“Kosten fur Energiewende explodieren,” declared the Swiss-based, German-language newspaper Basler Zeitung this month. That translates to “Costs for energy revolution explode.” Indeed they have.
As has been well chronicled, Germany has assumed the role of point man – in army parlance, the soldier assigned to the most hazardous duty during a patrol – in the campaign against nuclear energy and, conversely, climate change. Nuclear power plants provide reliable baseload electricity while producing virtually no greenhouse gases, arguably making them the best hedge against the alleged climate effects of carbon-dioxide emissions. But Germany and a number of other countries are trying to phase out nuclear energy in response to the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Convinced they could replace nuclear as well as coal-fired plants with wind and solar installations, German utilities went all in on green energy.
“Utility company Tennet TSO spent almost a billion euros (about $1.2 billion) last year on emergency interventions to stabilize the national grid,” Basler Zeitung reported. “The reason for the increase in emergency interventions is the rising number of solar projects and wind turbines in Germany. The share of renewable energy increased from 29 to 33 percent of the electricity last year. Wind and solar power are irregular and often unpredictable. This makes the network increasingly unstable.”
Even The New York Times is a skeptic on German green energy. “Germany has spent an estimated 189 billion euros, or about $222 billion, since 2000 on renewable energy subsidies,” the Times reported last October. “But emissions have been stuck at roughly 2009 levels, and rose last year, as coal-fired plants fill a void left by Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power. That has raised questions – and anger – over a program meant to make the country’s power sector greener.”
Germany has spent $222 billion since 2000 in pursuit of “Energiewende,” not counting the billions it has spent to sustain a stable flow of electricity through the national grid. Anyone who has perused the data on green technology knows that the solar panels, wind turbines and other machinery the Germans installed during the past 18 years are outmoded, and have grown inefficient and unreliable with age.
The news from Berlin isn’t all bad. The rest of the Western world can thank the Germans for showing us what not to do in pursuit of cleaner, more efficient energy production.
