Germany’s plans to transition the country to electric cars will probably increase carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to an engineer.
The basic problem is that Germany isn’t close to generating nearly enough energy from wind and solar to power electric cars, and the country has been forced to slow its green energy plans due to blackout risk.
“[A]n electric car running on power generated by dirty coal or gas actually creates more emissions than a car that burns petrol,” Dr. D√©nes Csala, an engineer at Lancaster University, wrote in The Conversation. “For such a switch to actually reduce net emissions, the electricity that powers those cars must be renewable. And, unless things change, Germany is unlikely to have enough green energy in time.”
Germany’s upper-legislative chamber passed a resolution to phase-out gasoline vehicles by 2030 last October.
However, green energy is failing to satisfy the country’s stated energy goals, despite spending over $1.1 trillion on its “Energiewende” plan to boost wind and solar production to fight global warming. The plan hasn’t achieved the government’s goal of significantly reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and may have already increased CO2 emissions.
“As things stand, Germany’s well-meaning but contradictory ambitions would actually boost emissions by an amount comparable with the present-day emissions of the entire country of Uruguay or the state of Montana,” Csala continued.
Due to the inherent unreliable performance of wind power and political opposition to nuclear power plants, Germany has been forced to return to coal to generate electricity. Coal now provides 44 percent of Germany’s power, This shift caused Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to actually rise by 28 million tons each year following the policy shift.
As a result of green energy’s rampant unreliability, Germany plans to cap the total amount of wind energy at 40 to 45 percent of national capacity, according to a report published by the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung. Germany will get rid of 6,000 megawatts of wind power capacity by 2019.
