Germany is shooting itself in the foot with a bizarre "clean energy" program that is only increasing its reliance on fossil fuels. The cost of wind and solar energy (without sufficient storage capacity) is causing energy prices to rise higher than what many families can afford. This will inevitably push Germany to fall back on coal and perhaps natural gas. Worst of all, they haven't built the import capacity to diversify where their natural gas will come from. Most of the fossil fuels will be imported by pipeline from the former Soviet Union - Russia. This will mean that Germany will probably soon achieve puppet state status while the US weens itself off coal - ushering in an energy revolution with domestic natural gas. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/w...ean-energy-proves-complex.html?pagewanted=all
I'm not an expert on Germany politics by any means but my understanding is that the Greens in Germany (who are actually a viable party unlike Green Parties in other countries) had been gaining steady support on getting rid of nuclear power for years. Then the Fukushima disaster happened and it resulted in a big spike in support on the issue which was going to benefit the Greens in a huge way. Merkel then turned around and pulled a play out of the Clinton triangulation playbook and just stole the issue in order to kill off support for the Greens. It totally worked as the Greens did pretty poorly in the last election. The problem (which has been pointed out) is that Germany doesn't have alternative energy sources available to it. Not to mention, Germany is planning on a rapid phaseout of nuclear power which doesnt give it enough to time to setup alternatives. This was a case of short term political gain totally screwing the country up. Germany better figure something out fast.
There's definitely a whole lot of hilarity with Germany's renewable program. They've gone from exporting power to buying power from other European countries who either use nuclear or coal, ( and the Eastern European nuclear plants aren't as good or safe as the German ones were), to needing to construct expensive power lines because Germany's solar and wind programs work best in the north by the Baltic, but Germany's industry is all in the south, to the fact that Germany doesn't even directly subsidize solar and wind plants, but rely on "renewable energy portfolio standards" which directly screw with the average German's ability to pay energy costs. It's absolutely amazing in its sheer incompetence.
And Merkel won reelection last night with the largest margin since German unification. Making a drastic change in such a complicated and complex area as energy policy is never going to be completely smooth but they will figure it out and the investments in grid changes will pay off grandly in the long run. This is a transition that has to be made and we will make it at some point as well. Whether we choose to do it or are forced to do it will make all the difference. And the numbers of Germans having their power cut off is quite low. 70,000 a month just in CA alone in our system.
The observation that she won was made in counter to the implication that the policy was increasingly unpopular. That still may be the case, but if so, it apparently wasn't important enough to not vote for Merkel yesterday.
This is the tradeoff you make with renewables -- they just aren't economic, so you will pay more for them. Especially now in the US with our shale gas revolution, natural gas plants have rapidly displaced coal due to low gas prices, and have dealt a hammer blow to renewables since the price of power has come down. Oh, and the only country to meet the Kyoto protocol standards? The USA. The one that was ridiculed for not agreeing to it back in the day. True hilarity. All credit goes to the energy pioneers who revolutionized the way to drill for gas and oil. Innovation at its finest.
I work for a power company and the article leaves me feeling like the journalist may not have a great familiarity with the industry in general (saying stuff like energy can't be stored 'very long', when the problem is efficiency, not duration), which I say with some trepidation since this is the NY Times and all. Much of the US also relies on renewable energy portfolio standards, and we amp them up a little every 5 years or so. It's not unusual for energy policy with utilities. Maybe they are too aggressive, I don't know, but the mechanism isn't a problem -- or isn't causing one in the US. But, when it comes to renewables, we look at Germany as a model of what the US can be. And, the expensive transmission projects are also something commonplace in this country. A lot of money is being invested now to bring electricity from wind farms in low-population areas like West Texas to population centers like Dallas. On a variable cost basis, wind and solar are cheaper than anything else, so long as the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. So the grid always wants to take those resources first. But, you can't leverage the benefits if congestion on the power lines prevents you from delivering that low-cost electricity to consumers. Building transmission then allows you a more efficient way to serve load in dense areas than building yet another gas turbine. And that would be even more true in Germany, where gas is not so cheap. I think their plan to decommission all this nuclear generation so quickly is kinda crazy, but I can understand them not wanting a meltdown in the middle of their country. The article does a pretty poor job of discussing the wind-down but I have to guess that's where all the price pressure comes from. Of course carbon pollution will increase if you decomission nuclear faster than you can build renewables. They need to use coal and gas as a bridge until the renewable infrastructure is in place. But, I don't see that the plan is imperiled in the long-term. And I certainly don't see how it's 'autocratic' at least as it compares to the US system. In fact, you may want to gin up the US autocratic energy policy thread now. EPA just released their plan for restrictions on carbon emissions for new power plants last Friday. It would make building coal-fired generation without advanced scrubbers impossible. They'll release their rules for existing generation next year. When they do, it'll put a bunch more coal plants out of the money. A lot of coal-fired plants will be shuttered when they do and our generation mix is going to swing hard toward natural gas until wind and solar catch up.
True. Marginal economics rules the day in a commodity market like power. However, wind and solar don't have attractive capital costs, especially when they're far from load centers. Rules for existing generation will be a kick in the nuts to the economy. Obama's trying to use the EPA to do the work he is unable to do on his own around the environment. I'm sure he'll time this to be right after the elections.
According to BP... http://www.bp.com/en/global/corpora...gy-type/natural-gas/natural-gas-reserves.html how much longer can this bridge last? inevitably, everybody will feel the pain of losing cheap sources of energy, well, unless SpaceX finds space oil reserves. so laugh at Germany now, but in 100 years or so, there won't be much laughing for your grandchildren if we continue burying our head under the sand. Let's continue the consumption pattern of consuming in 300 years or thereabout, the resources that took millions of years for the Earth to produce and store. it's a winning formula.
Without government incentives, the return may not be as good as traditional generation. But, there are government incentives and probably will continue to be since we want to capture the environmental benefits. And the PV efficiency keeps getting better and the transmission is getting built. So, it's not impossible for renewables to geniunely compete with the government's intercession. Also, there's a lot of potential for distributed rooftop solar to offset a great deal of future demand. People in the coal industry say so. And coal-fired generators like Luminant and FirstEnergy can't be too pleased. But, I don't really see the industry as a whole proclaiming doom and gloom. Cheap natural gas is already making coal expendable from a pricing perspective. Considering the near price-parity and the difference in pollution, merchant fleets were all building gas plants anyway, even before Obama ordered the EPA to make carbon rules. I really don't think it'll hurt all that bad, at least outside of coal-country. I don't know what to make of the 'unable to do on his own' dig. EPA reports to him. Their rules are a manifestation of him acting. He ordered the rules. So this is completely what he is doing on his own. Your criticism should have been, 'Obama's trying to use the EPA to do the work that Congress isn't willing to do around the environment.' Which is wholly appropriate because the EPA is acting to protect the environment, which is its mandate in its function within the executive branch. If Congress doesn't like it, they'll have to pass a law to stop it. As for timing, EPA is supposed to release June 1, 2014. When's the election again?
You're closer to the whole thing than the rest of us. I'd like to hear your thoughts on Germany's power situation, if you have any.
I'll be honest, I am not an expert on energy. geeiamsobored described the political move by Merkel correctly. I just don't understand how he comes to the conclusion that the country is totally screwed up because of it. On a more global scale, I think it is obvious that relying on energy sources that will eventually be exhausted and/or which might in some cases be needed for more important (e.g. medical) purposes doesn't seem like a brilliant idea. In the long term, the only energy sources that make sense are renewable energy sources. The other question is how this transition can be done, and by one country alone, when it puts it at a competitive disadvantage. On the other hand, it might put the country at a competitive advantage in the longer term when it has world-leading knowledge about how to use renewable energy? I guess that Germany is somewhere in between these two scenarios? I don't know which one is true.
The country by no means is screwed up. Phasing out 20% of your energy in 10 years is a huge undertaking and I think its reasonable to think that there will be larger implications to this. I think they'll be able to import enough energy to deal with this just fine but you're looking at higher prices and a larger carbon footprint because of short term political calculus. That's a problem. But you're in Germany so obviously I'll defer to you on this.
