"German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that the plan “combines independence, affordability and climate protection…It is not just extreme weather events around the world that demonstrate how urgently we need to do more to protect the climate,” he said. “If the situation in the Strait of Hormuz determines whether people can still afford their daily commute to work, that is not a good state of affairs.”
If there’s been an upside to the Middle East War, it’s that it’s been a giant advertisement for renewable energy. Not just cheaper, cleaner, & better, crucially it means energy-independence, too.
Smart move by Germany. Their industrial and manufacturing base is getting clobbered by China because they stuck with the dying fossil fuel paradigm for too long. Every other EU nation has committed to ending fossil fuel use, hopefully this further accelerates their efforts, too.
When another oil pipe was bombed somewhere in September and the prices hiked, I saw people commenting that it’s ‘your rulers [oligarchs] doing that to push EV [electric vehicles] on us’ which seems like the most misdirected rage I’ve seen (yet) and maybe most uninformed. I wonder if the comment came from the US
Always planning in the far future so politics can change…and someone else can be blamed for it not happening. Sheesh, we are so screwed. I never thought in my wildest dreams that we as a species would be cheering on climate change. Even this is too little too late.
2000 2010 2020 20302045Small modular reactors cannot be widely proliferated soon enough. Solar, Tidal, and Wind being able to provide for the majority of energy needs still feels like a dream.
Wake up, it’s a reality. China alone has 1000GW of installed solar, and globally it already out produces all coal and oil power plants combined.
Trump the environmentalist
I mean, Genghis Khan did something similar.
lol, set it far enough in the future that it’s a worthless promise aka kick the can down the road.
if they’d said by 2030, then i’d pay attention.
Who could have predicted such a war? Or the climate collapse? Or the invasion of Ukraine?
They all just came out of nowhere.
The war against Iran did not come out of nowhere. The USA has been overt about wanting “regime change” for Iran since 2001, and since Trump’s last term especially. Meanwhile Iran has been very open about how they would respond in case they were attacked by the USA: punish all US-aligned countries in the region, close the Strait of Hormuz, close Bab al-Mandab, and target Israel directly and indirectly.
So this was very predictable and that’s why lots of people have been talking about it since 2017.
My tinfoil hat theory is also that the US currently do not have the enough energy to supply all the expanding data centers, so we’re starting our imperialism again for oil.
Shortly after the Venezuela insurgency where we stole their oil, Trump rambled on about how he met the CEO of Nvidia, and he bragged about securing oil for him, I wish I could dig up that clip again.
I’m sure Iran was also for stealing their oil for our data centers. Israel probably convinced us that we would win a joint operation, and everything else was convenient excuses to justify an invasion.
I think you’re right, but my read is a bit broader. I think that they’ve been planning a confrontation with China for the past decade, and that Venezuela, Cuba and Iran are just part of the “sequencing” of that war. They see these countries as chess pieces and they need to move those around before going in for the main objective.
But I think two things didn’t pan out the way that they had planned. First, China is moving away from oil much faster than they had anticipated, and second, the AI race turned out to be much closer than they had hoped.
The USA’s position is basically that whoever “wins” the AI race is going to control the planet for the upcoming decades, because it will provide such massive advantages for industry and warfare. And the USA is used to being a decade ahead of everyone else technologically - but in this instance they’re neck-and-neck, because China is producing good chips despite not having the best fabs, and China is producing good LLMs despite throwing way less compute at their models. At the same time, I think everyone was a little surprised at how good LLMs actually are (I know that’s a controversial thing to say on Lemmy, but that’s what they believe).
So I think this sped up the timeline for the war on China by a lot. Suddenly they felt the need to act immediately, going down their sequence of conquest which was supposed to put them in a much better bargaining position against China.
AI was also a big part of the supposed diversification of the Gulf State economies, where UAE/KSA was supposed to get data centers in exchange for alignment with Israel. They’d fuel the data centers with fossil fuels, cool it with who-knows-what, and get a small part of the slice. Hence why Iran has targeted those data centers.
yeah, sure. German energy strategy is basically as sound as a shaggy dog story. they just want that sweet russian gas back.
The article is mostly about petrol for cars, it briefly mentions reliance on gas (for electricity). Do germans have gas connections to heat their house and cook?
Do germans have gas connections to heat their house and cook?
Yes
Though I assume that this is also being phased out?
They already phased out their gas showers, so i would say progress is being made.
Partly just through economics. As solar generation becomes more democratised, running things off a power source you can’t generate yourself becomes less attractive.
That is kind of a secondary,natural effect, I guess. Basically most of the new heating systems installed are heat pumps, because those make more sense economically. So the gas delivery network will get more expensive with dwindling users, making gas prices rise even quicker than the resource price itself.
Im old enough to remember the EU condemning China for “overproducing” solar panels.
Should’ve used UNLIMITED POWER (nuclear)
The ironing is delicious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#Germany
Should’ve used UNLIMITED POWER (nuclear)
And I thought the NUCLEAR trollbots couldn’t get any dumber. I was wrong
Nuclear is a great option. But we’re too stupid as a species to just do it. We’ve also proven that we will bomb nuclear power plants to bits, which is such an idiotic thing to do.
“Yes Mom I’ll clean my room, but first let me trash it for another 20 years, then I’ll hire a crew to rebuild the house.”
“Just another 20 years haha guys I swear”
They provided an actual roadmap, which presumably has steps with deadlines earlier than 2045. If anyone can read German, please let me know what the roadmap says.
they have an english version of the roadmap. If you read it, can you give a tldr?
Germany’s Fossil Fuel Transition Roadmap (Sept 2026):
- Legally bound to cut emissions 65% by 2030, 88% by 2040, net-zero by 2045 (Federal Climate Action Act). Already at ~48% cut since 1990, while GDP grew ~48% over the same period.
- Fossil fuels still 65% of final energy consumption; Germany imports ~98% of its oil, ~95% of gas, 100% of hard coal; costing ~€76bn/year.
- Renewables hit 55% of gross electricity consumption in 2025, targeting 80% by 2030. Coal power must end by 2038 (possibly 2035).
- 2025 was the first year heat pumps outsold gas boilers in Germany (48% market share).
- EVs were 32% of new car registrations in Aug 2026; EU mandates 100% by 2035.
- New gas/oil heating systems installed after July 2026 must phase in carbon-neutral fuel blends starting 2029. 2026 Climate Action Programme: 67 measures projected to cut ~27 million tonnes CO2 and reduce gas/petrol imports significantly by 2030.
- Internationally: Germany’s spent ~€11.8bn on climate finance in 2024, backs Just Energy Transition Partnerships (South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, Senegal), and quit the Energy Charter Treaty in 2023 over it undermining coal phase-out.
Source: German Federal Ministry for the Environment, “Germany’s Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels” (Sept 2026).
if they give a tldr can you give a one sentence judgement.
would be a lot easier to do that with those nuclear plants that were shut down recently
Actual renewables or “biofuels”?
As far as i have seen: “no biofuels”. But i would not bet on it.
