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Germany can't power its industry anymore due to renewable energy shift (bulb style) - C C - Sep 8, 2022
Royce Lochmann: "But, Klaus, if we do this... There will still be no Green Goddess to reward us with earthly blessings and sainthood for being at the forefront of energy piety." --Sieben Psalmen für Herrn Schreiber
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What the hell is happening in Germany? (not just due to Putin)
https://shortfall.blog/what-the-hell-is-happening-in-germany-62a110abb1cd
EXCERPTS: Germany: 80 Million people, 350.000km2, (former) export champion of the world, the global heaven for car enthusiasts, an industrial power house with a stellar reputation abroad for “clean”, “efficient”, “straight”, “knowing how to do it.” Today, Germany is struggling. Just this year, Germany became a net-importer …
Over 20 years, Germany embarked on one of its biggest economic and societal endeavors ever, the “Energiewende”, the transition away from fossil fuels to “clean renewables”, mainly wind and solar. It invested 400 billion EUR of German taxpayers’ money, not counting the consequential cost to the economy and citizens because of the highest power prices in the world.
Today, Germany is at the center of western energy starvation, surely made worse by the “dispute” with Mr, Putin further East.
Shouldn’t Germany be happy with high coal and gas prices? Isn’t that what Europe tried to achieve with high CO2 prices, to make fossil fuels more expensive?
[...] As a result of these policies, prices started to increase before the war in Ukraine. If today a utility had a spare coal fired power plant, it could buy coal and CO2 certificates and make an unprecedented 400 EUR/MWh in profits. Imagine the situation if Germany hadn’t retired all these coal and nuclear plants?
[..,] Where are the cheap renewables? Where is wind and solar? Why do we have to turn coal back on just because Putin gives us less gas? Weren’t we told we can completely wean off fossil fuels? Weren’t we told that high-fossil fuel prices are good because that will eliminate those old technologies?
[...] If the unthinkable happens — major unscheduled power outages — or even if prices remain this high (very likely) and trickle through to every person on the street, to every industrial operation, then Europe will face social unrest not seen in decades. I am concerned that strikes or other civil action will worsen the economic crisis. I am concerned that extremists on both sides of the political spectrum in Europe will take advantage of this, that people will understandably look for alternative political solutions. I am concerned that governments do not understand the underlying cause of the situation.
[,,,] What is the cause? The “Energiewende” has had a disastrous outcome, and not just because of the war …
- The “Energiewende” has as its core the near-instantaneous replacement of coal, oil, gas, and nuclear with wind and solar (plus as much biomass, hydro, geothermal as possible, but those are limited so not expected to expand much).
- Wind and solar cannot — under any circumstance — power an industrial nation because any functioning economy requires a reliable supply of energy every single second of the day, that does NOT depend on the weather, that is energy and material efficient and energy dense. Also, supply of wind and solar infrastructure is largely controlled by China. (More details about why wind and solar don’t work at Schernikau et al. 2022 or my upcoming book “Electricity and the Future of Energy”.)
- Even if we had a long-term storage solution to overcome the intermittency of wind and solar, which we do NOT, the underlying problems of wind and solar in regards to their low energy density, material inefficiency, recycling challenges, short life-time, negative environmental effects, and conversion and transmission inefficiencies would not be overcome (See figure 11).
- Hydrogen is NOT the solution (see my newsletter from 10 April 2022). Up to 80% of energy is lost in the hydrogen supply chain, required to produce, store, transport, and repower (even “Energiewende” supporter Prof Kemfert agrees with me here).
- You would only use excess, unutilized electricity from wind and solar, nothing else. Because Hydrogen loses so much energy, you would never ever use electricity that you can use elsewhere. You would always first charge your Tesla, before you waste 4/5 of the energy producing hydrogen. Obviously, you would never use coal, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro to produce Hydrogen. That would just be madness to throw away valuable electricity especially at a time of electricity shortage.