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Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14%
(www.pv-magazine.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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I wish people would stop conflating energy with electricity.
So Germany had ⅔ of it's electricity from renewables, but still has gas for warming homes, petrol for cars, diesel for trucks, and so on.
That's fair, but it's still a very relevant metric. It shows the automatic transition made in electrification when people switch over to heat pumps, electric stoves or EVs.
Exactly. Both numbers are interesting, because electricity will likely be scaled up in the same proportions. If we're comparing countries, we should use total energy, but if we're just looking at progress within a country, looking at electricity generation is totally valid.
Well, from where I stand it's a useful number to understand the value of electrification. You hear a lot of misinformation along the lines of "why move to EV/heat pumps/whatever if the electricity they use is made by burning gas".
Which is a big "if", and knowing what the energy mix is in your country/area is an important rebuttal and answer to that particular question.
It skews the metrics though. By the title you'd think Germany is already more than halfway through to become carbon neutral, when it is obviously still extremely far away from that goal. People read this and think we're actually doing okay.
The hell is "doing okay"?
I am so frustrated by the discourse around renewables and climate change. Everybody online seems to be treating it like a puzzle or a board game, where you "win" at climate change when you find the "right" solution.
That's not how it works. I don't care about the "carbon neutrality" of Germany any more than I care about the "carbon neutrality" of a patch of the Atlantic Ocean. It's a global process that is never going to end. We're always going to need energy, it's always going to come from a mix of sources and we need to eventually find a global equilibrium we can strive to maintain.
Data is data, but taking issue with news, and particularly positive news, as if they were propaganda in a campaign where eventually people will have to elect the one source of energy they consume is kind of absurd. Yes, renewables are gaining ground, solar is moving faster than expected and no, that doesn't make the issue go away and we still need to accelerate the process and remove additional blockers to that acceleration. There are no silver bullets and there never will be.
[edit] don't upvote me, read their reply. They clarified their argument and I was wrong
I feel like you agree with the person you're replying to but don't see it.
You hate when people/media describes it as a winnable scenario. They are saying that the chart misrepresenting energy gives people the impression that the "fight" is almost "won" and the government has it covered - no need to keep it part of the conversation.
Kinda, but I'm frustrated with both sides of the argument. There is a cohort of very online people at the ready to clarify how whatever initiative or proposal is "not it" or "greenwashing" and will not "fix" things.
The activist argument is not so much that this is an ongoing thing we're going to be considering forever, it's that this or that solution is a corporate trap or a fake solution or whatever else. Often there isn't even an agreement on what the "real" answer is supposed to be, just a willingness to be the savvy, jaded one that calls out the latest snake oil handwavy solution.
So yeah, we probably don't disagree on the first part, but that post really tickled my sensitivity to the second part.
Fair enough! Thanks for elaborating.
For the record, see the guy's response below for exactly what I'm talking about.
Or on the other hand "the ultimate solution to all problems". There are a number of solutions to cut emissions, giving people options is what makes the difference. Also, simply cutting emissions isn't enough in many cases but get's painted as "the solution".
The point is that it's not positive, not more than an article telling you that tomorrow it will be sunny.
It's at best mild.
Now who is confusing weather with climate?
It's an article telling you that inflation wasn't as high as intitially expected. Doesn't mean prices went down, but it's still good news against the alternative.
We've looped back around to arguing about the meaning of "positive", which mostly tells me this is entirely a discussion about vibes, and maybe that's the best takeaway anybody can get from it.
Not doing nearly enough isn't "positive news". But thanks for proving my point. This is literally not going to do anything for us as a species with the current trajectory we're on, because, again, it's not enough, not even close to it.
Okay, so beyond nihilism, what's your point?
I mean, obviously this is at least an intermediate state towards whatever survivable endgame we want to reach. We need to be at this stage at some point to get to where we want to go.
Should this stage have happened sooner? Probably. Was it possible? Maybe.
But we're here now, so... what's your take? Because you seem concerned about good news discouraging people from something, but you also seem to be claiming there is no valid path forward, which seems way less productive to me.
Nihilism isn't the same as realism. We need to make great leaps, not babysteps. We were on our way to a catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius globally already, and that was before the result of the US election. Do you seriously believe the rest of the world, who already failed to do their own part, is going to now also compensate for the addition of the US emissions under Trump? That's not happening, especially not if we continue to delude us with misleading headlines like this. Toxic positivity is absolutely not helpful when the world needs a serious reality check.
No toxic positivity here.
I will note, though, you haven't met the brief. The closest thing to a target I see there is "great leaps, not baby steps". I'm gonna need something slightly more specific than that.
Trolling much? We've globally agreed to specific targets, so the actual fuck do you want to hear from me?
I want to hear the counterpoint to the progression being made. By all stats I can see, the adoption of solar power specifically is actually beating projections across the board. Overall CO2 reductions are not, and heating targets are out of the question, but this is the one element that is going better than expected, with the relevant asterisks.
You are out here raging virulently at the notion of acknolwedging that, so there must be a specific thing you want out of that process. Or, hell, at least some sort of mental model for what it is that acknowledging the reality of the changes in the energy mix towards renewables is doing to hamper the rest of the climate goals.
I just find it aggressively unproductive when purported climate activists make their online persona into outright denial of any and all possible steps towards curtailing climate change short of... well, I don't even know short of what, which is my point. The implication here is that there is some silver bullet or a switch that we can flip to be done with the problem, as opposed to... you know the foreseeable future being some mix of increasingly sustainable generation and mitigation of the near-inevitable human cost of the processes that have started and can no longer be stopped.
I'm "raging" (nice delusions / projections btw) about the literal fake news bullshit claim of equating energy with electricity to make people feel good about us doing way too little - and nowhere near enough to prevent a climate collapse, which means ultimately it's leading us straight to the same result.
It's data. Valid data, at that, that captures an important metric.
It's a weird, paradoxic stance to claim that you are deeply motivated to push for genuine climate action while actively and publicly being mad at any report that may hint at progress because anything short of absolute doomerism is automatically a distraction tactic. By that standard you'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards energy transition, complaining all the way that nothing is enough until the issue is entirely solved.
Which, of course, is never. Because again, this isn't a problem to solve, it's a situation to manage. Forever.
Man, there's tons of bad news for you to latch on to when it comes to climate change. You really don't need to spend your days actively mad at the few bits showing actual progress. Taken to the extreme, and this is close, it honestly feels just as much like a disinformation tactic, very much in line with the "climate change is real but there's nothing we can do to change it" deflection.
That's highly ironic since I'm apparently the only one who actually would support drastic climate action while everyone else votes for the comfortable fascists that push for coal because their fucking eggs are too expensive.
Whatever, I'm done with this species. It's clear that you all want this to happen so who the fuck am I to stop you all from jumping from the cliff.
So it was nihilism, then.
Look, I hate to break it to you, but you're not that special. You're not the only one who "gets it" and you don't get to be done with the species.
You will have a much easier time at it if you at least try to factor in the concept of the issue being complex and ongoing as opposed to building your entire online footprint around the idea that we could fix this by flipping a switch if we were all committed enough. Not only that, but it would also be a lot more productive in terms of helping promote better outcomes instead of serving as a useful scapegoat for some fashy troll to show how all climate activists are emo kids or something.
Which is not to say that drastic, sometimes painful action won't be needed. Alongside, I'm afraid, significant unavoidable human and economic cost from checks that we've already cashed in.
No, stop the mental gymnastics to make yourself feel better.
The downturn and consequent emissions drop during the pandemic very clearly showed that it is indeed that simple if we're all committed enough. Because that trajectory, if we would've kept it up until 2035, would've pretty much exactly landed us on our emission targets for that date.
The truth of the matter is that no one is ready for that, not corpos, not politicians who want to get (re-)elected, and sure as hell not voters - that much is very clear.
And to be clear, I have a much easier time since I stopped caring. I do my part and that's it, so that at least my conscience remains clean. But if humanity collectively wants to erase itself then be my guest. I'm not stopping you, because I simply can't. And how people act nowadays I am not even sure I want to.
You think the pandemic shutdown was simple?
I mean, man, I am more of an introvert, too, but... yeah, I'm gonna say "humanity isn't willing to transition to Covid rules permanently as a matter of climate change policy" is not the rhetorical killing blow you think it is.
You can't enact global behavioral changes as solutions to economic problems. That's the kind of adolescent social media thought process that ends with retirees radicalized into fascism. "If everybody agreed with me this would not be a problem" is not how large scale policy shifts happen.
On the plus side, you not quite grasping this is far less problematic than Elon Musk not grasping this, but the underlying issue is pretty much the same.
Compared to the consequences that await us? Yes.
I don't know what you being an introvert has to do with this, or why you feel the need to constantly push those thin veiled, passive aggressive insults around. It's not a matter of you sitting at home instead of socializing, it's a matter of degrowth. Our economic model does not work. Our mode of transportation do not work. Our consumerism does not work. Our constant need for growth, does not work!
And if you haven't noticed it yet, fascism is already on the rise, and will grow further the more climate refugees knock on our doors. But I guess when Frontex ends up shooting them in the thousands at the borders you'll just acknowledge that with mild interest as well.
People like you are quite literally proving my point and just reaffirm my stance. You all don't care, and you do not understand where we're headed.
Yes, we do, you wonderful unique genius of an angsty fifteen year old.
It's not that hard to understand, you are not possessed of a unique insight that somehow has eluded every economist on the planet.
You just haven't figured out that getting angy on the Internet about how everybody is dumb is not the game changer you think it is. Turns out meaningfully altering the collective behavior of eight billion people, each with their own individual set of incentives, is less responsive to an earnestly worded social media post that one may think.
Also, you may have to be more specific about who "we" is supposed to be. Whose economic model are we talking about? Everybody's? Just how much granularity are you considering here, if any at all?
Ironically that is genuinely all I'm asking for. And yet I don't think that's true.
That's a propaganda term by people who promote bullshit like e-fuels because "the only CO2 emissions are what was already out of the air, so bottom line it's neutral".
Please stop spewing climate denial propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net-zero_emissions https://unfccc.int/news/a-beginner-s-guide-to-climate-neutrality https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-carbon-neutrality https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20190926STO62270/what-is-carbon-neutrality-and-how-can-it-be-achieved-by-2050
The only one spewing propaganda is you. The world needs "net negative" to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere that was already blasted into it since the industrial revolution, not "net zero"/"carbon neutral".
Get a clue.
Those are stepping stones on the same path you dingus. Calling literal climate scientists & institutions propaganda just proves my point about your climate change denial.
I'm just gonna report you since you're clearly some disinformation troll.
Of course.
And carbon neutral is a major step in that direction. Carbon neutral not the end goal, and most people don't claim that it is.
Exactly. As the amount of renewable zero carbon electricity increases, it will become less expensive than fossil fuels, which will naturally drive energy usage away from the more polluting sources.
You're right, but if you read beyond the title it's clearly stated that it's about electricity generation.