When the Germans mess something up, they do it properly
Germany — is aiming for a 40% cut in carbon by 2020, and have “led the way” with solar and wind power. Electricity bills are now twice the price of those in North America, and some 800,000 poor people had their power cut off because they can’t pay their bills. Despite the high prices, gas power has become uneconomic, even though it is one the best methods for dealing with the erratic energy delivered from wind and solar. Nuclear can’t save them, they will have none after 2022 when the last reactor turns off.
The pain is pointless. For all the money spent, they aren’t saving much CO2, and aren’t changing the weather. They end up importing many of the goods which need energy, so the emissions occur in other countries without emissions controls. The German manufacturing sector can’t compete and struggles by on subsidies. Consumers pay more for goods or pay more through tax for the subsidies. Meanwhile, in the EU politicians seem to have realized that biofuels won’t work, but they don’t have the courage to kill them off and face the backlash — instead they fund it just enough to keep it in a zombie state.
Germany’s renewable energy levy, which subsidizes green energy production, rose from 14 billion euros to 20 billion euros in just one year as a result of the fierce expansion of wind and solar power projects. Since the introduction of the levy in 2000, the electricity bill of the typical German consumer has doubled.
As wealthy homeowners and business owners install wind turbines on their land and solar panels on their homes and commercial buildings, low-income families all over Europe have had to foot the skyrocketing electric bills. Many can no longer afford to pay, so the utilities are cutting off their power. The German Association of Energy Consumers estimates that up to 800,000 Germans have had their power cut off because they were unable to pay the country’s rising electricity bills.
Gas is uneconomic, plants are closing, 20% are unprofitable, facing shutdown:
Every 10 new units worth of wind power installation has to be backed up with some eight units worth of fossil fuel generation. This is because fossil fuel plants have to power up suddenly to meet the deficiencies of intermittent renewables. In short, renewables do not provide an escape route from fossil fuel use without which they are unsustainable.
Gas-fired power generation has become uneconomic in the EU, even for some of the most efficient and least carbon-intensive plants. At the end of 2013, 14 per cent of the EU’s installed gas-fired plants stood still, had closed or were at risk of closure. If all gas plants currently under review were to close, this would amount to 28 per cent of current capacity by 2016. Almost 20 per cent of gas power plants in Germany have already become unprofitable and face shutdown as renewables flood the electricity grid with preferential energy.
Investors are running for the hills. Germany faces an energy crisis. Michael Bastash [Daily Caller]:
After years of subsidizing green energy production, Germany may be on the brink of an imminent “energy crisis,” reports German Mittelstand News.
“Every second power plant planned in Germany is about to fold,” Mittelstand News reports. “The willingness to invest is decreasing rapidly as even the most efficient gas-fired power plants can no longer be operated profitably.”
A real free market would have none of the core uncertainty of overlaying a government controlled market on every single part of the electricity sector.
Zombie biofuels economics
EU politics won’t kill the biofuels industry, but can’t afford to keep it alive. Financial Times:
The EU launched a range of subsidies and other measures mandating the use of biofuels more than a decade ago, prompting a wave of investment in an industry that was generating revenues of €15bn by 2011.
But concerns that making fuel from crops would drive up food prices and boost demand for farm land, increasing the problem of deforestation, led politicians to rethink their policies three years ago.
A vote to limit crop-based biofuels is due in the European Parliament this week but Mr Sanchez said the long delays meant Abengoa had been forced to put plants on hold in Germany, France and the UK.
A similar lack of clarity was damaging other sectors such as solar power, he said, affecting renewable energy investment across Europe.
Windpower is not far behind — semi-Zombie:
The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) reported in February a sharp drop in new installations in 2014. The EWEA’s annual report shows investments in new wind facilities plummeted last year as a result of “erratic and harsh” changes in renewable energy policies in several countries.
The rate of installations plunged by 90 percent in Denmark, 84 percent in Spain, and 75 percent in Italy.
Bonner Cohen goes on to explain just how useless wind power can be:
Little Wind Energy, High Costs
The lack of reliability is also a problem. Examining data for 2014, German researcher Rolf Schuster reports, “Wind energy is extremely volatile. During some quarter-hour periods, the roughly 25,000 turbines [in Germany] indeed delivered a lot of power. But at other times they delivered practically nothing.” Schuster concluded on average Germany’s 25,000 wind turbines operated at 14.8 percent of their rated capacity in 2014, averaging less than 6,000 Mw of their nearly 40,000 Mw capacity.
INFO: The German plan to cut 40% by 2020 is thanks to the energiewende blueprint.
Graphs on the topic here from Marlo Lewis.