Less than a month after the failed Bonn UN climate confab, Germany has announced a most audacious energy policy: in order to shutter nuclear plants (but not completely scuttle their economy), the German government will direct climate fund cash to building coal and natural gas plants. You can’t make this stuff up.
Germany plans to dump nuclear power by 2022 but clearly needs to meet burgeoning electricity demand especially for a still powerful manufacturing economy dependent upon exports. Solar panels at their latitude and windmills are not going to suffice, so the solution is more coal. The environmental movement must be apoplectic with so many politically correct wires crossing at once.
With yesterday’s story of “wide blackouts” expected to affect Europe (during winter, no less) due to Germany’s anti-nuclear decision by Chancellor Merkel, Germany has decided not to freeze during the winter by relying on renewable energy resources:
The plan has come under stiff criticism, but the Ministry of Economics and Technology defended the idea. A spokeswoman said it was necessary as the government switches from nuclear to other renewable energy sources and added that the money would promote the most efficient plants possible.
Will Merkel cave or shovel climate fund cash into coal burners?
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I think maybe she needs to get the Thorium religion, and solve all the “problems” at once.
But in any case, something productive of lotsa energy has to be online. In this as in all markets, the Invisible Hand has brass knuckles for use if needed.
Oh well, it’s quite encouraging that when the chips are down pragmatism comes first.
It’s something we should have done long ago, with the coal reserves we are sitting on, it’s a blindingly obvious route to take.
Only the whole debate has been corrupted by the climate changers.
The AGW crowd is made up of many factions. The only thing that holds them together is the craving of power over others. But if you pick the scab, you do see the many divisions within them: PETA and the Oz solution to reduce GHG (Kill camels). Climatologists vs Nuclear Power Activists (that should be anti nuclear, but they somehow glommed onto the title with no negative in it), ELF/ALF and CO2 activists.
Germany’s policy is just another act in the theater of the absurd that is the AGW movement. So Napoleon will teach the sheep a new bleat. oil bad, coal good! (after all, coal leaves coal dust that does cool the world as we have now been told).
Are the German leaders havin “Octoberfiest” every day i
Merkel has to be severly drunk!
Even though all government-funded projects are inevitably more wasteful and less effective than are privately-capitalized (and profitably operated) endeavors in the same areas and of the same size, the Germans’ decision to build new coal-fired powerplants – presumably incorporating recent advances in petrochemicals combustion to improve energy yield and mitigate adverse externalities – isn’t half as wasteful and screwed-up as are most government dumbpuckeries.
Sure, the coal fuel cycle is inescapably more dangerous – front-end (mining, transportation) and back-end (vast mountains of carcinogenic coal ash, carcinogenic effluents in the atmosphere, etc.) – but “clean coal” technologies have been hellaciously researched, and should be implemented in these brand-spankin’-new Kraut furnaces.
There’s also the fact that all the coal ash can be “mined” as a source of radioactive Thorium isotopes, which the French will no doubt be happy to take off their neighbors’ hands as the Frogs dive merrily into the Thorium fuel cycle to power their fission reactors, generating electricity to sell – at a nice premium – to the Germans.
Simple fact…..
South African coal is a lot cheaper…..
…..which means a lot more profit
Why is it that when the knee jerks it usually knocks your teeth out? Why is the grass gray? Why is a rainbow gray, gray, gray, gray, gray, and infragray?
Pretzel logic at its finest.
The story, http://www.thelocal.de/national/20110713-36277.html , closes with
Hmm. Build more coal-fired power plants, not damage the 40% reduction goal. Sounds to me like they already know there’s no chance of reaching the goal.
It’s either burn more coal and gas or ironically import nuclear generated electricity from France. The Greens can’t have it both ways on nuclear and fossil fuels. Currently, alternative energy just doesn’t cut it in winter.
So the Germans are building coal fired powerstations to replace nuclear, we Brits are building them as backup for wind power and the French are doing their usual whatever they please whilst telling us all what to do. The one redundant and expensive part of all this that could be got rid of would of course be the wind and solar.
Well done us!
King Coal heading to Asia. Asia is the pc term for Red China and its client states.
…-
“Coal deal clinched”
“London-based Fortune Minerals Ltd. has secured a long-awaited investment deal that will pave the way for development of a huge anthracite coal deposit in British Columbia.
On Wednesday Fortune announced the deal with the Canadian arm of POSCO, a South Korean company that is the third largest steel producer in the world.
POSCO will provide $181 million, including $30 million upfront in return for a 20% stake in the Mount Klappan project.
Fortune has estimated it will take $768 million to get the mine into full production, which includes a $317.8 million for a 150-km rail connection and upgrade to the CN Rail line to ship the coal to the deep water port at Prince Rupert, B.C.
Fortune Mineral founder and President Robin Goad said POSCO’s initial $30 million will help get the mine through the permitting, engineering and environmental assessment stages.”
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2011/07/13/18413051.html
Cold fusion products will scuttle all these plans way before substantial funds are allocated for any of these long-range myopic solutions.
Germany, never will compromise its manufacturing base. (unlike the UK)
Germany will ensure that they have sufficient secure energy at a cost that ensures Das Autos are competitive. Can’t do that with wind and solar!
VW, Audi, Merc, Porsche….
I bought some stock in a company, BWC, involved in nuclear power a couple of years ago. I have to admit that the Japanese nuclear accident did cause me some financial pain. But I decided not to sell. It seems to me that nuclear is the right answer and that everyone will realize it eventually. So I’m keeping my stock. The countries that had the knee jerk reaction to Japan’s nuclear accident will change their minds once all of the emotional huppla is over.
i think that you guys have missed the boat by a foot or two.
the germans have a huge coal mine/generation station in central germany. it is big enough that it shows up on google maps quite well.
they use bucket wheel excavators connected to conveyor belts and have been doing so for about thirty or more years. they have reached the stage where they dump the overburden and ashes back into the hole (open pit mining) as they move along.
the place already looks like the face of the moon only worse, so whats the damage expanding it by what, 50-75% so there’s a couple of 4block square villages over the unmined coal.
they’ve already paid the price in being called dirty b@ur momisugly#%$rds for decades, so every thing is up from here.
C
green sand:
the costs of building autos mostly labor, tooling and engineering time. very little is energy costs.
C
@ur momisugly Tilo Reber says:
July 13, 2011 at 1:48 pm
I bought some stock in a company, BWC, involved in nuclear power a couple of years ago. I have to admit that the Japanese nuclear accident did cause me some financial pain.
If you didn’t sell any, how did it cause you financial pain? If anything it would have been a buy opportunity.
I don’t have much to say about this, other than….. lolrotfpmp!!!!! hahahahahahaahahahhhahhahaha!!!!!!!!
A lot of the coal in Germany is “Brown” coal, high in sulphur so that should help cool things down nicely. Perhaps that’s the new anti-AGW strategy?
Since the particulate emissions will block further warming (by blocking sunlight), it sounds like another win-win! Coal is merely a highly portable form of sunlight. Plants create coal. It’s concentrated biomass (again, which is merely stored sunlight. It’s basic science).
There is another partial explanation (apart from far too many Germans being stuck-up, envious, self-righteous, narrow-minded cowards with deeply disturbed conscience, doing dirty business with shady totalitarian regimes).
Many influential German decision-makers are firmly in Putin’s pocket.
pk says:
July 13, 2011 at 1:58 pm
green sand:
the costs of building autos mostly labor, tooling and engineering time. very little is energy costs.
C
The cost of every element you mention and all the many, many more elements required in the production of autos are affected by the cost of energy.
It is not possible to have a cost effective competetive manufacturing industry with uncompetitive energy costs. Germany recognises this and will take steps to ensure their supply of cost effective energy as you are witnessing today.
Ha ha only crazed climate communist hippies would’ve thought otherwise.
It was there from the get go. The economy of germany is not too good. So what to do when almost all your reactors are too close to retirement, due to them closing up shop in the eighties for new ones, and it would become too expensive to build an equivalent of 30% of total energy need in such a short period. They first went with extending the reactor life spann to not have to build more dirty coal ‘an necessary, but that was clearly hugely expensive trying to make old reactors work for longer than they were initially designed for. Enter the natural dissaster in Japan, during a time of financial crisis and weak economy in pretty much the whole EU topped with high unemployment. It must have been a great boon for now they can dissmantle the old crappy expensive to maintain reactors and build cheap coal and gas power plants that’ll employ far more people ‘an from building new nuclear reactors which requires more academics, at the same time they still come out as being toatally on line with being green to pacify the crazies. Ontop of all this of cours is the holy grail of EU’s highly manipulative but very much tax rewarding CO2 cap and trade and an odd assortment of energy taxes. Essentially a win win win win . . . win situation for the German government, and EU.