Germany's Energy Program Not Meeting Goals

Germany's government has decided to phase out nuclear power and coal plants. The last German reactor is scheduled to be shut down by the end of 2022, the last coal fired plant by 2038. At the same time, the government has encouraged the purchase of climate friendly electric cars increasing the demand for electrical power. And despite efforts to save energy in the past decades, Germany's power consumption has grown by 10 percent since 1990. ¹

Sufficient renewable energy sources might not be available in time to compensate for the loss of fossil and nuclear power. Though renewables account for around 40 percent of Germany's electricity supply, there are limits to expansion, for reasons that are political rather than technological. In some rural parts of Germany, people are fed up with ever growing wind parks; more citizens are protesting new, and often taller, wind turbines in their neighborhoods. And there is growing resistance to the new paths needed to transport electricity from coasts to industrial centers. Auto Sector The German auto sector has been hard hit. For example, car maker Opel recently announced 2,100 job cuts in Germany. Late last year Daimler, owner of Mercedes Benz, announced plans to axe at least 10,000 jobs. Volkswagen's Audi said it would slash up to 9,500 jobs or one in ten staff by 2025 and car suppliers Continental and Osram announced staff and cost cuts. ² Solar Industry The government decided to reduce subsidies to the solar industry in 2012 and then the industry nose-dived. By 2018 virtually every major German solar producer had gone under as new capacity declined by 90 percent and new investment by 92 percent. Some 80,000 workers, 70 percent of the solar workforce, lost their jobs. ³ Wind Industry Once lavished with huge incentives, the German wind industry is being hit hard after the government recently ended the huge subsidies that were once aimed at expanding the installation of wind energy capacity. Spreading like contagion, the demise of turbine manufacturers across Europe has taken hold in Germany, with Enercon lining up to sack 3,000 of its workers, in a last ditch effort to stay afloat. ⁴

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In Europe, a dozen countries haven't erected a single turbine during 2018, and that coincides with massive slowdown in construction elsewhere. Here's something to keep in mind. Ignore the usual rubbish about a wind farm powering hundreds of thousands of homes. What they mean to say, of course, is that on those rare occasions when wind conditions are perfect, and the turbines are actually operable, heavily subsidized wind power will knock conventionally generated electricity out of the market, for few hours at a stretch. Until calm weather sets in and then coal, gas, hydro and nuclear pick up the tab. ⁴¹

Energy Poverty

Energy poverty is a problem in Germany. This has been defined as not being able to afford adequate warmth, cooling, lighting, or the energy to power appliances that guarantee a decent standard of living and health. One shorthand rule is that a household is energy poor if it must spend more than 10 percent of its income on power. It is estimated that 50 million European households now qualify, many of them in Germany. ⁵ A 2017 study found that the proportion of households in Germany spending more than 10 percent of their income on energy tripled from 7.5 percent in 1998 to 22 percent in 2013. ⁶ In the past ten years, the price of electricity for households and industry in Germany has risen by a third. For a typical household with 4,000 kWh per year, this means 320 euros in additional costs for electricity alone. One kilowatt of electricity now costs on average 30.03 euro cents. ⁷ Every year 600,000 households (2 million people) are getting their power switched off in Germany because they can't afford the sky rocketing electric bills.⁶

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Final Analysis

Germany, one of the so-called green leaders, has not reduced its emissions in 9 years and there are no signs this trend will change any time soon. In fact, since 2007 the US has alone reduced its CO2 emissions by approximately 700 million metric tons annually, which is in the neighborhood of Germany's total annual output. ⁸ In 2018, Germany produced 866 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, a far cry from its goal of 750 million tons by 2020. If emissions reductions continue at the same pace as they did over the past decade, then CO2 targets for 2020 will only be reached eight years later, and 2030 targets will not be reached until 2046. ⁹ Yet Germany is building 23 new coal fired power plats to overcome the very serious deficiencies of green energy despite bragging about their being a leader in the green energy transformation. ¹⁰ Despite much hype, Germany still generates just 35% of its electricity from renewables. And if biomass burning, often dirtier than coal, is excluded, wind, water and solar electricity in Germany accounted for just 27% of electricity generation in 2018. ⁹ The German government plans to spend $40 billion over four years to help the country cut its carbon dioxide emissions. Such measures will likely reduce the global rise in temperature by 0.00018 C in a hundred years, an immeasurably small gain for such a large cost. By contrast, spending the same amount on prevention tuberculosis in developing countries could save more than ten million lives. ¹¹ According to official calculations, close to 3700 miles of new power lines are required to make Germany's Energiewende, or energy revolution work. By the end of 2018, only 93 miles had been built. Nevertheless, Germans' opposition to nuclear power endures: 60 percent of them want to get rid of it as soon as possible. ¹ The German word for this approach is ‘massenverdummung’ which means mass dumbing, in other words a situation in which masses of people become stupid. This is not the green poster leader one should follow.

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References

1. Jochen Bittner, “The tragedy of Germany's energy experiment,” The New York Times, January 9, 2020
2. P. Gosselin, “Germany's green new deal begins to deliver: industry sees 'horrible number', a disaster,” notrickszone.com, February 11, 2020
3. Lawrence Solomon, “Are solar and wind finally cheaper than fossil fuels? Not a chance,” Financial Post, April 27, 2018
4. “Europe's wind industry faces total collapse: no new wind farms built since 2017,” stopthesethings.com, March 13, 2019
5. Ronald Bailey, “Renewable energy mandates are making poor people poorer,” Reason, June 2018
6. P. Gosselin, “Germans unable to pay power bills,” notrickszone.com, April 9, 2019
7. Holger Douglas, Green energy: German electricity prices skyrocket to record highs,” climatechangedispatch.com, January 27, 2020
8. “Germany will fail 2020 climate goals, now eyes 2030 target,” phys.org, June 18, 2018
9. Michael Shellenberger, “Renewables threaten German economy & energy supply, McKinsey warms in new report,” forbes.com, September 5, 2019
10. Michael S. Coffman, “Power down,” Range Magazine, Spring 2017
11. Bjorn Lomborg, “How climate politics hurt the poor,” project- syndicate.org, September 26, 2019