Spiegel: Germany’s Failed ‘Energiewende’

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Germany’s much ballyhooed Energiewende (transition to renewable energy) was supposed to show the whole world how switching over to green energy sources could reduce CO2 emissions, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, provide cheap electricity to citizens, and heroically rescue the planet. Ten years later, the very opposite has happened: Germany’s CO2 emissions have been increasing, electricity prices have skyrocketed, the green jobs bubble has popped, and tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared. Worse: tens of billions are being redistributed from the poor to the rich. Other countries around the world have noticed and are thus having serious second thoughts about industrializing their landscapes with green energy systems like wind, solar and biogas. Germany has proven that green energy does not work well after all.

Spiegel reports here how Australia’s conservative government led by Tony Abbott is now using Germany’s failure as one of the main arguments for getting out of green energies and getting back to affordable and reliable coal power. Spiegel, perturbed by Abbot’s direction, writes of his doing away with the CO2 emissions trading scheme and his plans to abolish the CO2 tax. Australian industry has been burdened by a 15 euro per tonne CO2 tax while in Europe it is only 5 euros. Spiegel writes:

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The prices for raw materials are crumbling, auto manufacturers Ford and Holden, a GM arm, have announced plans to close factories. Mining companies such as BHP Billiton are rethinking their expansion plans. ‘The Australians have their backs up against the wall,’ says Heribert Dieter, expert at the Science and Policy Foundation in Berlin.”
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What’s especially embarrassing for German greens and the green media like Spiegel is that countries around the world are now citing Germany’s failure in marshaling through the Energiewende as a reason to abandon the green path. Germany is showing the world how not to produce energy. In Germany the mad rush to green energies has led to skyrocketing electricity costs, crony capitalism, massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, and an unstable power supply. Moreover, energy-intensive companies are exempted from paying the green energy feed-in surcharges, and thus leaving the lowly consumers to foot the entire bill.

One German mid-size company I know in the local area covered its sprawling factory roof with thousands of square feet of solar panels and today sells the solar energy produced to power companies at an exorbitant price (approx. $0.50/kwh). Then, to power its factory, the company turns around and buys the very same power at a fraction of the price (roughly $0.20/kwh). What’s really perverse is that the same company is also exempt from paying the green energy feed-in surcharge, because it claimed excessive hardship from its “energy-intensive” manufacturing operations and associated energy costs. Twisted and distorted or what!

In summary: Germany’s energy market has been transformed into a grotesque market distortion and redistribution of wealth scheme from the poor to the rich. Abbott is absolutely right not to go down this socially and politically dubious path. Spiegel sniffs that Abbott has simply brushed aside all the criticism from environmental organisations being fired his way. Spiegel writes “quotes translated from the German):

The premier does not let himself be misled, and reminds everyone that in Germany the costs for the Energiewende have exploded. The country that was once a model is now a dissuasive example. “We can’t afford to follow Germany’s example,” Ron Boswell, Senator of the state of Queensland is quoted as saying in ‘The Australian’. Because of its expansion of renewable energy sources, Germany has the highest energy prices in the world. “We would be better off learning from the United States,’ Boswell believes. There energy is about three times cheaper than in Australia.”

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- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/19/...pursuing-green-energies/#sthash.OdnASHgD.dpuf

 

[The Dude]

Coal is so last century

 

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Coal is so last century

Germany are in the process of building over twenty new coal power stations.

http://www.dw.de/despite-climate-concerns-germany-plans-coal-power-plants/a-2396828-1

 

[Rune]

Germany’s much ballyhooed Energiewende (transition to renewable energy) was supposed to show the whole world how switching over to green energy sources could reduce CO2 emissions, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, provide cheap electricity to citizens, and heroically rescue the planet. Ten years later, the very opposite has happened: Germany’s CO2 emissions have been increasing, electricity prices have skyrocketed, the green jobs bubble has popped, and tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared. Worse: tens of billions are being redistributed from the poor to the rich. Other countries around the world have noticed and are thus having serious second thoughts about industrializing their landscapes with green energy systems like wind, solar and biogas. Germany has proven that green energy does not work well after all.

Spiegel reports here how Australia’s conservative government led by Tony Abbott is now using Germany’s failure as one of the main arguments for getting out of green energies and getting back to affordable and reliable coal power. Spiegel, perturbed by Abbot’s direction, writes of his doing away with the CO2 emissions trading scheme and his plans to abolish the CO2 tax. Australian industry has been burdened by a 15 euro per tonne CO2 tax while in Europe it is only 5 euros. Spiegel writes:

.
The prices for raw materials are crumbling, auto manufacturers Ford and Holden, a GM arm, have announced plans to close factories. Mining companies such as BHP Billiton are rethinking their expansion plans. ‘The Australians have their backs up against the wall,’ says Heribert Dieter, expert at the Science and Policy Foundation in Berlin.”
.
​

What’s especially embarrassing for German greens and the green media like Spiegel is that countries around the world are now citing Germany’s failure in marshaling through the Energiewende as a reason to abandon the green path. Germany is showing the world how not to produce energy. In Germany the mad rush to green energies has led to skyrocketing electricity costs, crony capitalism, massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, and an unstable power supply. Moreover, energy-intensive companies are exempted from paying the green energy feed-in surcharges, and thus leaving the lowly consumers to foot the entire bill.

One German mid-size company I know in the local area covered its sprawling factory roof with thousands of square feet of solar panels and today sells the solar energy produced to power companies at an exorbitant price (approx. $0.50/kwh). Then, to power its factory, the company turns around and buys the very same power at a fraction of the price (roughly $0.20/kwh). What’s really perverse is that the same company is also exempt from paying the green energy feed-in surcharge, because it claimed excessive hardship from its “energy-intensive” manufacturing operations and associated energy costs. Twisted and distorted or what!

In summary: Germany’s energy market has been transformed into a grotesque market distortion and redistribution of wealth scheme from the poor to the rich. Abbott is absolutely right not to go down this socially and politically dubious path. Spiegel sniffs that Abbott has simply brushed aside all the criticism from environmental organisations being fired his way. Spiegel writes “quotes translated from the German):

The premier does not let himself be misled, and reminds everyone that in Germany the costs for the Energiewende have exploded. The country that was once a model is now a dissuasive example. “We can’t afford to follow Germany’s example,” Ron Boswell, Senator of the state of Queensland is quoted as saying in ‘The Australian’. Because of its expansion of renewable energy sources, Germany has the highest energy prices in the world. “We would be better off learning from the United States,’ Boswell believes. There energy is about three times cheaper than in Australia.”

​

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/19/...pursuing-green-energies/#sthash.OdnASHgD.dpuf

Energiewende is a lunatic gamble with the country’s manufacturing prowess. But if it pays off Germany will have created yet another world-beating industry, say the gamblers. Alone among rich countries Germany has “the means and will to achieve a staggering transformation of the energy infrastructure”, says Mark Lewis, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.


In May Mrs Merkel sacked the environment minister, Norbert Röttgen, after he led her Christian Democrats to a disastrous defeat in a regional election. His successor is Peter Altmaier, a canny parliamentarian who will share responsibility with the economy minister, Philipp Rösler. In fact Mrs Merkel has taken charge herself. She convenes energy summits with leaders of the 16 states, and promises to incorporate grid operators’ plans into federal law by the end of the year. But even she admits the Energiewende is a “Herculean task”.

ower from the people

The plan will require two transformations, one micro and one macro. The first is an unruly, subsidy-fed explosion of wind, solar and biomass power, a “strange mixture of idealism and greed,” as one energy boss calls it. The second is the effort to pull this into a system providing reliable and affordable electricity. Protagonists of the micro version see themselves as democratising economic and political power. The renewable-energy law entitles anybody who puts in a solar panel or a windmill to sell surplus power to the grid, receiving a generous “feed-in tariff” guaranteed over 20 years. This gives renewable electricity priority over conventional power. Not surprisingly, renewables grew ten times faster than the OECD average from 1990 to 2010 and now account for 20% of electricity output (see chart). The government’s target is 35% by 2020. Germany gets more electricity from renewable sources than any other big country.
The return on capital can top 20% a year in the best spots. But do not confuse harvesters of sun and wind with electricity plutocrats. “One important goal is to break the monopoly” of the four big power companies that dominate the market, says Hermann Albers, president of the Federal Wind Energy Association. Municipal utility companies plan to boost their share of electricity production from a tenth to at least a fifth by 2020. More than 100 municipalities want to be “100% renewable”


The number of “energy co-operatives” has risen sixfold since 2007, to 586 last year. Solar parks have migrated from farms and family houses to apartment blocks. “Roof exchanges” match owners with investors. Niebüll allows only wind farms in which residents can buy stakes, lest landowners become local fat cats and others rebel against the project. In 2010 over 50% of renewable-energy capacity was in the hands of individuals or farmers, according to trend:research, a consultancy. The big four had just 6.5%.
This is perking up sleepy regions. Farmers are likelier to remain on the land. Services, from consultants who guide investors through the subsidy jungle to specialist windmill repairmen, have taken root in towns. The taxes paid by Niebüll’s wind park are one of the town’s main sources of revenue; in smaller settlements they may be almost the only local source.
The micro-level works almost too well. Schleswig-Holstein plans to generate three times as much renewable energy as it consumes and to export the surplus south and west. Southern states are keen to produce their own renewable power, too. Bavaria talks of self-sufficiency. The states’ windpower targets add up to double the federal government’s goal of 36 gigawatts by 2020.

The €20 billion national-grid plan is another macro-project meant to channel micro-level exuberance. It assumes that the biggest need will be to supply northern wind power to southern and western consumers. Yet if so, perhaps renewables should be tempered elsewhere. “We have to synchronise infrastructure and renewables”, by allowing new wind and solar projects only where the grid can take delivery of what they produce, says Stephan Kohler, head of the German Energy Agency. Upgrading the grid, to beyond Germany as well as within it, would reduce waste and the risk of instability.

It is hard to think of a messier and more wasteful way of shifting from fossil and nuclear fuel to renewable energy than the one Germany has blundered into. The price will be high, the risks are large and some effects will be the opposite of what was intended. Greenhouse-gas emissions are likely to be higher than they would have been for quite a while to come. But that does not mean the entire enterprise will fail. Politicians cannot reinvent the Energiewende on the run, but they can stay a step ahead of the risks and push back against the costs—and they are beginning to do so. In the end Germany itself is likely to be transformed.






more at link- http://www.economist.com/node/21559667