The UK likes to go the other way by talking up a ridiculous goal and then immediately failing it, like "Our goal is to produce zero CO2 and become the global leader in renewables by 2025” and then immediately open a new coal mine.

Yes, but the goals in germany are written into a law, and the highest council actually blaming the government for failed goals.

The goal is complete decarbonization until 2045 and a lot of sectors in Germany are already on track with that goal, energy being one of them. That with a minister of finance, that does not want to spend money and a minister of transportation, that is more a puppet of the automobile industry and does not care about decarbonization. Imagine the US without the huge subsidies into clean energy. That's what Germany is trying to do under their current minister of finance.

German here.

Even back under Merkel, elected parties had a habit of defining good goals and then rendering them impossible to hit through policy. This meant that no one could fault them for trying, and no one could fault them for not being able to hit them.

Nowadays my countrymen aren't as stupid anymore. That doesn't mean we can do anything about it, but especially since Merkel we don't believe any of these leaks anymore.

I'm much more optimistic, though I do think it will get worse before it gets better. I think we'll end up with a few mass killer enviromental events before humans start to save themselves properly. It'll never be too late as Earth is always going to better than anywhere else for us.

Quick list of things hopeful in my feeds of the top of my head.

• Renewable energy is the cheapest energy.
• Agrivoltaics can increase yeilds while also providing power.
• Home Solar & battery pay back time is coming down all the time.
• Electric cars are the cheapest over their life time and the upfront costs are tumbling.
• Electrification of more and more transport types is happening to save costs.
• EVs are going V2H/V2G/V2X which means you get a large home (and office?) battery to take part in energy markets.
• Second life EV batteries will eventury be a source of larger, cheaper, home batteries.
• Just the other day another methane solution : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/22/bacteria-that-eats-methane-could-slow-global-heating-study-finds
• Fusion looks closer than 50 years out now.
• RightToRepair + OpenSource is slowly spreading and will reduce life time costs and reduce e-waste. Regulators are waking up too.
• Vertical farming is developing and will end up cheaper.
• Lab meat or precision fermentation is a path to animal free animal protein at lower costs.
• 5 minute cities as an idea is spreading.
• Covid has normalized WFH
• Green spaces in cities to cool them and improve mental health is increasingly being talked about and pushed in some forward thinking cities.
• Peak population is constantly revised down and sooner. Once population starts to fall, it's not set to stop for a long time.

There is a lot of movement. It's all about aligning economics with fighting climate change. Which is natural as using less to do the same thing is better for both.

One thing that is a very good sign is oil companies are scared. They are spending a lot of money pumping out FUD. Doom peddling to slow climate action, but economics is against them. Even without climate damage being costed in. Which governments will do when oil is less powerful.

Fight the doom!

Which country?

@[email protected] You are misinformed there. The energy sector reaches its goal and offshore wind farms and solar panels are actually over-performing, meaning more are built than was planned for this year. The sectors largely missing their goals are the transport and the building sector.

If all the subsidiaries that went into nuclear power the last few decades went to renewables instead Germany would have no issues at all, but hey... giving tax payer money to some very few giant energy companies is more important than creating a Europe leading renewables energy sector that does not rely on russian fossils or nuclear material.

You should know that nuclear power is very expensive while renewables are absurd crazy cheap. I've been to a German Endlager and it takes years and BILLIONS of Euros just to seal this thing off. Guess who is paying? Mostly tax payers.

There's be no company in Germany which would be willing to run a nuclear power plant if they were responsible for the permanent disposal of their waste on their own instead of letting the tax payer pay (most of) for it.

How about you guys stop this bullshit about the nuclear plants stuff? They were scheduled to be shut down for a VERY long time, the biggest mistake was selling out nearly all the renewable energy manufacturing to China. Nuclear power is only making a profit, if it's subsidized like crazy.

Not only that - A LOT of Germans are actively against putting up more wind power, let alone photovoltaics. Which is what over 50% voted "against" as well. Those that didn't go voting, have lost all say in it, so yeah. That's not a political issue, we Germans are the issue.

What’s wrong with nuclear?