I'm not saying it's Germany's fault, we're the ones selling them energy. Or rather a couple rich guys make shitloads of money while everyone else pays for their profits.
> In reality, Germany still exports electricity to "nuclear powered" France.
France imports very cheap electricity from Germany when wind/solar works very well and exports very expensive electricity when wind/solar works badly. It's a pretty much balanced trade between the two in terms of electricity but it's far from balanced in monetary terms, Germany pays the non-stability of their grid at a high price.
Just watch what Germany has done to its economy in the past couple years. In Germany all energy prices - and especially electric energy - are the highest on the planet! Germany is shutting down nuclear and coal energy plants but has nothing to compensate them. The only solution is to buy nuclear and coal energy from other european countries to high prices.
Wind and solar is a complete failure, economically and ecologically. Germany has invested billions in renewable energies but got nothing out of it. Only destroying its own ecnonomy. Let this be an example to all other countries.
Now, the EU is declaring gas and nuclear as environmentally friendly (maby because France is pushing) but what a complete shit show the EU has become is unbelievable. The european energy grid has gotten really fragile because there is not enough energy "production".
Corruption is everywhere. German taxpayers have to pay compensation money to coal companies because contracts between the state and these companies where terminated early. German taxpayers are paying for renewable energy sources that can never keep their promises. Again, the state signs contracts with big corporations and also gives them subsidies (taxpayer money). Now there's not enough energy available, blackouts are a real possibility but no one is resonsible.
There are no well thought out plans, only lobbyists of the corporations to get even richer, and corrupt politicians who profit from it.
Germany has a long history of poor energy source choices (polluting cars, coal use, reliance on highly polluting energy sources from russia - fortunately this ended but only after strong-arming, not willingly). I understand it’s position as an energy poor country but it needs to change course, which i am sure it will.
I'd like to thanks the German government's policies for the past decades for making me pay absurd electricity prices since the Russian invasion started, even though I live in Sweden with 90+% of renewable electricity generation I'm forced to pay the highest spot price in the EU (aka, gas in Germany) because of Germany's decision to burn coal and gas all the way into 2022... The inertia on modernising Germany is starting to bite your neighbours.
France is heavily importing German electricity, so that does not work out. Sources are many, but here [0] is a random one from January "German Power Exports to France Surge to Highest in 30 Years"
In 2019, Germany was the biggest power exporter in europe. In 2018, Germany exported 50 TWh of energy, enough to power all of Portugal for an entire year [1]. In fact, neighbour countries had to install devices to prevent Germany from swamping their own networks with excess energy.
Maybe there are days where Germany has to buy power. And yes, we have to import things like oil, LNG or coal (for which the newly built coal plant is btw). But the electric power production of Germany over an entire year is more than its demand, so Germany is a exporter.
> Germany could simply sell nuclear electricity to other EU members so they will burn less gas.
Germany is already the largest electricity exporter on the planet [0]. Germany is also the only economy of its size class that has an actual renewable share close to 50% [1], while comparable economies, like Japan or the US, hover at around 20% renewables.
In that context it's extremely questionable how Germany gets constantly blamed for all kinds of things related to energy, when it was literally were the renewable energy change was pioneered not just technologically [2] but particularly regulation wise [3].
250 to 300 billion euros, which is more than the cost of rebuilding from scratch all the French nuclear power plants, is what Germany has invested from 1996 to 2014 to increase by 22% the fraction of renewable electricity into the gross production of the country (that went from 4% to 27%).
For this price tag our neighbors did not decrease their energy imports, did not accelerate the decrease of their CO2 emissions per capita, that remain 80% higher to those of a French, increased the stress on the European grid.
> Germany has been a large net exporter of electricity for years. 18.9 TWh
It does not mean anything if they can't decide when they export it.
Waht matters though, is that most of the time their electricity has an awful carbon footprint w.r.t what the wealthiest country in Europe should afford. All the rest is but mental gymnastics to try to justify that.
I also read that with incredulity "but not an electricity problem". Germany generates lots of electricity from coal and gas, emitting lots of carbon dioxide. That's a problem.
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