Germany - Too Successful?

A number of ex-colleagues gathered together the other day - sadly for a funeral - but the talk soon turned to the state of the electricity market, or I should say markets because we strayed into the issue of Germany building new lignite plants. With renewables (some 23% or so of German power production) often base-loading during the day (solar) or in periods of reasonable wind there is a need for back-up generation. Nuclear can't do that and gas in Germany is expensive so lignite plants are kept running as spinning reserve. The result? Germany's CO2 emissions are actually on the rise.This is not a pretty picture; the German's seem to have dug something of a hole for themselves. No to nuclear. No to CCS. No to gas. Is the big German experiment to base an electricity system on renewables about to fail?