How Germany and Japan dealt with reduced nuclear power

Writing for the American Solar Energy Society Paul Gipe wrote in Sep. 2011 that despite shutting down its nuclear plants Germany is managing without increasing use of coal and other fossil sources.  On this blog (Oct. 14,2011), I commented that it was perhaps premature to make that judgment since the electricity production data covered only the first half of the year during most of which period the nuclear plants were fully operational.

I have been waiting for the 2011 numbers to be reported by various sources (BP, IEA etc.).  The latest numbers I have from IEA's Monthly Electricity Statistics, but they cover through Nov. 2011.  In Nov. 2011 there was 77% less nuclear power produced in Japan compared to Nov. 2010.  In Germany, the decline was not as steep, only 31%.  What surprised me was that in contrast to the impression given in media articles, in neither country is the contribution from nuclear power zero.  

To enable comparison with total electricity productions in 2010, I estimated the 2011 numbers by adding the Nov. 2011 production figures to the year-to-date figures (essentially asserting that production in Dec. 2011 will be close to that in Nov. 2011).  With this assumption nuclear plants in Japan and Germany would generate 274 and 133 TWh respectively out of an estimated total power consumption of 1000 and 548 TWh.  In 2010 the two countries produced 1038 and 566 TWh of electricity.  Somehow, despite nuclear power shutdowns in 2011, both countries have managed to generate over 96% of the power they generated in 2010.

	Japan		Germany
	2010	2011 (est)	2010	2011 (est)
Total Electricity	1038	1000	566	548
Nuclear	274	154	133	102
Combustion sources	673	747	374	359
Hydro	82	75	25	28
Wind, Solar, Geo	9	23	49	62
Net export	0	0	15	2

To deal with the shortfall from nuclear power, Germany drastically reduced its power exports and increased imports of electricity. Germany's net exports in 2010 amounted to 15 TWh, but in 2011 that number is likely to be 2 about TWh.  Couple this change with an increased production from wind, solar, and geothermal sources of 13 TWh and about 2 TWh additional from hydropower, and you have made up 28 of the 31 TWh lost from nuclear power.  Germany also reduced combustion-based electricity by about 15 TWh, such that in 2011, it is estimated to consume about 18 TWh less in 2011.

Japan does not export or import electric power.  The estimated loss of 120 TWh from nuclear has been made up in part by increased generation from combustion sources (74 TWh), and in part from increased wind, solar and geothermal resources (14 TWh).  Hydropower production has gone down in Japan in 2011 by about 7 TWh (I am not sure why), and so the total shortfall for the year could be as much as 39 TWh (ca. 4%). 

Further nuclear plant closures are scheduled in both countries, and in 2012 the contribution from nuclear power will be substantially less.  How they manage these deeper cuts, remains to be seen. 


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The IEA published the final numbers for the year, and so although it does not make any substantive difference, here are the electricity production numbers.  One reader pointed out to me that by focusing on net exports I am missing the marked changes in the imports.  With that in mind, here is the updated breakdown in TWh:

	Japan		Germany
	2010	2011	2010	2011
Total Electricity	1038	1010	566	548
Nuclear	274	153	133	102
Combustion sources	673	747	374	354
Hydro	82	75	25	28
Wind, Solar, Geo	9	22	49	67
Exports	-	-	58	55
Imports	-	-	43	51
Net export	0	0	15	4

Green Jobs in Energy

Perusing through an announcement from ARPA-e, I ran across this statistic: the US ethanol industry employed 400,000 people in 2010 and produced 13 billion gallons of ethanol (9 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent).  Wow, that is a lot of jobs! Consider the fact that the oil and gas industry employs a comparable number of people, 415,000 (Bureau of Labor Statistics data) for extraction and refining.  The output of the O&G industry was roughly an equivalent of 130 billion GGE of liquid fuels and about 24 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (ca. 200 billion GGE).  Likewise, in 2010 the US electric power generation sector employed about 390,000 people and to produce 4,325 TWh of electricity. Contrast that with the nearly 100,000 employed in the wind industry that generated only 170 TWh.

As we pointed out in the CMO book, “The primary purpose of the energy industry is not to provide employment within the industry, but to make a commodity that allows many industries to flourish and employ people.”  If as a nation we are really seeking to find employment for people, we have to produce more energy.  Developing energy sources like ethanol or wind may be great at employing many more people, but it only means that when you have to pay living wages to all those employed; the product is naturally more expensive.