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LNG isn't as cheap as pipelines, but it's how a majority of the world imports their gas (Japan, China, India, South Korea....). And it's only a medium-term solution for Germany.
You seem to be operating with outdated information. In 2021, renewables provided 250 TW/h out of Germany's electricity production of 600 TW/h, about the same proportion as fossil fuels, the remainder being made up by nuclear power. In fact wind power alone was the single biggest source of electricity production if one separates out lignite and hard coal as fuels.
Energy storage is still a problem, but one that we're making great progress on. Gas and nuclear can cover base load medium-term, and there's exciting stuff also happening in geothermal. Ultimately the answer will be integrated global energy grids and lots of redundant electricity storage capacity (maybe fusion too), but we'll be waiting a while for that.
Why does it matter what the majority do? They already have the infrastructure set up for LNG, Germany doesn’t. Once it’s set up it will still cost far more than using a pipeline.
That’s great and all that they manage to eke out that much energy from renewables, why isn’t it 100%? Because my information isn’t outdated. Germany is still a cloudy place without much wind compared to many other places.
Progress is being made on storage but it won’t be made quick enough by winter. Gas prices are still going to be eye watering and the worlds 4th largest economy is likely to go into recession
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LNG seems to be competitive with pipelines over long distances, so while local gas is always better LNG imports at least have lower per-mile costs and higher flexibility.
But have you seen graphs of German solar production? It doesn't matter how much power you produce in July to push your annual average up, you're not running heat pumps off it in January. And you're not running it off a battery for six months either!
"Net Zero" is the biggest con of renewable advertising. The net is full of fucking holes in important places.
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