Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded, now they want to silence him
Mood
heated
Sentiment
negative
Category
politics
Key topics
renewable energy
fossil fuel industry
climate change
A scientist exposed anti-wind groups as being funded by the oil industry, leading to backlash against the scientist, sparking a heated discussion on the ethics of fossil fuel influence on renewable energy debates.
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I n my ideal world these people would be prosecuted.
Real answer? Pick a battle and commit to it. That means allying with folks who agree with you—or have an incentive to agree—on your one issue with whom you may strongly disagree on other policy or even moral positions. This doesn’t need to be a permanent alliance, after all, just a transactional one to achieve a goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National...
If you HONESTLY want to try to convince people that these politicians and industries are a net negative you can not just sit there and call people fucking idiots. It makes a person retreat into their view that much more. You have to just calmly explain things. Sometimes you have to explain that thing a lot.
A lot of people who voted right wing are looking for reasons to re-evaluate their decisions. Dont give them a reason to double down by calling them fucking mornons. Soft language will win this fight.
If only
This.
Sometimes I think I want people to change their minds extremely and instantaneously. When I look at the micro-changes they make, and have the endurance to see these changes over time, they can actually make extreme changes and in a short period of time. It's just rarely instantaneously extreme.
i dont believe this to be the case. If they have such a reason, then surely they would've already examined it much earlier and came to a conclusion under which they won't have been a right wing voter in the first place.
So there's something else at play, such as preconceived notions, or the inability to sort out facts from fiction (being presented as fact on TV), that makes them behave the way they did.
and then everyone clapped
The far, far easier (at that end of things) way to solve our problems would be to shift our economic policies to favor the poor at the expense of the very wealthy, because a huge share of the cause of their stubborn stances is economic insecurity. But unfortunately, that...probably requires getting them on board, at least to some extent. (Not to mention actually having a free and fair election again, which...looks pretty dodgy at the moment.)
The only way to stop those people is boots-on-the-ground political, social, and cultural activism. No, writing mean tweets and just taking part to that fancy "guess your next leader" powerball variant you do once every four years is not remotely enough.
Our current system makes it much too easy to hold on to profits even when direct negative externalitites cost millions of human life-years.
not while there's still oil to be extracted. Rigs (esp. offshore ones) take a lot of initial investment, and takes several decades to fully pay out. It's not hard to imagine that those investments hadn't fully matured and so they'd want the demand for oil to continue.
What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power. A parallel branch of Wind and Solar companies are doing all the installations and running the power but not to the extent of bringing new capacity online, its all purely for replacing the old coal and gas systems. Quite a lot of companies are having to buy their own installations and run them so they can have their new data centre.
They'd rather see world go through an energy crisis which will make their profits skyrocket, before we eventually de-fossilize.
The financial modeling also relies heavily on the assumption of government preference (hard if there is a huge lobby who hates your guts) and wind speeds holding constant (wind speeds are falling and this is blowing holes in wind farm finances).
The electricity grid is not "forced" to accept anything. Places like Texas show that economic incentives work for renewable energy. In fact, economic incentives are stronger than disinformation.
What I think is really weird in the world today is the power companies don't seem interested in selling more power.
China has to import 70% of its oil so it needs to focus on renewables. If the US doesn't produce enough oil for its own needs, it too would be building solar and wind at scale I presume. But the US is a net oil exporter.
So Hill Farmer Bob can just put a turbine up on the big hill and get "free" electricity. If there was magically Oil everywhere, and Bob was legally allowed to just drill for it, that's what he would obviously do, but in most places there is no oil and oil companies ensured they control the rights so Bob couldn't drill.
This is what capitalism is about, you own stuff therefore you get free money forever. But you don't own the sun or wind.
I'm wondering if the current governmental backlash to wind is just a prelude to getting "wind rights" of vast geographical areas sold to some properly bribing oil corporation.
Then the company can totally control the transition from oil to wind in such a fashion as to extract maximum revenue without having to care about any external competition.
As an example I feel even Gas electricity LCOE equivalent is calculated as Capex + Opex where Capex amortisation over lifetime depends on capacity factor of Gas turbine plant. With more renewable penetration even in a competitive market like ERCOT the LCOE equivalent costs for Gas increases although technically this should drive overall electricity lower and should work for everyone.
This completely creates a significant issue for Natural Gas future too which I think was unthinkable for US Gas producers as it was the safest bet decades into the future.
Not too talk about what even a 3-4% Oil demand destruction in Oil for transportation due to EVs can do to the oil markets.
All this seemed theoretical before but now the tides are finally changing led by China and most of the world has a vested interest in reducing Oil and Gas dependency as most of the world are net importers too.
So all these plays are essentially trying to maximise the cash producing life of the current assets whether it can be achieved by FUD or whatever other means necessary.
However, there's also a trend that giant corporations are kind of like giant oil tankers (no pun intended). It takes a humongous amount of energy to change a company's fundamental core business. Oil companies are in the business of oil. Even if they expand to becoming an energy company, it takes a long time for them to change their "oil DNA". Based on that, I can imagine that certain oil companies - though not all oil companies - elect to maintain the status quo.
I don't think this is unique to big oil. It's unique to big {pharma, tech, oil, *}. What I find harder to find out is what the "weights" are for both sides and how they are influenced.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-russian-officials...
It's sad that this has become so normal, and that they can pressure opponents into silence. I'm wondering if we'll ever get rid of this.
Just the stuff the Heartland Institute does is enough to write a book about and still not a peep from the usual crowd.
The War-for-Oil conspiracy theories are proven correct.
The suppression of 'free energy' is discussed widely as being a result of oil-industry repression.
And on and on.
Because it hasn't. The "free energy" stuff is way off the mark and pales in comparison to absolute kookery of weather machines being responsible for things climate change is actually doing.
They don't have a solid grasp of reality and it shows in how they're unaware about the specific things the oil industry is doing. Much of their rhetoric is big oil propaganda being repeated anyway.
War for oil isn't a conspiracy - it's such obvious public knowledge that there are memes about it. Yes, the country that is a major oil producer and in the currency of which most if not all oil transactions are done uses its military might to preserve the status quo - that's hardly a secret.
Your disdain for the conspiracy theorist scene is mirrored in that scenes disdain for justice.
In the case where there is actionable justice that can be achieved, the conspiracy theory is no longer a theory - the conspiracy is prosecuted in the courts of our proud nations' democratic institutions.
If so, then you are at odds with (at the very least) then president George W. Bush, and then prime ministers Tony Blair and John Howard.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, either the conspiracy theorists do include oil-motive conspiracy theorists, or heads of state have little influence over what is considered an acceptable, non-conspiratorial idea in public discourse.
Almost all of the post-Iraq oil contracts went for Chinese companies. The US made very little of it.
It doesn't really prove war for oil, war tends to mess up production and also we have a huge amount of domestic production. But that depends on what exactly the claims are.
"Free energy" doesn't exist so that just goes back to them barking up the wrong tree. It's taking a real villain and blaming them for nonsense instead of something they actually do.
e.g. I listen to a guy that goes exposes the conmen in the UFO community. The reason the guy focuses on UFOs is because he believes that when he was younger he saw a UFO. Over time he slowly realised over time that he had been lied to by these conmen. He isn't interested in the truth about the oil industry, he cares about the truth around UFO encounters because that is what he cares about.
edit: apart from that, no one is willing to pay for a realistic substitute for the fuel oil (marine) or diesel, so the question is actually moot.
Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
Have you looked at the government subsidies for nuclear in the UK and the massive lifetime cost? In terms of offshore wind - initially it was subsidized to get it up and running - but now it's established those have dropped and dropped.
> Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
I said I don't know. I said had heard the argument and these are examples of better arguments against wind IMO if they are true.
I don't know what to believe. I am dubious of any reporting on these issues.
> Sure - but no-one is claiming 100% wind is the target - total strawman argument. The UK goverments own net zero plan actually still includes gas generation!
Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
> One of the more bonkers arguments in the UK was when there was a massive fossil fuel price shock a couple of years ago due to wars and rising global demand - the fossil fuel lobby blamed rewnewables for the high prices!
I don't remember this. I am sure people will point the finger elsewhere rather than themselves.
I blame the high prices on fuel duty and taxes. Fuel Duty is 52.95 pence per litre and then you have to add VAT. The current diesel price is ~£1.40 per litre at the local Tesco filling station. So that is ~50% of the cost if I am understanding this correctly.
The person didn’t ask if you know, they asked if you had looked at reports. You cannot for once believe there weren’t subsidies as these endeavors are very time consuming with hundreds of regulations that need to be met.
> Neither are they claiming wind is 100% the target.
What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Obviously not. I said as much. I've listened to good arguments for and against it and I don't know what to believe.
My comments were simply about the fact that you could make better arguments than the ones that were presented.
> What do you perceive when they say wind is not reliable and increase electricity costs? I mean, it is free electricity, with minimal impact.
It isn't free electricity. There is a cost to constructing them, maintaining them and decommissioning them when they become EOL.
If the wind doesn't blow, they don't generate electricity. This means that there is more demand on other sources. So price is driven by supply and demand. All of this the energy company will factor into your tariff. So obviously it is going to affect the price of electricity.
> The way you understand about gas prices, while dismissing some arguments in favor of renewables is a bit telling.
Understanding a basic tax calculation that is listed on a government website is relatively easy and took a few seconds for me to guestimate. It is much more difficult for layman (like myself) to understand the Total Cost of Ownership of a Wind Turbine, it ROI and understanding whether that maybe a good investment.
I wasn't arguing for or against wind. I was saying there are arguments against wind that might be better than the ones are often highlighted. You are mistaking me highlighting there are potentially better arguments, with agreeing with those arguments.
Obviously there are very good reasons to get rid of coal, but it leads to higher prices. Reducing fossil fuels in the grid will be expensive and I worry that the lack of candor from politicians on this will end up making the transition more difficult politically.
The need for backup is not an argument against wind in itself. But it is important to consider the full system costs of wind generation, which includes the backup costs as well as the additional transmission infrastructure.
Firming argument is valid, but UK deploys nuclear/gas anyway. You can start feeling real challenges past ~70% ren generation - firming becomes more expensive due to opex but you still need it and gas opex is smaller vs nuclear in this low utilization area. So now you are in a moral dilema- ditch nuclear and build gas firming or reorganize capacity market so that nuclear has some CFD or is compensated for firming&grid stabilization (not all nuclear can operate in island mode so that's another factor)
Germany choose the path of gas expansion if you read Fraunhofer. UK is still in a mix. Nordics are lucky with hydro so they can expand basically all low carbon tech
For now they have sufficient power, but considering nuclear timelines, you better start now
Enhanced geothermal could play a role here, but for now it's debatable.
Demand response is basically - please don't use power because we don't have enough or because it's expensive. That's not an appealing option.
Smart grid management is good but it'll take years to reach good condition - you need to expand/upgrade transmission and distribution systems with proper equipment.
Germany has it's own path that's more or less stable for a long time- coal+gas firming, tons of ren and major transmission expenses, to the point govt will start subsidizing them
THE UK gets 30% of its electricity from wind and another 5% from solar; Denmark gets 70% from renewables, mostly wind. Iowa gets 65% of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38%, mainly from solar.
But some lobbyists are trying to kill momentum, especially those who see nuclear as a silver bullet. It is not.
what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it
Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements
It's a strange double standard. As is the building of expensive pumped hydro storage for use with nuclear.
The company supposed to build them held a tender for first SMR, then pivoted to large scale reactors and shortlisted three options. Then that tender disappeared and now they have shortlisted 2 SMR options.
What is happening is a no one wanting to admit the absolutely ludicrous costs and hope the question will fizzle out.
Which as we all know are paper products which rely on ”scale” to achieve anything. No one seems to talk about who will buy the couple hundred SMR prototypes to achieve said scale.
”Get something on the grid” when the mangled number put out in PR communication is 2035.
So realistically early to mid 2040s. Why not just build renewables and storage and have ”something on the grid” counted in months and years instead of decades?
renewables cover different aspect of demand. What you do if you don't have enough firming power? Hope neighbors will have spare power? That's why you start planning nuclear now, or you'll start planning gas later, just like Germany
Anti subsidy reports in 2019 [1] landed on a what was seen as a worryingly large €10B for the entire Swedish market based subsidy system over the period from 2003 to 2045. 2018 the actual costs landed on €300m.
In 2021 the price of the system went to zero and was subsequently phased out for new producers. You know; market based subsidies.
In other words, much less than €10B will ever be spent on it.
Please stop making stuff up because you can’t bring yourself to accept how horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power is.
Are suggesting that we should build peaking nuclear power plants to solve firming? Because that is Sweden’s problem. Managing a January cold spell coupled with low wind is what is used to calculate the resiliency.
What capsize factor should we calculate? 20%? That is way higher than a January cold spell but let’s go for it.
Running Vogtle at a 20% capacity factor leads to 80 cents per kWh electricity.
What you are suggesting is completely batshit insane when actually putting a number on it.
Who cares if the final bit of firming is fossil based with possibility to be decarbonized through synfuels, biofuels or hydrogen when we still have large portions of the economy to deal with?
Don’t let imaginary perfect be the enemy of good enough.
[1]: https://timbro.se/miljo/ny-rapport-subventioner-till-fornyba...
I have never understood this complaint about solar and wind. If we could have our electricity 100% generated by green sources most of the time and then rely on other sources (even natural gas) to supplement when there isn't enough being generated by solar and wind I would weep with joy. That'd be an astonishingly huge victory in the fight against climate change. I wouldn't even care if we needed significant government subsidies to ensure that the gas plants stay profitable while their demand is unpredictable.
- This increases demand on other sources of energy. If there is a sudden change in demand you have a price spike. This leads to an increase in price to consumers.
- If the grid also has to be re-balanced. This has a financial cost in of itself. If the grid can't be re-balanced you can have blackouts. Blackout can potentially kill people, it effects business etc.
- If you are getting it from other countries, this means you are reliant on another nation for your energy needs. This is a security issue. e.g. Norway threatened to ration energy exports back in 2022. This would of course increase the price.
- Energy prices have a knock affect to everything in the economy and are a significant driver of price inflation. This obvious has an adverse affect on the economy.
Subsidies are paid for via taxation. At the moment the UK is likely to increase taxation again in October as they were unable to cut benefits earlier this year. The larger the subsidies a government are paying the more money they need collect in taxation, or you have to borrow. The UK is unlikely to be able to collect much more tax, and we are borrowing a huge amount of money as it is.
I'm not even antioil in general but I am pro diversification, and think it's absurd to bring up government in that way when a major point of government should be to represent value for the citizens, that might not be represented in the market otherwise.
Same reason why agriculture is - too vital of an industry. Which might make sense from a national security standpoint - but it also gives the oil industry yet another reason to fight tooth and nail against anything that can diminish the importance of oil.
If oil ever became non-vital to the country's infrastructure and economy, those subsidies would stop, and the entire industry might go the way of British coal.
As for being cost effective, onshore wind is probably the cheapest option, and I think it's hoped that offshore will come close to that once more of the learning curve has been traversed. Perhaps fossil gas from the North sea is still cheaper for now, if you ignore the external cost.
I think solar power is even cheaper, but doesn't deliver much in the winter so far up north.
Backup: Batteries are cost effective for short term shortages. For long term shortages, you'd fire up thermal plants, either biomass or biogas (fossil gas for now).
It doesn't make sense to back up wind with nuclear. Nuclear has a high capital cost and relatively low running costs, so you don't save much from being standby but you still need to pay back the loans.
Well, if they were entirely sincere in their concern for the view, the birds, and the noise, only one of those concerns would apply to offshore drilling.
Considering "preventing industrialization" to be an end in itself is something different, usually associated with being pro-wind-power.
There is, of course, a debunking video response (14 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKVNFqqzvP4
NIMBYism (destroying the beautiful views from my golf course) and "Think of the birds" also feature high on the list.
- Unclear maintenance - there's no clear way what to do with dysfunctional mills on land.
Just letting them rot seems to be a thing. Offshore maintenance is surely no fun, too. How long do they last?
- Pollution - there's a lot of abrasion and this stuff is pretty unclear,
it's even going into places where clean water is collected. Does anybody care about this?
- Ecology - there are a lot of trees that get cut down for wind. Maybe keeping those trees would be better.
Kills birds and bats is also part of the argument
- Economy - a lot of energy is produced at the wrong time. So much that it's even expensive to dump.
How much energy goes into producing the mill, and how long will it last?
Does this break even if you subtract subsidies, maintenance and value the dumped excess-energy realistically?
Is there any good storage solution coming - or will this remain to be a myth?
Two argument seem to be to "claim damages from the visual impact of offshore with projects located off their coasts" and "invoking the federal environment legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act".
https://www.treehugger.com/the-marketing-of-gas-stoves-never...
Heats faster, doesn’t crack etc.
With gas you also have to worry about proper ventilation, and most homes don't actually have that. Not to mention that gas leaks are a risk as well.
It's performance is actually a huge risk point as well, since it's so periodic.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-06/what-australia-can-le...
> For the first time ever, California's batteries took over gas as the primary source for supplying evening power demand in April, providing "akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors" one evening, according to the New York Times.
You'll notice in your article they are almost always talking about power instead of energy because energy is the problem.
We still need about 100 - 1000x improvements to rely on batteries without reliable power plants, depending on how much the generation capacity is overbuilt.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-renewables-g...
In reality we will still have a lot of fossil generation which will make it 'easier'.
There are numerous camps with strong impassioned and conflicting arguments as to cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...
The only sense in which there are conflicting arguments, is that the leftist Spanish government read the above report and concluded that it was the fault of the gas plants for not being available when they were needed. Because they were switched off. Because of their own policies. This is not an argument that deserves genuine consideration.
The preliminary report was exactly that, preliminary off the cuff listing of things that might cause issues with no definitive conclusion .. hence the need for longer consideration and a final report.
> the leftist Spanish government
Drop the politics and act like an Engineer (civil, electrical)
> the fault of the gas plants for not being available when they were needed. Because they were switched off.
It's routine across the globe to bring power generation facilities on and off, and spin them up in anticipation of need - this incident is a failure of a control algorithm regardless of politics.
“In 2019, California had 770 megawatts of battery storage. Now, it's 14 times higher, at 10,383 megawatts, and by the end of this year, it expects to add another 3,800.”
We saw the same curve with solar and wind. 20-30 years worth today will be peanuts in the near future. You’ve outlined a very achievable goal.
For the past year in the UK the average is ~30% generation from wind. https://grid.iamkate.com/
So seems it's possible. Swings in generation are dealt with via inter-country interconnects, pumped storage and gas turbine generation. Nuclear adds a steady base.
The UK's prices are a political choice due to the mapping of voters over the energy generation distribution.
By breaking the country in to zones, where the electricity that's bought can actually reach the users they then apply the actual economics of the system properly, and encourage suppliers to build where the demand can be satisfied by them.
Situation is very similar in Germany - most industry is concentrated in the south while most productive wind in the north. In the past it didn't matter since prices were similar with coal. But now, since you can't magically create wind in low wind/unproductive areas, the options are either split zones and kill part of industry, which Germany doesn't want, or to keep a single zone and build expensive transmission like sudlink.
Now, banning onshore wind in England for a decade when it was the cheapest source of energy available. That's just plain stupid (or a corrupt gift to your mates in gas companies).
I don't think anyone is expecting wind farms to supply anywhere near 100% of energy production. Probably not even 50%.
From the IEA report: "Substantiated by in-depth case studies, this report infers that, almost anywhere on the planet, nearly 100% VRE power grids firmly supplying clean power and meeting demand 24/365 are not only possible but would be economically viable, provided that VRE resources are optimally transformed from unconstrained run-of-the weather generation into firm generation."[1]
However, propagandists routinely spread misinformation on firming. For example, they might cite the absolutely absurd LFSCOE which is funded by the energy sector's equivalent of the Center for Indoor Air Research[2][3][4].
[1] https://iea-pvps.org/key-topics/firm-power-generation/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
[3] https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/10/rice-university-s-baker-in...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Indoor_Air_Research
Once a better solution has been found, the land can be freed for the nature to take over again.
We have no issues with stealing a couple of square miles of nature in order to pave it for our cities or to use it for farming.
Once you remove the wind turbines, the harm you've done to the nature was minimal: production of the turbines, used area and generated noise, minimal pollution of the area, the troubles of recycling them. That's mostly it.
You don't have this with oil, nor with current-age nuclear.
Also, we've already accepted the noise of cars, trucks, motorcycles and planes.
So I really don't get what they are protesting about, specially in Germany.
They aren't particularly dangerous, and they don't leach contaminants. So you just bury them so no one can access them too easily. But it does require leaving the sealed reactor buildings in place - even if you can reuse the rest of the land and the exclusion area.
Some countries may have postponed decommissioning because it's cheaper to wait a bit Some countries allow recycling of some stuff, even concrete, like Italy
[1] https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out...
The way I understand it, Germany had a horrid mix of anti-nuclear eco-activists, local coal lobbyists and Gazprom's natural gas lobbyists. The politicians not included in any of the above were too toothless, and couldn't fight through this bullshit and secure good outcomes regardless.
Some of those critics focus on nuclear (Like AfD: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/populist-afd-sand-gears...) and some of those pretend to be angry about the slowness of Germanys transition but it doesn't really add up to anyone who pays attention to the local facts. It's just a meme to get people angry at the left and/or environmentalists, while the right openly and continually sabotage progress.
Greenpeace did great work on the peace front, but wrecked 50 years of carbon progress on the nuclear power front.
The "left" (by your definition) also opposes fossil fuels but we're nowhere near eliminating those. Why haven't they succeeded?
Surely mere "opposition" isn't enough.
Leaving nuclear in place would be good, going heavily into renewables would also be good, but doing neither would be idiotic, and somehow that's what they did.
Greens were in a coalition with the Social Democrats led by Chancellor Schroeder; Schroeder agreed to the Greens’ demands for nuclear exit and negotiated a board role at Gazprom for himself after his political career.
Merkel initially wanted to reverse or freeze the exit timeline but bowed to public opinion to continue it once the tsunami hit Japan.
I mean not always, they put feed in tarifs for solar in law at the end of the 90s. This led to a huge boom in solar production and it made the Germans very big in solar panel production. Unfortunately, like all other countries they were eventually outproduced by china.
This model has been copied in a lot of places afterwards and only when a mature market for solar exists does it stop working (it becomes a subsidy for people that produce paid for by people that don't).
When the conservatives regained power, they vowed to cancel and stop the exit timeline, but then came Fukushima and an irrational media panic - and Merkel did what she does best.
Poland is building nuclear power now though, after decades of burning epic amounts of coal (~85% of their electricity output).
This is most likely coz it provides a route to creating a nuclear weapon in a hurry "just in case". It isnt cost effective for them for any other purpose.
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/poland/
They keep putting their nuclear switch on date backwards (2040 now I think?) but renewables have been taking big chunks out of the problem and will continue to do so.
You mean f_ck up safety and security of whole Old continent for decades to come, for some ego polishing, personal weaknesses or similar noble reasons?
She still admits no failures nor missteps during her reign in many topics where she clearly failed badly, despite journalists asking very direct questions about this. I wonder when will German population realize how much long term damage she has done, if ever.
The German antinuclear movement started as a local aspect of the 68s civil rights and environmental movements. Then, when Chernobyl hit, West Germany enacted restrictions in daily life to cope with the risk of radioactive fallout and contamination. The daily experience of many Germans was probably not too dissimilar from the Covid time. (The restrictions were less severe but the mood was similarly apocalyptic)
This experience made a nuclear-free Germany an absolute core part of the progressive movement here. It's part of the founding story of the Greens.
Other flashpoints were plans for "eternal storage" facilities for nuclear waste. The conflict around the Gorleben facility was going on between government and local population for several decades and had given rise to entire protest communities.
It's a partisan topic like maybe abortion in the US.
The only aspect of Merkel's decision that was surprising was that she did it. She seemingly switched political sides and enacted several parts of the progressive agenda (also gay marriage and "wir schaffen das" - the famously liberal stance on refugees) - as head of the conservative party. Her party and voting base were not happy with that...
It's almost as if the outrage was astroturfed into existence by the nuclear lobby using similar tactics to the oil lobby.
You never hear someone complain about Germany's nuclear exit and then pivot into "but at least they're doing well with renewables and they should do better and go faster on EVs and electrification of heat" which would make sense for someone who had a strange affection for nuclear tech, particularly those last two which work great with nuclear.
What you do see is people absolutely seething about leftists and environmentalists and renewables who only have one just barely socially acceptable outlet to attack Germany on.
But they attack them not because their decarbonisation is slow but because they were clear leaders in the tech that threatens fossil fuels around the globe.
Making it seem like a failure is a good way to slow down that transition in other countries too.
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