Another circlejerk article for Europe with a hypothetical scenario as an opinion piece just to get people angry. Seems weird that something like this is coming from Reuters - I thought they did mostly matter of fact reporting for things that happened and not stuff like this

On an annual basis, the roughly 8.1 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity closed this year has been more than offset by increases in generation capacity from solar and wind sites, data from think tank Ember shows.

Oh great. If we now also replicate all the Nazi cesspool comments then we feel just like /r/europe.

However, with generation from solar - Germany’s second largest source of clean electricity behind wind - set to plunge this winter due to reduced daylight, Germany’s total clean power generation looks set to decline just as energy consumption levels rise from higher demand for heating.

There's a big push in Germany to install heat pumps. If people doing that are getting dual air conditioner/heater systems installed, it may be that it'll increase summer demand for electricity, and that'll mitigate some of that.

As things stand, Europe's peak electricity demand is during winter, due to electricity-powered heating.

In the US, peak electricity demand is during summer, due to air conditioning.

What you'd ideally like is, if your generation is non-dispatchable, for demand to more-or-less track when power is available. In general, solar is going to tend to be generating at the right times if your peak load is from air conditioning, and the wrong times if your peak load is from heating.

European adoption of air conditioning is increasing.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/08/02/europe-reluctantly-turns-to-air-conditioning-as-heatwaves-bite-data-shows

In Italy, sales of air conditioning units grew from 865,000 a year in 2012 to 1.92 million in 2022, according to the industry association Assoclima. These were mostly for business and not residential use, with growth reported in the first quarter of this year.

Most are split heat air pump systems, that can heat spaces in the winter, which Assoclima says can reduce gas consumption as prices spike during the war in Ukraine. That dual-use attracts consumers.

What I don't know is what the total impact will be.

What a way to phrase the headline. We hopefully won't have any nuclear winters!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

German officials opted to shut the country's last remaining reactors in April, as although they generated steady volumes of power with little to no emissions, authorities preferred to expand supplies of renewable energy rather than make additional investments in the nuclear fleet.

However, with generation from solar - Germany's second largest source of clean electricity behind wind - set to plunge this winter due to reduced daylight, Germany's total clean power generation looks set to decline just as energy consumption levels rise from higher demand for heating.

Over the first nine months of 2023, German output of clean and fossil-powered electricity dropped from the same period in 2022, mainly due to stunted power demand from industry.

German output of chemicals and fertilizers - previously manufactured using abundant and cheap natural gas - have slumped to their lowest totals in over a decade in 2023 as producers throttled back production, data compiled by LSEG shows.

Production of cars, steel, batteries and turbines have also been pared back, resulting in an expected rare contraction in Europe's largest economy this year.

However, total German solar electricity generation historically declines by over 80% from September to December, due to sharply reduced daylight hours.

The original article contains 640 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!