For at least three years I have been saying that German energy policy, known as the Energiewende (Energy Transition), is doomed to fail sooner or later.
Not so the German mainstream press, which much like that of America, is firmly in the hands of leftists who have been religiously singing the praises of the Energiewende as a model for all humanity to follow.
First and foremost has been the popular weekly, Der Spiegel, that has also profiled itself as viciously anti-American to the point of making up fake news to paint America as evil incarnate (Claas Relotius).
Imagine my surprise when on a flight from Washington to Vienna, the flight attendant handed me a copy of Der Spiegel with the title story proclaiming loudly that the Energiewende has been “Botched in Germany”(Murks in Germany).
As if to make sure that the message is not lost, the title picture showcased broken wind turbines and hanging power lines on a dark Berlin skyline.
Had Spiegel finally come to its senses? No chance of that. The magazine continues to argue that the Energiewende was a “great idea” destroyed by German “narrow-mindedness,” whatever that meant.
What nether Der Spiegel nor the vast coterie of German officialdom, starting with Chancellor Merkel, can afford to admit is that the Energiewende was from its very beginning the “dumbest energy policy in the world” as the Wall Street Journal editorial board recently called it, and should never have been tried, let alone at the scale as occurred in Germany.
What Merkel & Co also cannot admit is that the whole idea of building a reliable electric supply on unreliable renewable solar and wind sources is impossible, because there are times when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
The Germans even coined a word for it, they call it Dunkelflaute (dark doldrums). Germany had also outlawed clean nuclear power after Fukushima on the asinine assumption that it could get hit with a 9.0 earthquake and a giant tsunami, leaving no alternative short of coal-fired plants to guarantee base-load i.e. reliable electricity to the highly industrialized nation.
Here are some of the facts that forced Spiegel to write this story that can no longer remain hidden.
Nearly 20 years after the beginning of the Energiewende and colossal expenditures to subsidize renewable energy (160 billion Euros in the last five years alone) very little has been achieved.
And what has been achieved, says the story, is in “crass contradiction with the meager results” and “far distant from the self-announced targets.”
Of the needed 7,700 km new power lines, only 950 km exist and only 30 km was added in 2017. The vast majority of those (60.5%) are still in the planning stage and 16.1% are yet to be planned.
And it looks like things will almost certainly get worse. Spiegel admits that the 1.2 million photovoltaic installations and 30,000 wind turbines currently present were erected with the help of “gigantic sums of state money” and without them, the future looks bleak.
Already, curtailment of subsidies is wreaking havoc with new installations. In 2018, the 743 new turbines are 1,000 less than the year before and many renewables companies are shedding jobs or filing for bankruptcy.
Half of the 30,000 windmills were installed before 2004 and are rapidly approaching the end of their useful life. Most will be closed down.
And that is before we even look at the three other key anchors of the Energiewende that are yet to be touched: housing, industry, and traffic.
Moreover, the German people, who are now paying the highest electricity rates in Europe, (nearly three times those of the U.S., twice those of France) and are forced by the state to subsidize industry, are starting to resist.
There is scarcely a new project started “that is not fought over or objected to.” Earlier it took less than 40 months for a project to go online, now it is at least 60 months.
There is one final thing that Der Spiegel does not want to tell us. All those huge expenditures would not make an iota of difference in the world’s CO2 emissions as long as the greatest polluters, China and India, are allowed to continue spewing CO2 unimpeded. In other words, the Energiewende was in vain!
Read more at American Thinker
How many people are dying prematurely as a result of the government sanctioned and promoted earth has a fever fraud ? 10,000 of thousands per year .
All of the above is true, but the Democrats can do the Green New Deal right and make it work. At least that is what they think. Brian, do you really think that the Democrats understand physics, or have any desire to? The tragic thing is that in the United States the same mistakes made in Germany are likely to be repeated here at least in part, especially in some states. The middle class family will pay.
They don’t make a difference to Germany’s CO2 emissions, even if that did affect the climate. Total waste of money in fact. Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Captain. The so called renewable solutions, that aren’t renewable or solutions, defy those laws of physics, in particular as regards energy density and intermittency, and can never deliver what they promise on the simple engineering facts. Renewables are incapable of replacing fossil energy on the grid at the levels required 24/7, and unavoidably expensive to collect per KWh because of their weaknesses. Only much more intense and sustainable nuclear power can replace intense fossil energy sources. But the fraud of alternative reality is still making €Billions for insider subsidy farmers and their political enablers, by law. Never mind the climate, follow the money. https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9qesny4dzfg1is/Energiewende%20CO2%20Tweet%202017-01-24%20at%2011.52.12.png?dl=0