Generation In Germany Research Articles

Fervo Showed Fractured Geothermal Works, Now Must Do It Bigger, Cheaper, and Soon

Earlier this year, one of the founders of Fervo Energy announced that the geothermal innovator had reached its “Mitchell moment.” Jack Norbeck, chief technology officer for Fervo, likened a test where it used a pair of fractured wells to create water hot enough to generate electricity to the time when Mitchell Energy adopted slickwater fracturing to economically extract large amounts of gas from the ultratight rock in the Barnett Formation. “We have derisked all those core challenges, we reached the Mitchell Energy moment for geothermal,” Norbeck said. By doing all that and supplying 3.5 MW of electricity to the local grid that powers Google facilities, he announced that the firm’s enhanced geothermal system (EGS), had reached the highest level of technical readiness. Now comes the hard part—proving that technical triumph can be turned into something really big. The Mitchell moment in 1997 is remembered because it led to a series of innovations that allowed hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to add enough oil and gas production to move global markets. What has been learned about fracturing in the decades since allowed oil industry veterans at Fervo to effectively use those tools to do what others had failed to accomplish—create high-volume EGS capable of generating power. One big difference between the moments is that Houston-based Fervo’s next step looks like a leap compared to Mitchell’s. After Mitchell’s moment, no innovation was required to sell shale gas from the Barnett or find the oilfield services needed to develop and produce it. Plus, it could learn from the many other companies working in tight rock plays. Its moment was the culmination of years of innovations by oil and service companies who continued finding ways to build on that advance. The endless arguments over who can claim credit for the innovations behind the Mitchell moment are evidence of the size of that support network. Today, Fervo’s efforts are also supported by the oil industry’s service sector and supply chain. Oil company Devon Energy, drilling contractor Helmerich & Payne, and pressure-pumping specialist Liberty Energy are among its early backers. And Fervo is benefiting from the government-funded research and site-evaluation work at the Utah Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) site, which is the key site for geothermal testing funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE). But unlike Mitchell, the path to commercial success will require Fervo and others to show they can create large operations to convert the heat they harvest into a cost-competitive commodity in a fast-changing, highly competitive industry. Sage Geosystems recently was added to the short list of geothermal startups with big projects, signing a deal with Meta to build a 150-MW plant somewhere east of the Rockies. Also high on the list is Eavor whose first commercial project will use its closed-loop heating technology for home heating and electric generation in Germany.

Dynamic life cycle assessment of European electricity generation based on a retrospective approach

The composition of electricity varies significantly throughout the year. As a result, the environmental impact of the electricity mix is also highly variable. However, most LCA studies assume a static annual average electricity mix and neglect these fluctuations. Therefore, this study examines the time-varying environmental impacts of electricity generation in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland using a dynamic life cycle assessment. It shows that the impacts of environmental categories vary considerably depending on when the electricity is generated, resulting from the different energy generation patterns throughout the day and year. In particular, the integration of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic systems and wind turbines leads to significant fluctuations of environmental impacts. To determine the magnitude of the variation, coefficients of variation are calculated for each environmental impact category for a representative year. High coefficients of variation of more than 20% can be observed for several environmental impact categories. In addition, both a production-based and a consumption-based approach were used for the dynamic life cycle assessment. Comparing these two approaches shows significant differences in impact category results, for example, for Italy, with an average of 15%. These differences highlight the importance of including cross-border electricity flows in assessing the environmental profile of electricity. Overall, the results of the study emphasize the need to implement dynamic electricity mix models in life cycle assessments, especially for systems with time-varying electricity consumption. The provided Excel spreadsheet files with hourly time profiles of environmental impacts for the countries studied facilitate the adoption of the developed models by other practitioners and provide a valuable tool for assessing environmental impacts.

Ökologischer Umbau von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Kosten und Nutzen

Abstract This article weighs up the costs and benefits of the expansion of renewable energy technologies for electricity generation in Germany. According to calculations of the German Ministry of Economic Affairs, this expansion has cost electricity consumers almost 300 billion euros since the introduction of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in 2000. Moreover, payment obligations of a similar magnitude are already in place for the next two decades. However, with the accelerated expansion of renewables following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, politicians are accepting costs well in excess of this approximately 600 billion. Given the costs already incurred, a cost-benefit analysis is imperative, not least because further costs in the three-digit billion range are not included in the 600 billion figure, such as the costs for grid expansion, which would not be necessary to the same extent without the expansion of renewables. Against this backdrop, strict attention should be paid to cost discipline in the further expansion of renewables by ensuring that the Federal Network Agency only issues technology-neutral rather than technology-specific tenders for the expansion of renewables in future. This means that only the most cost-efficient renewable technologies will be installed. Consequently, there will be budgetary scope for future investments that could boost the growth potential of the German economy more than the expansion of renewable energies. Contrasting with the high costs, the benefits of expanding renewable energies are modest. For example, the share of renewables in primary energy consumption in 2022 was only around 17 %. With such a low share, achieving greenhouse gas neutrality in 2045 with renewables alone appears to be a tremendous challenge.

Two Tales of the Energy Commons Through the Lens of Complexity

Abstract The Energy Commons embody the small-scale generation of renewable energy by groups of citizens. Existing scholarship and the European Union’s rules on the internal governance of citizen and renewable energy communities envision the Energy Commons as making the energy transition more democratic, equitable, inclusive, and local. Based on empirical research on citizen-led energy generation in Germany, this contribution examines the extent to which Energy Commons in practice live up to these normative ideals, why they partially fail to do so and how regulatory change can enable Energy Commons to converge to these ideals. This contribution sets out different types of Energy Commons and assesses how each type performs against scholarly expectations and the EU rules on their internal governance. It identifies the complexity of the energy sector as the main obstacle to achieving said normative ideals and sketches guidelines for regulatory change to reduce this complexity.

How did the Russia–Ukraine war impact energy imports and electricity generation? A comparative analysis between Germany and the United Kingdom

The energy crisis caused by the Russia–Ukraine war (RUW) has affected the energy supply chain. The countries most impacted by the sanctions imposed on Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine focused on replacing the countries they import their energy from in the short term and switching fuel, for example, from natural gas to coal in Germany. The objective of this article is to verify how the war has impacted energy trade and electricity generation in Germany and the United Kingdom (UK). The results indicate that the RUW had consequences on these countries’ energy sector, significantly affecting fuel trade and electricity generation in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Temporally and Spatially Resolved Simulation of the Wind Power Generation in Germany

Temporally and spatially resolved data on wind power generation are very useful for studying the technical and economic aspects of this variable renewable energy at local and regional levels. Due to the lack of disaggregated electricity data from onshore and offshore turbines in Germany, it is necessary to use numerical simulations to calculate the power generation for a given geographic area and time period. This study shows how such a simulation model, which uses freely available plant and weather data as input variables, can be developed with the help of basic atmospheric laws and specific power curves of wind turbines. The wind power model is then applied to ensembles of nearly 28,000 onshore and 1500 offshore turbines to simulate the wind power generation in Germany for the years 2019 and 2020. For both periods, the obtained and spatially aggregated time series are in good agreement with the measured feed-in patterns for the whole of Germany. Such disaggregated simulation results can be used to analyze the power generation at any spatial scale, as each turbine is simulated separately with its location and technical parameters. This paper also presents the daily resolved wind power generation and associated indicators at the federal state level.

Educational integration by the third generation? Placement and academic achievement of students with immigrant background in Germany

Studies show that minority students who were born abroad or whose parents were born abroad are less successful in school than their majority peers. However, little is known on whether these disadvantages persist for the grandchildren of immigrants, i.e., the third generation. Assimilation theories come to different predictions for third-generation students’ educational integration. We investigate third-generation students’ placement in different school types and their reading and mathematics achievements in Germany. Using data on ninth graders (N = 14,958) collected in the National Educational Panel Study enabled us to precisely identify third-generation students and to distinguish students by their ancestors’ countries of birth. Our results reveal that most third-generation students did not differ in their educational success from their majority peers, while first-generation and some groups of second-generation students, on average, were less successful in school. Overall, our findings are in line with classical and new assimilation theories and suggest that educational integration is mostly “completed” by the third generation in Germany. For some groups, however, we do not observe the major trends predicted by classical and new assimilation theories but patterns suggesting processes expected in segmented assimilation theory.

Relational Distance and Transformative Skills in Fields: Wind Energy Generation in Germany and Japan

ABSTRACTOrganizational interactions in fields, including their antecedents and consequences, remain under-researched, in particular with regard to relational distance and transformative skills. Through a comparative study of the German and Japanese wind power sectors, we explore the importance of distance among organizational actors and the development of skills. While in the case of Germany a radical increase in wind energy generation can be witnessed, the situation in the field of Japanese wind power remains largely unchanged. We show how different degrees of distance among organizational actors in these two countries result in the different development of skills that stimulate transformation in the field of energy generation. More precisely, we illustrate the pivotal role of distant challengers with their transformative skills for the successful conversion of already established field structures. Our study contributes to field theory by elaborating on the understanding of the evolution of relational distance, thereby grasping the dynamic interplay between the diversity of actors and their skill formation within a certain strategic action field.

Levelized and environmental costs of power-to-gas generation in Germany

The transformation to a greener energy system leads to new challenges, as wind and solar power are not always available. A solution for this challenge is the generation of synthetic natural gas (SNG) and hydrogen from (surplus) wind and solar power, so that the green gases can be stored in the natural gas grid long-term and be used for electricity generation when wind and solar power are not accessible. This solution is especially of interest if the storage infrastructure is already in place, as in Germany, since investment costs can be avoided. Because of that, the study investigates the levelized cost of SNG and hydrogen generation in Germany applying the cost estimation method by Rubin et al. For the investigation, different water electrolysis technologies (alkaline electrolysis, polymer exchange membrane, and solid oxide electrolyzer cell with a size of 1 and 100 MW) and energy scenarios (8,000 h grid, 2,000 h grid, wind, and solar) are contemplated. Besides that, the environmental costs of SNG and hydrogen generation in Germany are investigated due to the increasing importance of these costs for society and companies. The author concludes that the levelized costs of SNG and hydrogen are far too high compared to peer studies, as more cost factors have been considered after applying the method by Rubin et al. In terms of the environmental costs, the use of Germany's grid electricity is not recommended for SNG and hydrogen generation since the generation from wind and solar power is more environmentally friendly, whereby wind power is preferable over solar power.

Who cares for the future? Exploring public attitudes towards the needs of future generations in Germany

ABSTRACT This paper studies the determinants of support for future generations, using novel survey data for the case of Germany. I find significant, but not overwhelming support for prioritizing the needs of future generations vs. the acute needs of present-day citizens. Moreover, individual-level and contextual factors matter too. High-income and highly educated citizens are on average more supportive of the needs of future generations, the elderly and women less so. Left-wing supporters are equally more supportive of future generations, especially supporters of the Greens and those subscribing to ‘green-alternative-liberal’ values. Supporters of the right-wing populist AfD are most strongly opposed. General political trust boosts support for future generations, and economically thriving local economies are associated with higher levels of support for future generations as well.

How CO2 prices accelerate decarbonisation – The case of coal-fired generation in Germany

This paper analyses the potential impact of the world's two main coal phase-out instruments: 1) direct regulatory intervention restricting the operation of existing coal-fired generation capacity and prohibiting investment in new capacity and 2) market-based CO2-pricing instruments that make emission-intensive coal-fired generation less competitive. We quantify these instruments' potential effects in the empirical setting of Germany, where both instruments are employed concurrently. However, this paper's approach and methodology can be applied in any jurisdiction or energy system worldwide.Our paper provides quantitative results with a pan-European partial-equilibrium electricity system model. The model applies an innovative three-step approach. Step 1 solves an investment and dispatch problem with reduced technical and temporal complexity for European countries. Step 2 computes the dispatch problem at a bihourly resolution and step 3 solves the investment and dispatch problem for Germany with increased technical complexity.Our results confirm that both a regulated phase-out as well as a price on CO2 emissions can reduce the amount of coal-fired generation in an electricity system. If CO2 prices remain at current levels, coal-fired power plants leave the market significantly before the regulated phase-out date, reducing demand for employees in the Lusatian lignite industry. Regions and federal governments should take this finding into account when planning and preparing for structural change.

Motivated by political beliefs, not only by language: How Russian speakers in Germany compose their transnational news repertoires

Extant research in media and migration has been largely apolitical, focusing on how migrants use media to culturally connect with their homeland and keep their family ties. However, in times of increasing international conflicts and polarisation, such as the years leading up to the Russia's war against Ukraine in 2022, migrant audiences find themselves in a situation when the coverage of national and international politics in the homeland and host country media can differ dramatically. Against this backdrop, this study investigated how Russian speakers living in Germany create and navigate their transnational news repertoires. Grounded in 42 semi-structured interviews with the Russian speakers of the 1 and 1.5 generations in Germany, conducted between May and October 2021, this article identifies three types of transnational news repertoires: (1) politically-motivated news repertoire, (2) truth seeking-motivated news repertoire and (3) situation-motivated news repertoire. The results show that all the news repertoires of all participants are transnational. I argue that in the context of international conflict, not only language but also the participants' political beliefs play an essential role in their news choice. Future research on migrants in political communication should distinguish research not only along with the language of the media outlets but also along with the political ideologies that they project.

Age-period-cohort analysis of depression trends: are depressive symptoms increasing across generations in Germany?

Several studies have examined trends in depression, but only few have explicitly considered possible generational differences. I examined changes in the burden of depressive symptoms between 2002 and 2017 according to age, time period and birth cohort in Germany. I used population-based data drawn from the German Aging Survey (N = 33,723, 54% female, ages 40 +) from 2002, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017. Depressive symptoms were measured via the CES-D 15. Hierarchical age-period-cohort models were used to examine trends in depression. I found that depressive symptoms changed across age, time period and birth cohorts. While there was a general decrease across time periods, strong evidence for a U-shaped cohort effect was also found: Younger generations, beginning with cohorts born after the World War II, increasingly report more depressive symptoms than older generations. This U-shaped cohort trend appeared most pronounced for the somatic symptoms subscale. Contrarily, only minimal cohort differences were found regarding the positive affect subscale. Therefore, depressive symptoms, and especially somatic symptoms, seem to increase in more recent birth cohorts in Germany, who might thus be at risk to experience more mental health problems in the future. Potential reasons for these trends and the generalizability of the results to other countries should be investigated by future studies.

‘HERKUNFT IST ZUFALL’: ZU OFFENEN HERKUNFTS‐ UND HEIMATKONZEPTEN IN DER LITERATUR DER DEUTSCHEN POSTMIGRANTISCHEN GENERATION

ABSTRACTIn the context of present mass migrations, escapes and ethnic wars, the traditional approach to origin and homeland in terms of belonging to an ethnically homogeneous nation, monocultures with one mother tongue and a strictly defined territory are subject to criticism and (re)‐defining. This article presents and analyses examples of four literary works whose authors are representatives of the young post‐immigrant generation in Germany: the prose texts by Saša Stanišić (Herkunft, 2020), Senthuran Varatharajah (Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen, 2017) and Katja Petrowskaja (Vielleicht Esther, 2014), and a radio play by Marina Frenk (Jenseits der Kastanien, 2017). In the selected prose works and radio play, the authors raise the issue of origin and homeland in the context of migration, globalisation, and transcultural movements. The article presents the complex processes of searching for adequate artistic expression for experiences related to disrupting family lineage continuity, loss of homeland as a country of birth, and multilingualism. The traditional patterns of stories about origin and homeland are broken and their semantics are redefined. Hybrid, open and ambiguous narrative forms replace the linearity of cause‐and‐effect chains. Belonging to a multitude of locations and systems, multilingualism, multi‐media, and transcultural strategies are a literary alternative to nationally coded models of origin and homeland.

Book Review: Inken Sürig, Maren Williams, The Integration of the Second Generation in Germany: Results of the TIES Survey on the Descendants of Turkish and Yugoslavian Migrants

Book Review: Inken Sürig, Maren Williams, The Integration of the Second Generation in Germany: Results of the TIES Survey on the Descendants of Turkish and Yugoslavian Migrants

Energy supply based on\xa0wind-solar power in Germany

Wind-solar power has an intrinsic huge volatility and the obvious question arises, is it possible to marginalize it to an extent that the power generation can sufficiently be synchronized with the electric power consumption being volatile as well. We present a novel function describing the volatile system as a whole. The new function, in turn, depends on three characteristic numbers, which means that the volatility of this system is characterized by those numbers. Using the data of the total electric power consumption and the total wind-solar power generation in Germany for the last seven years (2015–2021) taken every 15 minutes we determine the characteristic numbers from these data and get the result that marginalizing the volatility is possible with a minimum of required storage capacity, provided (i) a surplus of wind-solar power is supplied about doubling the number of devices, (ii) smart meters are installed, (iii) a different kind of wind turbines and solar panels is partially used. Our results suggest that all the present electric energy required in Germany can be obtained from wind-solar power if (i), (ii) and possibly (iii) are fulfilled. And our results indicate that, because of the minimal necessary storage capacity, controlled wind-solar power can in addition produce the energy for transportation, warm water, space heating and in part for process heating, requiring an increase of the electric energy production in total by a factor of 5. Then, however, a huge number of wind turbines and solar panels is required changing the appearance of German landscapes fundamentally. Our method can be applied to the wind-solar power problem of any country provided a reliable basis of power data exists over a sufficiently long period.

Of parliament and presentism: electoral representation and future generations in Germany

ABSTRACT Always pressured by electoral deadlines, parliaments are often seen as a weak link in the sustainability politics of representative democracies. Scholars reviewing possible democratic reforms for overcoming parliamentary presentism often reference Germany’s Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development (PBnE). What does this Council’s record reveal about the practicality of representing future generations through parliamentary bodies? We combine a philosophical-historical interpretation of Germany’s approach to future-generations issues with an empirical analysis of the PBnE’s record. We conclude that while the PBnE has brought greater formal attention to sustainability in the parliamentary process, the idea of enhanced future-regarding representation remains problematic. Counterpoising different sustainability-oriented institutions grounded in diverse forms of democratic legitimacy is a more promising path.

Empirical greenhouse gas assessment for flexible bioenergy in interaction with the German power sector

Wind and solar power are already the major pillars of renewable power generation in Germany and will become even more dominant in the future. At the same time, dispatchable power plants phasing out. The expected increase of fluctuations in the residual load could be partial balanced by flexible bioenergy. However, there is currently no assessment approach for quantifying the systemic GHG impacts for flexible bioenergy generation.Based on the merit order concept, we develop an empirical approach to systemically assess the GHG emissions impact for electricity generated by flexible bioenergy plants. We estimate price response functions using the historical data of market prices and feed-in time series for the different forms of dispatchable non-renewbale dispatchable generation (NRDG). By calculating the expected NRDG based on these functions, and using specific emission factors, we are able to estimate the net impact for a switch from invariable to flexible bioenergy generation.The calculated net impact ranges from −20 to −36 g CO2eq per kWh, which is equivalent to a benefit of −10% to −18% respectively for an average carbon footprint of 200 g CO2eq per kWh. The calculation tools are written in Python and freely accessible on ZENODO and GitLab.

The remaining CO2 budget: a comparison of the CO2 emissions of diesel and BEV drivetrain technology

This paper describes the CO2 emissions of the additional electricity generation needed in Germany for battery electric vehicles. Different scenarios drawn up by the transmission system operators in past and for future years for expansion of the energy sources of electricity generation in Germany are considered. From these expansion scenarios, hourly resolved real-time simulations of the different years are created. Based on the calculations, it can be shown that even in 2035, the carbon footprint of a battery electric vehicle at a consumption of 22.5 kWh/100 km including losses and provision will be around 100 g CO2/km. Furthermore, it is shown why the often-mentioned German energy mix is not suitable for calculating the emissions of a battery electric vehicle fleet. Since the carbon footprint of a BEV improves significantly over the years due to the progressive expansion of renewable-energy sources, a comparison is drawn at the end of this work between a BEV (29.8 tons of CO2), a conventional diesel vehicle (34.4 tons of CO2), and a diesel vehicle with R33 fuel (25.8 tons of CO2) over the entire useful life.

Food Waste Generation in Germany in the Scope of European Legal Requirements for Monitoring and Reporting

The European Commission and the German government are committed to the United Nations SDG target 12.3 of reducing food waste along production chains and halving it at retail and consumer levels by 2030. European member states are required to monitor national food waste levels and report annual progress to the European Commission from 2020 onward. In this regard, the main objective of our study is to provide food waste quantities for Germany by applying methods meeting the legal requirements for monitoring and reporting within Europe-wide harmonized methodology. Our results refer to 2015 and are based on the best available data, using a combination of official statistics, surveys, and literature. We found that approx. 11.9 ± 2.4 million tonnes (144 ± 28 kg/(cap·year)) of food waste were generated in Germany, while the reduction potentials varied throughout the different sectors. Even though the underlying data show uncertainties, the outcome of the study represents a starting point for the upcoming monitoring activities in Germany by uncovering data and knowledge gaps. To meet the political reduction targets, a national food waste strategy was launched in 2019 by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, which is an important step toward cooperation and exchange between actors along the entire food chain, raising awareness, and improving data quality, monitoring, and implementation of prevention measures in practice.