Yes Germany is gambling big time on this move. Germany is the world's #2 exporter (I believe China only recently overtook them) and increased energy costs will make their factories and manufacturing industries relatively less competitive. Especially versus American factories that have much much cheaper energy coming from our low natural gas prices. I fear Germany may have titled too far towards renewable resources -- the US was starting to move that way before the shale gas revolution, but now that we have tons of natural gas, it's much less of a priority. Shale technology will spread to the rest of the world over time (5-10 years). Unfortunately Europe is not that blessed with it (except for Poland, which has had disappointing results to date) so they may still have to look for another source of energy. What I want to avoid is the US going overboard on rewewables when we have such a huge supply of gas and oil within our own borders. It will hurt the economy too much in the form of lost jobs and higher power prices.
As Kojirou pointed out, the reliance on FSU energy has bad consequences. Not just on natural gas imports, but it also means that it will require more power in the grid to be generated by old Chernobyl-style reactors that will have to have their life extended to meet demand. If the goal is to be greener, I'd much prefer German plants to stay online than to trust these older nuclear plants that have a much larger risk of failure.
As luck would have it, Megawatt Daily did a story about E.ON today that talks about the German power market. I can't post it because of TOS issues. But, German prices have gotten quite high ($0.30/kWh in Berlin, where it's only $0.20/kWh in London) even though wholesale prices have dropped very low. My suspicion that closing nuclear plants was putting upward pressure on wholesale prices was wrong. The supply is plentiful and cheap and hurting the profits of the generators (like E.ON). The problem for the consumers is the subsidies for the renewables built into the rate case to pay for the capital costs of building out the renewable infrastructure. They're funding a transformation right now though, and those costs will subside. And when they do, Germany will be in a very good place for both sustainability and energy independence. Wind and solar are intermittent power sources, and they need conventional generation to fill in the gaps when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining. Gas (at least the modern CCGTs, not so much the simple-cycle steam plants) is an ideal partner because it burns relatively clean and you can start and stop those plants as necessary pretty quickly. But, they don't have a lot of gas, and wouldn't want to be beholden to Russia. They're shutting the nukes down. So, they'll probably have to have clean coal to support their renewables.
Taking out low marginal cost generation will put pressure on wholesale prices only if the marginal unit to produce (where supply meets demand) is impacted. My guess is that Germany is a winter-peaking country (not 100% sure tho) so they may not feel the pressure on prices now, but they might come January when they have to fire up the oil CTs or whatever their high marginal cost units are.
1. the dollars paid for fuel do not reflect the full costs of power generation. The environmental costs are hard to calculate and are not country specific. CO2 gasses from China threaten the whole economy in Tuvalu and impact all coastal cities. People paying for coal fired electricity do not contribute directly to future sea level rise mitigation but it will be an associated cost. 2. Innovation and change are pushed by relative costs. There are a lot of plans underway for storing renewable energies. Sometimes by forcing change through legislation it spurs science forward because it pays. Mileage requirements for US cars are one example. It's not a simple, short term cost problem.
I worked with a renewable energy asset mgr at a pwr marketer about three years ago. at the time he said solar panel prices were inflated due to chinese govt heavily subsidizing their market
Curious, bigtexx. Where did you hear about Poland having shale gas? I'll point out that I'm working on a project regarding British shale gas, which they seem to have discovered plenty of - Cameron said that it could run Britain for at least 51 years recently. Of course, they have their environmentalists doing their thing, but the fracking revolution really is an incredible sight to behold.
I'm an executive in the energy industry, so of course I know about shale gas in Poland. by the way -- environmentalists are only one of many issues holding back shale gas in other regions of the world. Take-away capacity (pipelines), access to technology, government land usage issues, etc all play into this.
The executives, in my company, are pretty busy all day. Definitely not gloating their accolades all day on a sports Internet forum.
I use this as a distraction -- plus I'm ridiculously efficient on the job. So basically I'm better than your executives. and by the way -- when their doors are shut, they're not always busy...
Yea I bet you are! But truthfully there is no time for trolling a website, it's cool though, I get your thing. You can make ridiculous comments and if all else fails you are super loaded so it is some sort of ethos. Whatever makes you happy!
I'm going to guess he's at a small or mid-sized company and doesn't have a technical background. He's not quite even-keeled or serious enough to be an executive at a major.
