Germany has spent over $550 billion Euro on renewables generation, grid infrastructure, & storage, and Europe as a whole has spent over $1.5 TRILLION on all of that over just the last TEN YEARS! What has Germany gotten for that massive investment? Per the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2020 Germany's total primary energy supply (TPES), which is the total amount of primary energy that a country has at their disposal, including imported energy, exported energy, and extracted from natural sources, was 13.7 TJ (tera joules). Of that, 15.1% or 2.07 TJ of all German electricity was generated by renewables, including hydro, wind & solar, and biomass.
Of that 15.1% of energy produced by renewable sources in 2020, 3.2% (0.07 TJ) was produced by hydro, 33.7% (0.69 TJ) was produced by wind & solar, and 63.1% (1.31 TJ) was produced by biomass (i.e. cutting down trees from North American forests & burning the wood). That means that after $550 BILLION in investment, Germany only generated 15.1% of it's electricity from renewables, and the majority of that came from cutting down forests and burning the trees! Given the need to reduce CO2 emissions, I don't think biomass should really be included, so excluding biomass. As such, including only hydro and wind & solar (which were 3.2% and 33.7% respectively of that 2.1 TJ), in 2020 Germany only generated 0.76 TJ, or 5.57% of it's electricity, from renewables!
In 2011, Germany had 17 nuclear plants which provided between 25% and 30% of the electricity used in the country. If Germany had not phased out those plants and, in starting in 2011 it spent that $550 billion Euro on new nuclear plants, even assuming plants take 10 years to build and $10 billion each, Germany would currently starting up 50 to 60 new nuclear plants and it would be generating MORE than 100% of its total electricity demand from CO2 FREE nuclear power.
Investment Performance (basically how much money would Germany have spent for each 1% of incremental CO2 free electricity):Renewables - $550 billion for 5.57% of incremental CO2 free electricity = $98.7 BILLION for each % of incremental CO2 free electricityNuclear - $550 billion for 75% of incremental CO2 free electricity = $7.3 billion for each % of incremental CO2 free electricityShow less
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