Posted on 05/13/2015 6:34:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
On May 7, Tom Friedman published an op-ed in the New York Times filled with praise for Germany’s green-power program. “What the Germans have done in converting almost 30 percent of their electric grid to solar and wind energy from near zero in about 15 years has been a great contribution to the stability of our planet and its climate,” gushed Friedman. “ . . . This is a world-saving achievement.”
Friedman is not alone in his admiration for the German energy program. President Obama has hailed it too, saying that the world should “look to Berlin” as the model for its energy future.
However, what Friedman, Obama, and other admirers of the German green-energy strategy fail to say is that it has come at the expense of sky-high electricity rates. According to EU data, Germany’s average residential electricity rate is 29.8 cents per kilowatt hour. This is approximately double the 14.2 cents and 15.9 cents per kWh paid by residents of Germany’s neighbors Poland and France, respectively, and almost two and a half times the U.S. average of 12 cents per kWh. Germany’s industrial electricity rate of 16 cents per kWh is also much higher than France’s 9.6 cents or Poland’s 8.3 cents. The average German per capita electricity consumption is 0.8 kilowatts. At a composite rate of 24 cents per kWh, this works out to a yearly bill of $1,700 per person, experienced either directly in utility bills or indirectly through increased costs of goods and services. The median household income in Germany is $33,000, so if we assume an average of two people per household, the electricity cost would amount to more than 10 percent of available income. And that is for the median-income household. The amount of electricity that people need does not scale in proportion to their paychecks. For the rich, $1,700 per year in electric bills might be a pittance, or at most a nuisance. But for the poor who are just scraping by, such a burden is simply brutal.
So, what has the German government accomplished for “the Earth” in exchange for the severe harm it has inflicted on the nation’s poorer citizens? So, what has the German government accomplished for “the Earth” in exchange for the severe harm it has inflicted on the nation’s poorer citizens?
It is claimed that Germany has replaced 30 percent of its electricity with renewable energy. If all you look at is capacity, that might appear to be true. Germany has a total installed capacity of 172 gigawatts (GW), and 65 GW of that is based on renewables. But neither wind nor solar power obtains an around-the-clock average of anything close to full capacity. Rather, these methods of electricity generation typically average at best about 20 percent of their full rated power. Thus Germany’s nominal 65 GW of solar and wind generation capacity is worth about as much as 13 GW capacity in conventional power plants. Of the 614,000 GW hours that Germany generated in 2014, 56,000 GWh came from wind and 35,000 GWh from solar, for an actual combined average power of 10.4 GW, or 14.8 percent of all electricity generated. About half of this, or 5.2 GW, has been developed since 2005.
However, in 2011 Germany had 20 GW of capacity in nuclear power plants, producing more than twice as much electricity as wind and solar do currently, at less than half the cost, with no carbon emissions whatsoever. But, using the rather improbable threat of a Fukushima-like tsunami as a pretext, the nation’s elites decided to shut them down; 8.3 GW have already been eliminated.
Thus, over the past decade, the total amount of carbon-free power that Germany has produced under its oppressive green-energy policy has actually decreased by 3 GW. The deficit, as well as all requirements for new power, has been met by burning increased amounts of lignite, which emits not only more carbon dioxide than practically any other power source, but large amounts of real pollutants as well.
Like an earlier regime in Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, Germany’s green-energy program is neither green, nor an energy program. Rather, it is a form of ultra-regressive taxation — in effect, a state-sponsored cult of human sacrifice for weather control.
Germany has brought the world many remarkable political innovations, including government by bureaucracy, the welfare state, regimentation of education, Red, Brown, and Green parties, theoretical and applied racial science and engineering, the precautionary principle, and the systematic philosophical and practical negation of Judeo-Christian ethics. Its heartless energy policy is entirely consistent with that history.
“Look to Berlin,” indeed.
— Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Energy, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, and the author of Energy Victory. His latest book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism,
Not to worry. The Buffets and Streisands of the world will never eat them, but you and I....http://www.popsci.com/rise-incredible-edible-insect
Without reliable cheap electricity, there is miserable poverty. This is not the first time Germany has made a strategically disastrous decision.
The krauts are complete, over-the-top whack jobs when it comes to ‘environmental” things, recycling Nazi’s, windmills, etc. No point of logic will talk them down. I believe that people will begin to freeze to death in the winter due to their stupid ideas and it won’t matter.
Well, the goal IS to make energy unaffordable to the point that the “elites” can use it only because it’s paid for by “the gov’t”, and the “poor” get it because they are compliant and dependent on the “elites”.
They already are... what I am saying is they really believe all of that global warming crap. They’re serious and unhindered by facts. It’s very scary!
unhindered by facts
—
Because they derive their sense of righteousness from their “caring about the earth”.
If the earth isn’t in danger, then they lose their “halo hanger”, ie, their eternal salvation.
THAT’S why the enviro-freaks are so adamant and unwilling to listen to reason.
Machts nichts. Gieben dem zum zubzidiez.
Tom Friedman is a technical ass.
He Is, quite properly, sticking to approprietly low IQ professions.
The Energiewende has two main policy tools: generous support for renewable sources of energy, and an exit from nuclear power by 2022. The government supports renewables by promising those who install solar panels or finance windmills a fixed, above-market price for each kilowatt-hour of energy they feed into the grid. Those renewable sources have grid priority, meaning they must by law be drawn upon before other energy sources, like electricity from coal, gas or nuclear plants.
The above-market prices meant that many Germans rushed into renewables, from installing solar panels on barn roofs to buying shares in wind farms. Renewable capacity expanded quickly, and now accounts for an impressive 27% of electricity production. But the renewables rush began as utilities also invested heavily in new fossil-fuel generation, especially modern gas-fired power plants. The simultaneous dash to renewables and new fossil-fuel power plants resulted in overcapacity and caused wholesale prices to tumble, which has battered the utilities’ profits.
At the same time, the prices paid by consumers have been rising. This is because of the above-market prices guaranteed for renewable energy. On a sunny, windy day, a flood of renewable energy surges into the system; it must be, by law, bought by grid operators first, with the producers paid those above-market rates. Those rates are subsidised by a surcharge on customers, and the surcharge must go up when more renewable kilowatt-hours are poured into the system. But an unintended side-effect of the policy has been that renewables undercut relatively climate-friendly natural gas on price. This means that traditional utilities have turned instead to much more climate-damaging coal for generation. The result is that prices have gone up and the use of renewable sources has expanded, but Germans have ended up emitting more carbon dioxide as a result of the extra coal—hardly the result the architects of the Energiewende hoped for. Fixing it is one of the current government’s top priorities—as it should be.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-10
I didn’t know the author Zubrin is into this subject matter. I thought he was only involved in trying to get our space program focused on Mars. It is good to see a voice of reason. The strangest thing to me is Merkel’s background is as a scientist (phd in physical chemistry) and yet she shuts down their (carbon friendly) nuclear energy plants over fears since the Fukushima disaster. That never made sense to me. I guess you need a liberal mindset to understand it.
Look to failure. I always do. BHO
The Day The Earth Stood Still ran on cable this weekend. Channel surfing I caught a few minutes. So the tsunami is coming to destroy a major city and everyone looking on is saying, we are to blame. Man is very bad. Look what man has caused.....so bogus.
Praise the environment!
It is called green energy for a reason. Only people with lots of green can afford it.
She is a politician first and will go with the crowd no matter what her training.
Environmentalism is just another tool in the Plan to inflict socialism. The government will subsidize the poor with money unfairly taken from those that have it. By their thinking, if you have any money, you are “rich”.
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