even earn money when you take that energy of the grid. So it's actually a pretty good plan, imho.
Germany is one of the worst places to site green energy production - not particularly windy, sunny, or close to the equator. Even if you could get hydrogen production via electrolyzers to be cost efficient, Germany would still be an importer of energy. The right way to look at this is not as an extension of German industrial innovation, but German ability to fall for ideology.
This is just wrong. The North Sea is globally one of the most ideal areas for wind power, with its shallow, windy waters. Meanwhile, the Alps, with their abundance of small rivers that need to be regulated anyway (protection against often-occurring floods), provide huge potential for hydroelectric power. Solar energy might not have a lot of sun hours in a year, but the private sector is still profiting from it, and panels on a roof don’t hurt anyone. Finnaly utilizing the abundant gas infrastructure, hydrogen could be the key ingredient to provide energy in case of a Dunkelflaute (a time with no sun or wind).
@@vidiewer4201 Germany isn't in the north sea, at least with respect to wind power. Germany doesn't have any significant untapped hydro-power. It is still cloudy and far from the equator, despite government subsidies. You are delusional. You would be part of the Hilter Youth.
Yet in 2023, renewables accounted for a record share of 59.7 percent of the net public net electricity generation in Germany. This is magnificent nation, when they do not fall for dictators promises
@@snowbarsyk You too would sign up for the Hitler Youth. This has resulted in them decreasing lignite mining by what percent? Nice that you identify net electricity production. How much storage capacity is being installed?
@richdobbs6595 i would sign up indeed, i am not particularly smart, have love to my parents, do not want them go to jail Hitler Youth was not optional if it bothers you Do not be upset too much about Germany. Stress is bad for heart
Very nice video. I personally think, that we will see sooner massive cheap and big electric batteries rather than hydrogen contributing outside of space industries to the wealth.
Well, as a German, the nuclear energy part was explained a bit hard from the view of right wing media as Welt or Cicero. No mention of the fact that building new nuclear plants is hellishly expensive(i.e. the new one in GB) and it is missing out that nuclear energy is heavily subsidized.
The price of energie per kWh of nuclear can't be right at a minimum they must exclude building cost, storage cost of spent fule and deconstruction cost of the powerplant. Please sorces i like to check that.
I agree 3¢ a KW hour is like the low South Korea was approaching. I can only assume it's because they are old plants which have paid down construction like you said.
The existing German nuclear power plants might of operated at 3¢ a kw as construction cost was already paid down, they shouldn't of been closed down early. That was an awful waste. Recently the Koreans are getting close to that figure, but for the most part new nuclear reactors aren't getting anywhere near that price and are far more than wind and solar.
@@isaacblackman1996 When you calculate price of wind and solar, for comparison with nuclear, you need to fully load both required storage and factor in ability to throttle production. It has been justified to build pumped hydro based on available nuclear power. It is never been cost effective to build pumped storage based on wind and solar. It is only effective to use battery storage for off-grid living and RVs. Not even economic in in expensive places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or self-imposed islands like South Australia. The "huge" batteries in those places are mainly frequency regulation with a bit of flexibility to start up natural gas turbines or weather a minor disruption. The deployment of wind and solar is based on reducing the reliability of the grid or transferring costs to fossil fuel plants.
There is misinformation in this video. 1) Cost of energy currently is not higher than before the ukraine war (so not especially high for german standards) 2) Nuclear power was only that cheap because of massive subsidies (current example being france) 3) The decision to move out of nuclear was NOT made by the greens (although they strongly supported the position) but by the more conservative Union after the Fukushima disaster.
Most nuclear plants of that era can have their lifespan extended to at least 80 years. Possibly beyond. You've just heard anti nuclear propaganda, like 90% of Germans.
I dont think that was a big issue, in Sweden we have equally old plants and they will continue to run for decades. Germany hade the best maintained nuclear fleet in the world.
This video hits on the head what my issue is with Hydrogen being the fuel source everyone is thinking the world should transition to. They don't understand the logistics of transporting and storing this is much harder and non-conducive for what currently exists. this is not the mythical energy solution anyone should look for, especially when it comes to transportation (except maybe for certain forms of public transportation), it's not even a good source for energy storage, as Hydrogen is immensely energy intensive to prevent from slowly escaping over a long period of time.
@@john.8805 Most of the energy we buy is from scandinavia and that is mostly green. Sweden has nuclear power but that is for domestic use. Foreign demand is satisfied with mainly hydroelectric power. 2023 France was the country germany exported the most electricity to. Also Belgium was importing german electricity in 2023. Ah that table from statista was from first 6 months only. In general we export electricity in winter and import in summer. We could have produced our own power, but that time the green energy from outside was cheaper than from our coal and gas power plants. In winter we have enough own green power and can sell it to the french. France has a higher electricity generation costs than germany. Germany is actually below EU average. France has lots of tax money in the electricity price. They even governized the EDF and took over the 60 bio Euro debt the company had and also the hundreds of billions that are required to renovate old nuclear plants and rebuild some of the oldest ruins.
Hydrogen economy has always been an attractive energy source. Main problem has been economical production and storage, with an additional headache of being highly corrosive if used directly as a combustion source. Fuel cells are still way too expensive, but the hope is there will be a breakthrough at some point. Missing from this great overview is the very interesting technology that produced Hydrogen using high temperature chemical reactions, some of which are very cheap and actually recycle the chemicals making a closed loop system. Pairing this with high temperature focused solar arrays to produce Hydrogen would be the ideal solution.
The discovery of gigantic underground supplies of pure energy solves the supply problem. All we have to do is to complete a re-fueling system that draws on these, as well as other, forms of hydrogen production. That means that H is the ` magic bullet ' to climate change
1:28 - Sounds to me like a crazy comic scientist that is screaming: "At one day it will work and all of you will see!! You will come crouching towards me and beg me for forgiveness for your ignorance!!"
Running the nuclear power plants exceeding spring would have increased risks due to worn-out fuel elements, not because the plants themselves were unsafe. The report acknowledged the good condition of the power plants but overlooked the issue of old fuel elements. Both EnBW and RWE highlighted potential risks associated with using old fuel elements. If the plan is to shut down the nuclear power plants soon, it wouldn't make economic sense to invest in new fuel elements. In this context, it appears to be more of an economic decision rather than an ideological one.
It is striking that only countries with plenty of tax money invest in new nuclear power plants - not private companies at all. Even in Germany, energy executives show no interest. Because they are already aware: Nuclear power plants are much too expensive. No kilowatt-hour from a newly built nuclear power plant can compete with one from a wind turbine or solar panel. The IPCC made this clear in a statement: “Newly constructed nuclear power plants were never competitive and will not be on the foreseeable future.
It could be, but it also could not be. It remains to be seen. If the world decides it would like to use Hydrogen at scale it will be great. However if we are the only ones using it the scale does not make it a really profitable venture.
Hydrogen is first and foremost a dead end technology which provides minimal advantages over alternative options, obviously it's better than petroleum and LNG but that's not really what it's being compared against.
Depends Australia, Turkey and China would be three great countries to work with in this sector. Also using this tech in countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia and Indonesia who are ripe for industrialisation but are energy insecure would be a huge benefit to Germany
The good news is South Australia has a large Green Hydrogen plant, Canada has several, built for Germany, being constructed on the East coast to export ammonia, and the US has 7 hydrogen Hubs being developed.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 There was a reason it was even abandoned in space flight. The mass storage, shipping and production of hydrogen are all problematic compared to equivalent solid state energy storage technologies combined with renewables.
I just want to commend you on your or your editor's (editors'?) selection of pictures. Every source of any news has some bias, but it seems to me like you do not pick pictures of individuals to fit a narrative, even if it's clear you have a position on a topic (i.e., bad person looks bad or angry, good person looks friendly and lively).
I must say, I have some problems with the video. Lets begin with nuclear energy. In 2002 the phase out of nuclear energy was set by the coalition of red SPD(socalist) and green (environmentalist fromed out of the antinuclear movment). In 2010 the nuclear phase out was moved back by a coalition of black CDU/CSU (conservative the party of Angela Merkel) and yellow FDP (liberal), but just 3 months after this the fukushima incident happend and they made a turnaround, there they set the date for the shut down of the last three nuclear reaktors. [1] Now at this set time in end of 2022 the last nuclear rectors should be shut down, but in Germany there was a energy crisis because of the ukraine war, so after some discussion the operation of the plants was extended for 3 months (the time the nucelar fuel elements will last). At this time Nuclear made 6,7% of energy prodution. [2] After that some partys wanted to extend the lifetime of the remaining three reactors, but they got no renewal from the ministry of economics (Habecks ministry). But to give a nuclear powerplant a renewal there a some very high obstacles to overcome, so first of all it would need to undergo a big inspection (just every 10 years necessary, deferred because of its soon shut down). With that it wouldn't have the newest security technologys (not so easy to integrate and very costly). The other option is to just lower the standards (not happening in Germany).[3] Next is nuclear fuel that needs to be purchased and produced (takes about 18-24 months, in a faster process 12-15 months), also here is a high dependencie on other countries (mostly not democratic or unstable, in order of mined uranium Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia, Usbekistan, Russia, Niger, China, India, South Afriaca).[4] German nuclear power plants have one of the highest security standards on this planet, but the threats for this plants are not foreseeable, from natural disasters to a terroist attack (maybe per plane) to hybrid warfare operations from states organized (and of course incorrect operation). And in the end you need bury all of it and hope it never see the light of the sun again. To the graphic [5] with the prices in 3:21 I found very contrary data like in source[6], also never heard from tech-for-future before. To use WELT and cicero as source in this case is like searching on fox news about positive news from the democrats. With the transition from fossil to renewable energy, there are new obstacles to overcome. Through solar and wind we are dependend on natur. But here comes one of the biggest weaknesses about nuclear they are best to produce energy 24/7 but with renewables there are days were more energy is produced then we can consume. So a energy source is needed that can complement renewables and is also renewable without producing CO2 when produced green. Here comes H2 into play. With gas plants that can in future burn H2. But H2 isn't only used as an energy storage, but also for steele and chemical production. NOT for cars, this will be way to expensive and waste of this ressource. Also I don't understand what this middle history part should show me. Just looked to bismark and then skipped to the H2 part. Source: [1] www.base.bund.de/DE/themen/kt/ausstieg-atomkraft/ausstieg_node.html [2] www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022.pdf Slide 10 [3] www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/P-R/pruefvermerk-laufzeitverlaengerung-atomkraftwerke.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=6 [4] investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy-investing/uranium-investing/uranium-producing-countries/ [5] www.tech-for-future.de/kosten-kwh/ [6] www.dw.com/de/faktencheck-ist-atomenergie-klimafreundlich-was-kostet-strom-aus-kernkraft/a-59709250
Some notes: Your pertinent sources are not exactly unbiased (ie quoting the government ministry that made the strategy and is known for fuddling with the truth) and of all this is true why is the industry complaining and not rejoicing as it seems to be a perfect strategy?
i just watched a video, german science woman, dont know her channel, who literally just said hydrogen is the worst thing to rely on. i think I'll take a scientists' word over this
There are some mistakes with your documentation. The cheapest source of electricity is currently Wind, solar and lignite in germany. Nuclear power was the most expensive one and is in France too, but they are used to push lots of tax money in the electricity prices. Still the french had to nationalize the EDF with app 100bio Euro in debt plus hundreds of billions ahead for refurbishing the old dinosaurs or build new ones. The problem was, they did not price in the regular maintenance, refurbishing and rebuilding and waste management to the electricity costs. Power generation costs in germany are currently below European average without nukes and in france above average. The new hinckley c in UK f.e. will deliver electricity for app 17ct per kWh when it is supposed to be finished in 2028 after 15 years construction while offshore windpower is at 3ct per kWh.
📊 If you appreciate our work, please leave a comment, thumbs up, or both. Your help will improve the algorithm and allow this video to reach more people on TH-cam.
📌 Support GTBT on Patreon! www.patreon.com/GTBT
➡ Paypal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/GoodTimesBadTimes
~"Germany is highly pracmatic" is extrem far from the reality. Germany got over the last 2-3 decades extrem bureaucratic and slowly, in terms of Government implementations and laws.
Globalist using global warming to unify their control is the reason we don’t use nuclear. New age monarchs that don’t have to care about them longevity of their country or a people who know them and will hold them responsible.
Too much irrelevant waffle.
Germany has oil and gas reserves, but refuses to exploit them. United States companies have the advanced technology to extract this wealth through advanced drill technologies and Fracking. German Laws and regulation make this 100% impossible, so Americans are happy to sell our oil and refined Diesel to keep the German economy going. That being said. lots of German companies are relocating their petrochemical dependent businesses to the USA. With Immigration, the Greens, low birthrates, etc., Germany is "Stuck on Stupid" and hopefully decides to fix itself while it still can. Hydrogen is stupid and dangerous and making it from Natural Gas creates more pollution than just burning natural gas. The entire hydrogen narrative is a ploy to save the car and truck companies that can't won't switch to electric cars and also want to sell part and maintenance, as electric cars require very little upkeep.
Thanks for the video and your hard work. If I was to criticise I would say this video is a very polish perspective video of Germany...
But that is what you are❤.
In Poland it's a good day when you have problems with Germany and a bad when you have problems with Russia. I would say you could improve your criticism of Germany (if you wanted the message to resonate more with Germans) if you were to remove some of the historical references because your fact base is very good. But you'll loose them by saying "Germans be Germans". For example why Germans have had this "atom Kraft nein danke" movement for so long is interesting.
German Scientist here:
Your analysis of German strategic thinking of the past 150 years is stunningly accurate. It isn't very often that you see videos like this, even (or maybe especially) by Germans themselves. Great work on your research and also great work on your presentation style. Keep up he good quality!
Because Germans dont think strategically, only tactically and operationally.
SVR really screwed you guys.
What do you mean by scientist?🤔
@@mrwhips3623 it's the name of a profession. According to the oxford dictionary it refers to "a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences."
I hope this helps.
/s
@@mrwhips3623 Well, either he's a scientist in an unrelated field and deliberately omits this piece of information in order to use his profession as an appeal to authority , in which case....it means nothing. Or he does posses a relevant degree, in which case I'd have to wonder why he decided to leave out the only relevant information in the lead-in.
Alternatively he's just really happy about his profession and just wanted to share it :D
Polish man deliver 1 hour, I click
Is he polish?
@@mulmusfistus4128 yes
This fact makes me like him more somehow.
@@The_Joker_1940 Is he a north or south pole? 😅
Poland stronk! Love from Slovakia!
I heard Wunderwaffe, so i want to see what my country is potentially cooking
Me too, failed Austrian painter here.
Manchmal ist man hier etwas zu einseitig.
Ich bin gespannt und höre trotzdem aufmerksam zu. 🤔
German Wunderwaffe: Self destruction through large scale immigration and energy deprivation
Looks like our führers are betting on hot air. I hope they are on to something.
Another disaster for it self and the rest of Europe. It's kinda your thing!
Polish man makes an 1 hour deep dive documentary on german industrial history what a gigachad
This fear of nuclear energy is really frustrating.
It's even more frustrating when I learned about how Green parties across Europe and the UK received support from Putin's Russia. And one can see that the success of the greens has, for now, meant an increase in reliance on natural gas, which increased reliance on Russia. Now it gets shipped across the ocean from the US, which puts out a ton of emissions before it even gets burned.
I wish there was a green party that was worth supporting but I don't know of any I've ever seen once since I started paying attention.
Even moreso the few people advocating for it not also advocating for Thorium usage.
@BiggestCorvid I think at a national level a libdem-conservative coalition combined with left-wing municipalities give the greenest policy. At least, that's how we got so much solar energy and electric cars in the Netherlands the grid can't handle it anymore.
I can indeed see the Germans going all-in on policies that don't work or are only working in Putin's favor. Inviting migrants to then spread them across the EU was such a gamble. Clean diesel engines also were a backfiring gamble. And now this silly gambit on green hydrogen. Here in the Netherlands the lobby remains strong enough to continue it while there are several alternatives ready to just make investing into hydrogen a waste of energy. But of course as always Russia has found a way to help Germany out by reusing empty gas fields for underground blue hydrogen generation. That's of course a solution too good for Germany to resist it, leading to the further Ruscistification of Europe.
@@BiggestCorvid The Finnish green's from what I recall happen to be explicitly pro-nuclear after some pro-nuclear scientist joined their ranks and was able to convince the majority of the green party in Finland to drop the nuclear-phobia
Even if hydrogen works out, how are you getting the energy to crack all that water without nuclear?
The ending of the nuclear power in germany when they already had plants working safely is a tragedy. The dangers of nuclear power are overblown, it resulted in higher emissions. The anti-nuclear element is one of the greens I resent the most.
And the anti house building, forcing young people to rent, which is essentially another subsidy for the old.
Green politics is just fear mongering without any semblance of logic. They fear nuclear energy because 'Muh Chernobyl, muh Fukushima'. Then they get their way nuclear energy is off the table. Then they start panicking because of climate change and co2 emissions. When presented with the fact that nuclear energy is on the low side of co2 emissions, they cry again 'Muh Chernobyl, muh Fukushima' and then proceed to ramp up the use of coal and Russian gas. Then they destroy untouched lands and eco systems to build their wind parks. Funding solar energy in this oh so sunny country is just the icing on the cake...
To be fair only about 10% of Germany's power came from nuclear when the shut off. And 3 of the 6 reactors was to be shut down anyways due to old age. So Germany only lost about 5% of its totalt energy needs.
Fake greens. same way stalin is fake communist
Germany had already spent billions building a new nuclear plant in the 2000's.
It now a theme park.
Germans like hurting themselves
One thing everyone should take into account is that hydrogen is not an energy source, is an energy storage method. Due to conservation of energy it is impossible to recover more (or the same) energy from transforming H into H2O than it takes to transform H2O into H.
Yes, but you can say the same for batteries, electricity is converted to chemical energy and convert back to electricity again, you don’t get the same watts used to charge the battery. They are not as power dense. Burning fossil fuel convert chemicals to heat, turning turbines (kinetic) to dynamo(electricity) lost much more energy. Even combustion engine vehicles lost most of the fuel burned.
Hydrogen is energy intensive to produce, but the fuel cells are very efficient in electricity conversion. That means the H2 can pack more energy than other forms of storage.
@@madsam0320batteries are just antenna. It's not being converted into chemical energy. Electrification of batteries (recharging) simply re-orients the microcrystaline lattuce of the electrolytes in the battery. Allowing them to function as a proper antenna for ambient RF frequency.
Over time during use, the structure of the chemical antenna decays and needs to be reoriented
You know what they say: Third time is a charm.
Germany was blue. Oh what oh what to do. Hitched up my pants. And conquered France. Now Deutschland's smiling through!
*Nervous polish noises*
@@Essah15 _quiet American chuckle_
Or is it, "three strikes and you're out"?
@@Essah15 first time Germany lost 30% of the territory, second time 30% territory lost again, do you really think there might be any more tries? LOL
To skip the history lesson go to 50 minutes for the hydrogen part. Your should really start using the YT feature to mark video parts for longer videos like this.
THANKS
History is what actually happened, what’s wrong with that?
It's context
1 hour video by our beloved polish man?! I immediately click on the like button and grab my popcorn 🍿
yeah but he talks too much shyte!
@@georgewaters6424no he doesn't
One important thing to note is that the initial exit from nuclear power energy in germany was already agreed upon in 2000 under Schröder (SPD/Greens) and then later sped up in 2011 under Merkel (CDU/CSU/FDP).
Edit: This is mentioned later on in the video, but at the start it is emitted, which confused me.
Greens and collaborators are criminals. Bring back GDR anti-wrecking laws.
Also called the Exit of the exit of the exit. As Schröder wanted to phase it out. Merkel reversed that decision, just to reverse back after Fukushima happened.
*omitted
Insane amount of work, love your long vids, thanks man
Love this long form content.
Just like Japan betting on hydrogen, this has nothing to do with a green transition or powering clean cars. That's the propaganda.
Hydrogen is both a form of energy storage and chemical input. If you're just viewing this from an energy perspective it doesn't make much sense--Germany's stubborn abandonment of nuclear energy comes to mind. However, nuclear power doesn't provide the molecules needed for fertilizer or weapons (bullets, artillery, explosives, propellants). Both countries are resource poor and need to maintain and expand industries to maintain their technical edge as much as their sovereignty. Both wish to pursue more independent foreign policy. They're also both threatened by either Russia, China, or both and the world is becoming increasingly fractured and unstable including supply chains. Even if H turns out to be very expensive and complicated, they will eat the cost if it means they are more or less self-sufficient in weapons production.
This. So much this.
Hydrogen allows for substitution of almost all oil and LNG in chemical processing as well as the mentioned energy generation. It also allows one to use overcapacity efficiently to store up energy for later and does not require imports once set up. Once the hydrogen economy is up and running in the first place, almost all of the most important chemical precursors required for modern industry and civilization as well as the energy to run it become completely independent of imports, outside influences and thus effectively of supply. It's almost irrelevant how efficient or inefficient the creation and storage of hydrogen is, because at that point it just becomes a scalable problem; since you can just store up energy and use it however you want, you can effectively just build an infinite amount of production, because the resources you need to fuel it are for all intents and purposes infinite and thus free.
Efficiency only determines the upfront cost you need to pay to get it running in the first place and the slope of your growth curve, once it's running, you can just scale to infinity and not care about the efficiency.
Some time ago I saw information that Germany had developed a method of storing hydrogen in the form of a gel. However, the Japanese Toyota used cartridges to transport this gas.
There may be synergy and a change in the "ecological" approach in the EU ;-). This could help it continue to dominate the car market.
Because the big yellow dragon set about devouring the car market.
There is no dichotomy between hydrogen as an industrial gas and nuclear power. Having nuclear power doesn't stop a country from producing hydrogen. On the contrary.
@@TimJBenham No one is claiming otherwise. That's missing the point though.
Fission reactors are very expensive to build and maintain, require extensive security and have considerable very long term costs, while also being dependent on Uranium imports and geographically concentrated and thus vulnerable.
Solar and wind power have none of those drawbacks; their chief and main drawback is the mismatch between supply and demand, which is solved by hydrogen.
@@TimJBenham I never said or implied any dichotomy between hydrogen and nuclear power, let alone hydrogen as 'an industrial gas' as you mention in one of its specific states. Perhaps you're answering another comment. I merely stated that hydrogen is not a source of energy but a vector/means of storage of energy with chemical/industrial properties that will be useful no matter the cost and that as a means of storage it has concomitant inefficiencies and energy losses at every stage of conversion and storage.
Sabina Hossenfelder a German physicist with a great science channel explains issues with hydrogen. Both Germany and Japan are going the hydrogen route, with the two of them teaming up what could go wrong? Honestly, I hope they succeed they are two of my favorite countries.
If they're using for plane i can get behind it because battery add alot of weight and unlike gas thye don't get lighter but everything else go electric for vehicles and any machine or nuclear and renewable for power hydrogen dont make sense to me
Remember Zeppelin?
It makes no sense to convert green electricity into hydrogen. That process alone is only 85% efficient. And then combusting the hydrogen for transportation is at best 60% efficient with today's technology. That's a 55% loss compared to just using the electricity.
@@ChrisTaylor-NEP For sure. Hydrogen is only useful as a last resort. If it can be easily electrified, that's the first choice. It's simply more efficient.
Well it is oversimplyfied to speak about hydrogen only in terms of powering cars.
There are plenty of uses where hydrogen is the only viable alternative to fossil carbohydrates:
- Steel. Chemical reduction of iron ores via hydogen is the only viable alternative to using coke (coal).
- High temperature processes. Glass, ceramics, cement, metallurgy etc. etc. is made at temperatures above 1000°C that cannot be electrified economically due to Ohm's LAw (higher temperature = higher resistance). You need a flame and the only viable alternative to natural gas is hydrogen.
- Organic chemistry. Everything from plastics, sythetic fibres, medicine etc. etc. is made of organic compoungs e.g. hydrocarbons. Those chemicals are made of carbon and hydrogen. The only alternative to using fossil carbohydrates as base chemicals is to produce hydrocarbon from biomatter. But there's a limit to sustainable production without interfereing in food production and converting more land for agriculture. Everything beyond that would need to be produced via direct synthesis of simple hydrocarbons like methane, methanole, formic acid or formaldehyde via CO2 and hydrogen and build everything else with these basic blocks.
- Ammonia production. Ammonia is also an important base chemical without which we wouldn't have fertilizer, explosives and dyes would cost a fortune. It needs hydrogen to produce.
- Global energy trade. Not every place with an excess supply of renewable energy can be physically linked via cable to a place with a demand for energy. In this case a major alternative to trading fossil fuels would be to ship hydrogen or synthetic fuels produced with hydrogen.
- Ships, planes and large machines. Imagine a plane taking five stops to recharge or a construction side being paused three times a day to recharge machines. Insane. You need synthetic fuels produced with hydrogen to keep the economy going.
Conclusion: Hydrogen will be an essential component of a fossil free economy. There is simply no working solution that can cover all the listed aspects in one system.
Germany examplfies great foresight in this field. I hope they will be succesful, they deserve it.
PS:
Steam engines are 10% efficient.
That's the difference between a pre-modern agrarian and an industrialized society.
Diesel engines are 30% efficient.
That's the difference between the 19th century and today.
60% efficiency is absolutely fantastic. It means a golden future for humanity if we avoid climate catastrophy.
NOT transforming the energy economy is the riskiest thing we can do.
Hydrogen feasibility is quite a challenge for German engineers. Hope some luck goes their way
The change in attitude towards nuclear energy was Russian FSB work in Germany. This made it dependent on Russian fossil fuels.
Absolutely 👍. It was Putin's master move. But also American NGOs and lobby are to be blamed.
Nah, we have plenty of idiots here - no need to invoke the Russians. If anything, they might have worked to strengthen or encourage already existing trends as they do in all rival countries.
Shooting ourselves in the foot has been a German tradition since 1914 - no sign of us stopping anytime soon.
Nice theory, but is there any proof?
@@markotrieste Well documented that anti nuclear movement got support from Russia in the 80s. Look around. Afterwards the Russian did it more discreetely
@@michaelrenper796 I know about that. But that interference was Soviet, from the cold war era, and was aimed at nuclear weapons, not power plants, and had nothing to do with energy independence but rather with war preparedness. I thought you had information about recent anti-nuclear-plants propaganda under Putin supervision for energy dependency purposes.
One of your best, Thank you so much for the detailed insights. It changed my understanding of the German POV completely.
Never has a channel earned my sub faster than this one.
Even though I've been through German history in school a good half dozen times this perspective and analysis was still fresh and helped me understand my country's history on a level which I simply hadn't considered prior.
Thank you for your amazing work!
Q: How do you detect a leak in a hydrogen pipeline?
A: Light a match.
That applies to just about any pipeline that carries flammables.....
@@MajinOthinus Natural gas has an odorant added so you can detect it by smell. You could add an odorant to hydrogen, but the hydrogen could leak where the larger odorant molecules could not escape, so it would not do much good.
@@vulpo That is only really relevant in the theoretical. Any "opening" that is small enough for that to occur is small enough to be entirely irrelevant in context.
Hydrogen also has the problem of making materials brittle. It's reactive and its atoms are so small that they fit into the gaps between the atoms in just about any other material. Expect the hydrogen infrastructure to eventually start having pieces of it break like glass.
💀💀
The Hydrogen-Story is not so simple. First: The really big potential in green hydrogen is the possibility to store specifically photovoltaic power, PV is very efficient but has the major flaw of reaching its highest capacity in summer, when the least amount of energy is needed and almost zero in the winter, when energy consumption is highest. And batteries or pump-storage hydro-electricity plants can't manage that. So Green Hydrogen has this important place. And there is also white Hydrogen, thats naturally occuring and can be harvested. The problem here is that we only discovered it in the 80s and the process to understand how this natural effect functions is still in motion. So we don't know yet how to find more white hydrogen and also can't estimate how big the world reserves of it could be. On the engineering level it seems to be a very good solution for everything thats big and has to go far, like Ships, submarines and Trucks but not a solution for small city cars and Scooters
Good comment. White hydrogen got some hype around the beginning of the year with some major discoveries... but no update since then. However, you forget about the less speculative blue hydrogen (converting a mix of fossil fuels and water to a mix of hydrogen and CO2 and subsequently storing the CO2 in suitable underground reservoirs). Blue hydrogen is cheaper today than green hydrogen* and while financial analysts predict the latter to become cheaper than the former in a decade or 2, I think basic thermodynamic considerations give the blue variant a structural edge over the green variant... To bridge the gap between what thermodynamics suggests and the real world you need scientists that build machines that approach the thermodynamic efficiency limits in a cost-effective way and this may be where Germany's belief in technology decides like the video wants to suggest.
*In fact, Biden's IRA seems to have the effect that blue (and opposed to green) hydrogen is about to boom this decade in the US, with the US becoming global hydrogen leader. This context could explain the big attention at COP28 for CCS. Blue hydrogen is usually associated with natural gas as the fossil fuel feedstock (CO2 can typically be stored in the same reservoir where the gas was extracted from), but the Germans are perhaps secretly betting on a variant with coal.
I like a lot both channels, in English and in Polish. I'd like to have a subtitled version for the polish channel (could be automatic Closed Captions even), it would help me to improve my polish significantly.
Think I’ve never understood recent German history better than I do after this video. Fantastic content and delivery accomplished here. Thank you for all of your great research and compiling of it. Great conclusions drawn.
You have misunderstood this if you think it will mean the highest electricity prices in the world. Most electricity will come from renewables, which are the cheapest electricity available. Only for intermediate periods will the stoed power (hydrogen) be used. All in all, it should still play out as a cheap and reliable green power - and even if unforeseen issues appear, they won't be insurmountable, and the prices will always be cheaper than with nuclear, which today, for new power plants IS the most expensive form of electricity production.
so you want to tell me that GER has cheap electricity. and that there are no energyheavy industries that are in the process of moving out?
come on. but maybe its just politicians that fuck it up by not building offshore and long transmission lines...
and of course nuclear is bad if you as a country has lost the skill like the brits who seem completely incapable of getting one plant built.
the question that i honestly ask myself is: has nuclear always been the most expensive or is it a question of scale? has it really been a prestige project in every country all the time?
@@maxsk9074 No. I am telling you that we WOULD have cheap electricity (and WILL have it), had the conservatives of the past not done everything they could to strangle renewables (which grew nevertheless).
Nuclear has become more expensive as experience with the technology grew and safety standards had to be raised. Of course, countries that want to have nuclear weapons would not care for that, since they need the technology for that other reason.
@@ianhenkso to summarise: politicians fucked up by making renewable expensive by burocracy, absurd zoning and environmental excuses
they still manage to wreck solar production
and politicians removed any prospect for future nuclear constrution by increasing "safety standards" and introducing more distrust
to this i would certainly agree 😂
wheather nuc or renew is superior in the future...you very well might be right. i dont know and it does not matter as the path has been chosen at least 15y ago
but just because its possibly cheap does not mean it will be
it ceratainly cost more than one portion of icecream to switch
Brilliant as always. Thank you so much!
Spectacularly made essay, thank you!
Saying that nuclear power is the cheapest is just too easy.
Yes, how could you even calculate the cost if it is totaly unclear how to store the waste?!
@@kommtzeitkommtradt5969 there is nothing unclear about it. Use reactors that consume waste and build storage inside geological structures.
You see some rocks with layers and swirls? Rock flows, and some rock types trap and store materials geologically.
With careful choice and some digging, you can build a storage warehouse where in 1000 years, the earth will have crushed and sealed it - water tight. Not all rock works like this, but salt domes work well and most of them are already dug out.
These formations exist only in conditions of geological isolation on the scale of thousands of years as a requirement of their formation.
Every salt dome is the perfect storage site.
It's not really the cheapest if you consider the construction costs and the dismantelment afterwards. Both are payed by the taxpayer.
I would say that's not it's biggest selling point.
@@kommtzeitkommtradt5969 at least, you have waste you can store somewhat. thats a major upside against fossil energy, which is the current alternative. and do we really want to calculate the prices against fossil fuel induced global warming? nuclear energy becomes more attractive if you think about it this way. (yes, in the end, everything needs to be renewable anyways, i know, but we're not there yet. and between coal/oil/gas and nuclear, nuclear is a very clear winner imo)
This is one of the better episodes on this channel. It's nice that the historical context was shown so accurately.
As far as hydrogen is concerned, I would be happy if the Germans managed to perfect this technology so that it makes economic sense. Then the fossil fuel monopoly would no longer be relevant.
I just want to point out that Die Welt and Cicero are both right-leaning, at times populist, publications and that the nuclear phase out was decided by the conservative Merkel government.
I’m not trying to defend intransparency and bad timing of the current government but we should try to understand the whole picture.
Yes thank you!
While the current government certainly isn't perfect, they ti easily get all the blame for bad decisions by the previous Merkel Governments which reigned for 16 years.
CDU under Merkel was centrist
Merkel and her gov was maybe right leaning 30 years ago, but not after that. They gradually became more and more left, and today its a center-left party
@@98TrueRocker98 Note that I described the Merkel government merely as conservative.
@@juliansebastian it's discouraging that such liberal policies and mindset can be described as "conservative"
Came here for geopolitics but learned some chemistry too. Great fun! :)
thanks Hubert!
Holy crap I have never found anything in my life that makes me get sleepy like this video. Not complaining this is amazing, thank you.
really likes the cultural historic analysis , gave me a new perspective on Germans
What an insane documentary! 👏
Brilliant analysis, a completely unique angle to historical perspective on technology and its influence on energy transition.
You must do similar analysis on other EU states, but not necessarily on energy alone though.👍
Nice analyzation!
Another great video mate!
May this commentary sacrifice to the algorithm help this most interesting video on its journey. :-)
3 cents of electricity from nuclear power is a huge BS! This not includes the demolition of the power plant and the cost of storing the waste forever!
3 cents are fake costs. These were calculated by assuming a superficial best case scenario with 100% workload 24/7/365 over the whole lifespan (30 to 40 years).
30 to 40 years for a nuclear installation? Try 60 to 80. You’re a bloody liar or a bloody fool.
It is true, in Sweden we do it right now att that cost. Including demolition. The problem is that you need to keep the power plants for a verry long time
Loving the long form video. An interesting insight into a nation that is seen as so economically rock solid- decision making in Germany leaves a lot to be desired. Greetings from Spain
Hello from Romania to our polish brothers!
What I think is under discussed is the absolute GLUT of oxygen this implies. If electrolysis becomes the norm, oxygen co-produced is going to dwarf modern ASU production, which may make a slew of technologies relevant.
Oxycombstion comes to mind, burning NG or Biomass in pure oxygen removes Nitrogen from the flue gas, which makes the products just H20 and C02, and its very easy to seperate water from a gas. In some places, that water might even be a valuable product, like SAGD in the oil sands.
Also, Casinos tend to pump in oxygen to make you stay awake feel good and gamble all night. Maybe morally dubious, but I would be interested in seeing if boosting O2 during the mid day in retirement homes had a similar effect.
Surely it should be piped into factories and offices to boost productivity, not wasted on casinos and retirement homes. It would make more economic sense to pipe CO to those places.
@@TimJBenham jesus
Hydrogen has the huge problem of breaking backwards compatibility with hundreds of billions of dollars of existing infrastructure and vehicles. At least with EVs, they had the pre-existing power grid to lean upon. If they were to use hydrogen to make synthetic fuel, perhaps with captured carbon so they could call it carbon neutral, then it could use the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, which reduces a vast number of technical, logistical, and economic headaches of switching everything over. Something like synthetic ethanol, kerosene, or petrol for vehicles, and methane for existing gas power plants.
I should add here that the main use of Hydrogen would not be to power EVs. Its main use would be as a natural gas substitute for example steel plants. Afterwards would be Energy storage from renewables. And then maybe Hydrogen trucks.
For some reason it is always forgotten, that not all Energy needs can be transitioned to electric.
this take is sooo wrong in so many levels
Amazing, been looking forward to listening to your analysis after work since I saw it dropped today.
So glad you're back narrating. I think the comments really appreciated you coming back. Unfortunately, some things can't be delegated.
Would a BBC nature documentary be the same if it wasn't David Attenborough telling us about it?
Shutting down nuclear plants is wildly stupid
Nuclear power is extremely costly and a crime against people in the future who will have to pay a large share of the expenses. It is multiple times more expensive than e.g. wind and only economically feasible when heavily subsidized. And the companies/people who profit from nuclear power plants will not pay for the costs of building them back and taking care of the nuclear waste in the future. There is only one single deep geological repository so far (in the US) and there have already been incidents and it is already discussed to be not a safe place to store nuclear waste at all. There is not a single deep geological repository that is likely to be a safe place to store nuclear waste for even a fraction of the time it needs to be stored. Nuclear power plants is like setting the couch on fire to grill a sausage on a stick and to "think about potential problems later" (when it is actually not your house and you plan to simply run away once the sausage is hot and leave the owners die in their burning house).
@@manuelpopp1687 so are the coal plants being left online to fill in the gaps left by nuclear.
Nuh uh
This video should be called "How Germany tries and fails to engineer its way out of problems." Hydrogen is a way to store and use energy. It is not a source of energy. They still have to mine for coal, oil, and uranium to power the reactors to create the hydrogen.
Honestly, if the Germans were thinking straight, they would be investing in 4th generation fission reactors to hold them over while the engineers finish ironing out the kinks in fusion.
Funnily enough an option that is highly fesable would be to subsidize hydrogen or ammonia production in the maghreb, levant or arabian peninsula and then import it. Most of those countries are some kind of authoritarian though, making this politically spicy.
@@cahdoge Atacama desert in Chile has more solar irradiation than all those countries combined, Chile is a highly democratic, stable country with free trade agreements with most of the world
Germany is producing exceess renewables very often and currently have to shut the wind turbines down very often, since they cannot dliver the energy to the consumers properly. Here comes the idea to store that into hydrogen which then can later be used to produce energy in gas power plants when there is neither wind or sun.
@@mla2385 That is stupid logic. You could do the same thing much cheaper with HTC or pyrolysis. It is cheaper and easier to store.
Germans are being stupid for the sake of an anti-humanist Gaia cult.
@@mla2385 Yeah that is the idea I guess, to use Hydrogen as a form of storing access green electricity produced in times of abundance.
Europe : you know Germany, nuclear is simplier and reliable.
Germany : i will not do nuclear.
Europe : ok but it's also cheaper.
Germany : I will not do nuclear !
Europe : But...developing new technologies will need time and a lot of money.
Germany : I WILL NOT DO NUCLEAR !
They'd rather burn wood 😂
Nuclear power is mamy things, but ceap it is not. Not at all.
@@janekbrat6951 Expensive to build but cheap in the long run, as shown at 3:15 in the video. It's an investment, for sure.
@@jackdoesstuff9033 Some of those numbers are from 2018 and thats an entirety for renewables. Between 2017 and now PV Panel prices dropped by 75%.
@@jackdoesstuff9033 Gas is the most expensive one by a long shot (oil isn't really relevant but even higher), renewables are the cheapest. Nuclear is somewhere in the middle. Some studies even quote it at 5x the price of onshore wind and 1.5x coal.
Just look at diagrams for merit order and market clearing price for germany, actual prices.
Nuclear power plants also emit far more lifetime CO2 emissions than renewables.
Looks like they forgot how painfully hard is to store hydrogen
Giving up is a skill issue
it is not if you store it in form of ammonia which moves if from "painfully hard" territory to "annoying" side of the "hard" spectrum
Hydrogen is the way to go as there are already new effective methods to store Hydrogen without the use of pressure or low temperature. Powerpaste for example is a mix with magnesium that is very clean and only needs water to make it to hydrogen again. Being self sufficient in energy resources is always a good goal. As it means you do not have to bow down to others. If it doesn't work out it doesn't matter as it would just mean one is in the pre Hydrogen situation. I mean this time no one is going to war. Personally I would hope the energy for Hydrogen would be won by Geothermal Energy, modern technologies as from Quaise could make this possible at cost that are quite low.
I liked this video very much
A small correction; the Marne Taxis is more of a propaganda gimmick as they transported at most 6000 troops total, a fraction of one division.
Yeah exactly they had massive failures.
Hey algorithm, boost this
This "transition" is highly controversial in Germany
Great Video and analysis! Thank you
Really good video. I specially like how you link the events
Another long term infrastructure plan Germany should be celebrated is the electric highway. They have thousands of Km of what are basically trolley/street car overhead wires planned aling highways so the Transport Trucks can operate electrically. That would allow not just long distance electric trucking, but allow it with a small battery that only has to cover 50km to the hoghway, where it van charge as you drive, and then power you 50km to a destination.
Eh, there's a lot of concern about how practical those will be to maintain. Those overhead lines can wear out frightfully quickly if the ...pickups? on the vehicles aren't kept in good condition. They're also pretty expensive to construct. I'm not saying the concept it doomed, but it's a lot more difficult to electrify highways than rail lines. It might prove more practical to minimize the reliance on long haul road transport rather than going to such great lengths to make it green.
You know electric trains have been doing that for over 100 years. Ditch the gadget bahns and just build what's worked for over a century
@@mathewferstl7042 I do, and Germany has great trains. Unfortunately, not everything is a train. Sometimes innovation is actually good.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 "electricifying" freeways and spending billions and billions to do so isn't a good use of limited money when you could get much more milage with the same amount of money electrifying railways.
Nice lesson!
Love this long form!
Great vid, thank you!
Great video I will share its contents, with credits, with my Japanese learners.
good video my dude
good analytics
You have to differentiate between electrical energy and hydrogen. Most processes that need energy now can use electrical energy with more efficiency (think heat pumps and electric cars) then with the fosil counterparts. Replacing those with hydrogen would be really dump. But there are processes that need very dense energy (planes) or the act of redoxing something (steel). those processes need hydrogen.
You also have to consider that we already have a surplus of green energy when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. This will become even more. Using this energy to produce hydrogen is practically free, you can even earn money when you take that energy of the grid.
So it's actually a pretty good plan, imho.
Excellent production this! Didn't expect to be eating dinner for an hour long when I clicked, but I more than welcomed ir
Thank you for another excellent video!
Germany is one of the worst places to site green energy production - not particularly windy, sunny, or close to the equator. Even if you could get hydrogen production via electrolyzers to be cost efficient, Germany would still be an importer of energy. The right way to look at this is not as an extension of German industrial innovation, but German ability to fall for ideology.
This is just wrong.
The North Sea is globally one of the most ideal areas for wind power, with its shallow, windy waters.
Meanwhile, the Alps, with their abundance of small rivers that need to be regulated anyway (protection against often-occurring floods), provide huge potential for hydroelectric power.
Solar energy might not have a lot of sun hours in a year, but the private sector is still profiting from it, and panels on a roof don’t hurt anyone.
Finnaly utilizing the abundant gas infrastructure, hydrogen could be the key ingredient to provide energy in case of a Dunkelflaute (a time with no sun or wind).
@@vidiewer4201 Germany isn't in the north sea, at least with respect to wind power. Germany doesn't have any significant untapped hydro-power. It is still cloudy and far from the equator, despite government subsidies. You are delusional. You would be part of the Hilter Youth.
Yet in 2023, renewables accounted for a record share of 59.7 percent of the net public net electricity generation in Germany.
This is magnificent nation, when they do not fall for dictators promises
@@snowbarsyk You too would sign up for the Hitler Youth. This has resulted in them decreasing lignite mining by what percent? Nice that you identify net electricity production. How much storage capacity is being installed?
@richdobbs6595 i would sign up indeed, i am not particularly smart, have love to my parents, do not want them go to jail
Hitler Youth was not optional if it bothers you
Do not be upset too much about Germany. Stress is bad for heart
Very nice video. I personally think, that we will see sooner massive cheap and big electric batteries rather than hydrogen contributing outside of space industries to the wealth.
Well, as a German, the nuclear energy part was explained a bit hard from the view of right wing media as Welt or Cicero. No mention of the fact that building new nuclear plants is hellishly expensive(i.e. the new one in GB) and it is missing out that nuclear energy is heavily subsidized.
Cool story. Now go do some fact-check.
@@sergiysergiy That is the fact check.
@@MajinOthinus You wish.
@@sergiysergiy No need for wishing.
@@MajinOthinus You just confirm that you greens live in some kind of parallel reality. Sad.
The price of energie per kWh of nuclear can't be right at a minimum they must exclude building cost, storage cost of spent fule and deconstruction cost of the powerplant. Please sorces i like to check that.
the cost per kwh produced by nuclear energy must per EU law include all the costs you have named. Unlike the other energy sources.
I agree 3¢ a KW hour is like the low South Korea was approaching. I can only assume it's because they are old plants which have paid down construction like you said.
Yes that's like saying ok yesterday we paid 100billion for it but today we only paid 2 euros! So the price is 2 euros!! Nuclear is best!
The existing German nuclear power plants might of operated at 3¢ a kw as construction cost was already paid down, they shouldn't of been closed down early. That was an awful waste. Recently the Koreans are getting close to that figure, but for the most part new nuclear reactors aren't getting anywhere near that price and are far more than wind and solar.
@@isaacblackman1996 When you calculate price of wind and solar, for comparison with nuclear, you need to fully load both required storage and factor in ability to throttle production. It has been justified to build pumped hydro based on available nuclear power. It is never been cost effective to build pumped storage based on wind and solar. It is only effective to use battery storage for off-grid living and RVs. Not even economic in in expensive places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or self-imposed islands like South Australia. The "huge" batteries in those places are mainly frequency regulation with a bit of flexibility to start up natural gas turbines or weather a minor disruption. The deployment of wind and solar is based on reducing the reliability of the grid or transferring costs to fossil fuel plants.
they are truly willing to do anything to do not use the most obvious energy source,nuclear energy.
Very informative, thank you
There is misinformation in this video.
1) Cost of energy currently is not higher than before the ukraine war (so not especially high for german standards)
2) Nuclear power was only that cheap because of massive subsidies (current example being france)
3) The decision to move out of nuclear was NOT made by the greens (although they strongly supported the position) but by the more conservative Union after the Fukushima disaster.
All modern technologies have been a "gamble " at some point but the ones at the forefront of them have greatly benefit from them.
Btw the german powerplants are old. The newest one was build from 1983-1988. Maybe we could have used them longer, but only for some years.
Most nuclear plants of that era can have their lifespan extended to at least 80 years. Possibly beyond. You've just heard anti nuclear propaganda, like 90% of Germans.
I dont think that was a big issue, in Sweden we have equally old plants and they will continue to run for decades. Germany hade the best maintained nuclear fleet in the world.
Can Poland 🇵🇱 become a nuclear superpower with South Korea 🇰🇷 Mexico 🇲🇽 Australia 🇦🇺 Argentina 🇦🇷 and Brazil 🇧🇷? food for thought
This video hits on the head what my issue is with Hydrogen being the fuel source everyone is thinking the world should transition to. They don't understand the logistics of transporting and storing this is much harder and non-conducive for what currently exists. this is not the mythical energy solution anyone should look for, especially when it comes to transportation (except maybe for certain forms of public transportation), it's not even a good source for energy storage, as Hydrogen is immensely energy intensive to prevent from slowly escaping over a long period of time.
Germany killing itself for the 100th time lmao
We are still alive lmao
great video!
Yes, our big industrial sector needs a lot of energy. Other than you show, nuclear power is not cheap enough for that.
Then why do we buy it from
France and Belgium now?
@@john.8805 Most of the energy we buy is from scandinavia and that is mostly green. Sweden has nuclear power but that is for domestic use. Foreign demand is satisfied with mainly hydroelectric power. 2023 France was the country germany exported the most electricity to. Also Belgium was importing german electricity in 2023. Ah that table from statista was from first 6 months only. In general we export electricity in winter and import in summer. We could have produced our own power, but that time the green energy from outside was cheaper than from our coal and gas power plants. In winter we have enough own green power and can sell it to the french. France has a higher electricity generation costs than germany. Germany is actually below EU average. France has lots of tax money in the electricity price. They even governized the EDF and took over the 60 bio Euro debt the company had and also the hundreds of billions that are required to renovate old nuclear plants and rebuild some of the oldest ruins.
@@john.8805 Daily electricity trading is another thing. That is a very complex kind of thing and electricity goes back and forth all the time.
Hydrogen economy has always been an attractive energy source. Main problem has been economical production and storage, with an additional headache of being highly corrosive if used directly as a combustion source. Fuel cells are still way too expensive, but the hope is there will be a breakthrough at some point. Missing from this great overview is the very interesting technology that produced Hydrogen using high temperature chemical reactions, some of which are very cheap and actually recycle the chemicals making a closed loop system. Pairing this with high temperature focused solar arrays to produce Hydrogen would be the ideal solution.
Russian cuts contracted gas deliveries to Europe ; Norway: Am I a joke to you.
Never Underestimate Germany… A Historic Fact! 🇪🇺
The discovery of gigantic underground supplies of pure energy solves the supply problem. All we have to do is to complete a re-fueling system that draws on these, as well as other, forms of hydrogen production. That means that H is the ` magic bullet ' to climate change
1:28 - Sounds to me like a crazy comic scientist that is screaming: "At one day it will work and all of you will see!! You will come crouching towards me and beg me for forgiveness for your ignorance!!"
Incredible video
Running the nuclear power plants exceeding spring would have increased risks due to worn-out fuel elements, not because the plants themselves were unsafe. The report acknowledged the good condition of the power plants but overlooked the issue of old fuel elements.
Both EnBW and RWE highlighted potential risks associated with using old fuel elements.
If the plan is to shut down the nuclear power plants soon, it wouldn't make economic sense to invest in new fuel elements.
In this context, it appears to be more of an economic decision rather than an ideological one.
They can get Hydrogen or Ammonia from Norway. 95% of our electrical energi are from Hydroelectrics.
It is striking that only countries with plenty of tax money invest in new nuclear power plants - not private companies at all. Even in Germany, energy executives show no interest. Because they are already aware: Nuclear power plants are much too expensive. No kilowatt-hour from a newly built nuclear power plant can compete with one from a wind turbine or solar panel. The IPCC made this clear in a statement: “Newly constructed nuclear power plants were never competitive and will not be on the foreseeable future.
“Not a fork or a spoon, but a fipoon. What will you think of next Germany?”
-Jordan Peele
Germany was not a gambler in WW1. They were a victims of a mugging by enemies that did not like its success.
It could be, but it also could not be. It remains to be seen. If the world decides it would like to use Hydrogen at scale it will be great. However if we are the only ones using it the scale does not make it a really profitable venture.
Hydrogen is first and foremost a dead end technology which provides minimal advantages over alternative options, obviously it's better than petroleum and LNG but that's not really what it's being compared against.
Depends Australia, Turkey and China would be three great countries to work with in this sector.
Also using this tech in countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia and Indonesia who are ripe for industrialisation but are energy insecure would be a huge benefit to Germany
@@blue-pi2ktI disagree, it is the best available technology for energy transportation and for high temperature industrial processes.
The good news is South Australia has a large Green Hydrogen plant, Canada has several, built for Germany, being constructed on the East coast to export ammonia, and the US has 7 hydrogen Hubs being developed.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 There was a reason it was even abandoned in space flight.
The mass storage, shipping and production of hydrogen are all problematic compared to equivalent solid state energy storage technologies combined with renewables.
I would already be greatly amazed if it won't turn out to be the next German Wunder-gaffe...
I just want to commend you on your or your editor's (editors'?) selection of pictures. Every source of any news has some bias, but it seems to me like you do not pick pictures of individuals to fit a narrative, even if it's clear you have a position on a topic (i.e., bad person looks bad or angry, good person looks friendly and lively).
On point.
34:00 repeating the same mistakes is a super power of the Western world
the irony of the country that produced the Hindenburg talking about hydrogen power in the 2020s...
You clearly missed the point about these companies operating those plants refused to keep these plants running 6:56
I must say, I have some problems with the video. Lets begin with nuclear energy.
In 2002 the phase out of nuclear energy was set by the coalition of red SPD(socalist) and green (environmentalist fromed out of the antinuclear movment).
In 2010 the nuclear phase out was moved back by a coalition of black CDU/CSU (conservative the party of Angela Merkel) and yellow FDP (liberal), but just 3 months after this the fukushima incident happend and they made a turnaround, there they set the date for the shut down of the last three nuclear reaktors. [1]
Now at this set time in end of 2022 the last nuclear rectors should be shut down, but in Germany there was a energy crisis because of the ukraine war, so after some discussion the operation of the plants was extended for 3 months (the time the nucelar fuel elements will last). At this time Nuclear made 6,7% of energy prodution. [2] After that some partys wanted to extend the lifetime of the remaining three reactors, but they got no renewal from the ministry of economics (Habecks ministry). But to give a nuclear powerplant a renewal there a some very high obstacles to overcome, so first of all it would need to undergo a big inspection (just every 10 years necessary, deferred because of its soon shut down). With that it wouldn't have the newest security technologys (not so easy to integrate and very costly). The other option is to just lower the standards (not happening in Germany).[3] Next is nuclear fuel that needs to be purchased and produced (takes about 18-24 months, in a faster process 12-15 months), also here is a high dependencie on other countries (mostly not democratic or unstable, in order of mined uranium Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia, Usbekistan, Russia, Niger, China, India, South Afriaca).[4] German nuclear power plants have one of the highest security standards on this planet, but the threats for this plants are not foreseeable, from natural disasters to a terroist attack (maybe per plane) to hybrid warfare operations from states organized (and of course incorrect operation). And in the end you need bury all of it and hope it never see the light of the sun again. To the graphic [5] with the prices in 3:21 I found very contrary data like in source[6], also never heard from tech-for-future before.
To use WELT and cicero as source in this case is like searching on fox news about positive news from the democrats.
With the transition from fossil to renewable energy, there are new obstacles to overcome. Through solar and wind we are dependend on natur. But here comes one of the biggest weaknesses about nuclear they are best to produce energy 24/7 but with renewables there are days were more energy is produced then we can consume. So a energy source is needed that can complement renewables and is also renewable without producing CO2 when produced green.
Here comes H2 into play. With gas plants that can in future burn H2. But H2 isn't only used as an energy storage, but also for steele and chemical production. NOT for cars, this will be way to expensive and waste of this ressource.
Also I don't understand what this middle history part should show me. Just looked to bismark and then skipped to the H2 part.
Source:
[1] www.base.bund.de/DE/themen/kt/ausstieg-atomkraft/ausstieg_node.html
[2] www.energy-charts.info/downloads/Stromerzeugung_2022.pdf Slide 10
[3] www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/P-R/pruefvermerk-laufzeitverlaengerung-atomkraftwerke.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=6
[4] investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy-investing/uranium-investing/uranium-producing-countries/
[5] www.tech-for-future.de/kosten-kwh/
[6] www.dw.com/de/faktencheck-ist-atomenergie-klimafreundlich-was-kostet-strom-aus-kernkraft/a-59709250
Some notes: Your pertinent sources are not exactly unbiased (ie quoting the government ministry that made the strategy and is known for fuddling with the truth) and of all this is true why is the industry complaining and not rejoicing as it seems to be a perfect strategy?
i just watched a video, german science woman, dont know her channel, who literally just said hydrogen is the worst thing to rely on. i think I'll take a scientists' word over this
There are some mistakes with your documentation. The cheapest source of electricity is currently Wind, solar and lignite in germany. Nuclear power was the most expensive one and is in France too, but they are used to push lots of tax money in the electricity prices. Still the french had to nationalize the EDF with app 100bio Euro in debt plus hundreds of billions ahead for refurbishing the old dinosaurs or build new ones. The problem was, they did not price in the regular maintenance, refurbishing and rebuilding and waste management to the electricity costs. Power generation costs in germany are currently below European average without nukes and in france above average. The new hinckley c in UK f.e. will deliver electricity for app 17ct per kWh when it is supposed to be finished in 2028 after 15 years construction while offshore windpower is at 3ct per kWh.