The alternatives where ready many years before the proposed end of nuclear. Solar buildup peaked in 2012 at over 10GWh/year and fell to 1 GWh/year due to political influence. Without the actions of the Merkel government, we would have 5 more years of nuclear and be way further ahead on renewables. So please stop blaming the Greens.
Where are you getting this 1gwh number? I am seeing 5gwh in 2021. I also am not seeing 10gwh any year. Perhaps I am not looking at the correct numbers?
If solar had its peak in 2012 that means it had its peak under Merkel's time as Chancellor? Which policy do you think Merkel was involved with that caused the drop? I assume you will say the change in feed in tariff? If so then why did the peak occur after years of the tariff continually dropping?
If it is the tariff, then why didn't we see a similar continual decline in the US when the tax credit ended at the end of 2016? There was a few year decline, but solar adoption is now higher than ever.
Would 5 years been enough that nuclear could have been shut down without causing any issues? Nuclear appears to be a large supplier of power in Germany. It doesn't seem likely that 5 years could have allowed solar to displace nuclear. Germany would still be having issues.
Do you have proof that roll out of solar would have continued at the same rate without the change in tariff (or whatever you are blaming Merkel for)?
You can see that solar collapsed from 8.2GW/a[1] in 2012 to 1.2GW/a in 2015.
Wind collapsed from 4.9GW/a in 2017 to 0.9GW/a in 2019.
I cannot exactly "proove" which decision was exact killer, but of course any decision takes some time to have the full impact, as larger installations usually are planned years ahead, so any change in politics will take years to take full effect. But the collapse of both wind and solar are difficult to miss - and we rather should have a steady growth in both rates or at least maintain the peak rates on a constant level. At minimum one can blame politics not to have acted to keep up with installations. But there were a lot of decisions taken which were clearly impacting the roll out of renewables. And that with a known deadline for the nuclear power plants.
Some decisions taken I can remember:
- the feed in tariff was lowered. Even if that is a constant process, when it crosses the threshhold of no longer being profitable, there will be a steep drop in new installations
- solar started to recover in recent years, probably because due to the cells becoming cheaper so it began to be more profitable again
- as far as I know there was an upper limit for any subsidy, so another reason for a stop of new installations
- for wind power the whole system was changed, leading to a deep decline. Subsidies were auctioned off, but unfortunately not including a time limit for actually installing new capacity. So many projects "won" auctions and were never realized.
The 5 years alone wouldn't probably not suffice to replace the nuclear power plants, but you have to count in as well all the missed capacity after 2012. If we had just continued at 8GW/a and above, solar capacity would almost be double of what it is today. Pretty much the same with wind.
[1] Sorry, might have mistaken the total number on top of the solar bar with the number on the bar. But over 8GW/a is still pretty much it.
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