Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Germany going Non-Nuclear by 2020

I was reading Germany is planning on shutting down all its nuclear power plants by 2020. They were planning to do this prior to the disaster in Japan, but now they are looking to accelerate it after the fact. Currently they get about 23% of their power from nuclear (about the same as the United States), 17% from renewable and the remainder from Fossil fuel power plants. They are hoping to replace the nuclear power with more renewable energy sources.

I wouldn't think of Germany as a great place for using Solar and even wind farms, but in the last couple of years they have spent almost 4 times more money on Solar than the United States.

Living in Florida going Solar would be great, except the cost. Even with all the subsidies provided by the State and Federal Governments it would still take almost 10 years for me to recover the cost of the Solar system in reduced electric bills.

Tom