Well, Germany until very recently, comissioned new lignite plants and is still actively mining lignite in areas that are still being expanded. There is some political turmoil about that, but at best, fossil fuels have plateaued. Also, for coal plants there are periods of "readiness" where the plants are nominally shut down already, but kept in readiness when power demand is high and renewables are nil, such as the cold period at the start of february this year. And we are comissioning gas power plants as a readiness reserve, those are kept in permanent readiness right after comissioning. Costs an arm and a leg, but energy storage investment doesn't exist in Germany aside from some very minor projects.
Oh, and renewables are at a standstill as well, for the last few years there was very much stagnating growth in capacity. Since older renewable investments are reaching the end of their component lifetimes and subsidy periods, we will soon be at net negative growth in renewable capacity.
I'm not sure where politics will proceed from here, depends on the election(s) this fall. Appetite for more renewables with ever-rising prices isn't as high as it used to be, at least in my subset of the population.
The idea that in a few years germany could be opening multiple lignite coal mines to replace falling renewable output makes me incredibly anxious about our chances of transitioning away from fossil fuels at all.
I've argued it in other places in this thread, but I really think the only solution we have right now for clean baseline power is nuclear energy.
Fully agree but this will not happen and it's also too late building nuclear plants takes decades and the know how to construct them is also gone in Germany. We will try to shut off coal plants until we get a huge blackout then we go back to coal.
Oh, and renewables are at a standstill as well, for the last few years there was very much stagnating growth in capacity. Since older renewable investments are reaching the end of their component lifetimes and subsidy periods, we will soon be at net negative growth in renewable capacity.
I'm not sure where politics will proceed from here, depends on the election(s) this fall. Appetite for more renewables with ever-rising prices isn't as high as it used to be, at least in my subset of the population.