From Dr. Benny Peiser at The GWPF
Network Agency Calls For Suspension Of Emission Laws For Old Coal Plants
Last winter, on several occasions, Germany escaped only just large-scale power outages. Next winter the risk of large blackouts is even greater. The culprit for the looming crisis is the single most important instrument of German energy policy: the “Renewable Energy Law.” The economic cost of a wide-scale blackout are measured in billions of Euros per day. The most important test of energy policy is now the stability of power – so far only the cost of the green energy transition has been focused upon. Because the federal government does not have the guts to start an overdue and fundamental debate about the usefulness of a 12-year-old, now totally outdated, “launch aid” called EEG, it now threatens to over-steer, with the green energy transition ending up in a crash. Fasten your seat belts. –Daniel Wetzel, Die Welt, 10 May 2012
Old coal power plants need to stay in operation or Germany’s power grid faces collapse. That is the warning of Germany’s national grid agency. Because the danger of blackouts is growing as a result of the shut-down of six nuclear power plants last year, the Federal Network Agency is proposing to suspend legal emission limits for plants. Old power stations, which are due to be shut down due to their high environmental impact, should continue to operate. “Closures of more conventional power plants are currently not feasible in Germany,” it says literally in the grid agency’s report: “Given the present and future tense situation, it is necessary to suspend closures due to the emissions reduction law.” –D. Wetzel und D. Siems, Die Welt, 10 May 2012
The German Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) issued a press release warning that the national power grid is in serious trouble and that something needs to be done urgently. Germany’s once impeccably stable world-class power grid has been transformed and is today just one step away from being a developing-world laughing stock. This has all been accomplished in just a few short years – thanks to the country’s reckless and uncontrolled rush to renewable energies, wind and sun, all spurred on by a blind environmental movement and hysteria with respect to nuclear power. –P Gosslin, NoTricksZone, 11 May 2012
Winfried Kretschmann (Green Party), the prime minister of the state of Baden Wuerttemberg, is urging Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) to encourage the construction of new gas-fired power plants. Especially in southern Germany energy security is at risk, according to Kretschmann. –Nikolai Fichtner,Financial Times Deutschland, 3 May 2012,
Global-warming-related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world, with one species in particular danger: the electricity ratepayer. Denmark, an early adopter of the global-warming mania, now requires its households to pay the developed world’s highest power prices — about 40¢ a kilowatt hour, or three to four times what North Americans pay today. Germany, whose powerhouse economy gave green developers a blank cheque, is a close second, followed by other politically correct nations such as Belgium, the headquarters of the EU, and distressed nations such as Spain. The result is chaos to the economic well-being of the EU nations. Even in rock-solid Germany, up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty.” Some 600,000 low-income Germans are now being cut off by their power companies annually, a number expected to increase as a never-ending stream of global-warming projects in the pipeline wallops customers. In the U.K., which has laboured under the most politically correct climate leadership in the world, some 12 million people are already in fuel poverty, 900,000 of them in wind-infested Scotland alone, and the U.K. has now entered a double-dip recession. –Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 12 May 2012
Gee, what a surprise. And now the EU is looking askance at the Rio seance. When will full-scale revolt take place?
It is often said: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
In Germany’s case, this was entirely predictable: the goofier and more grandiose the renewable energy projects, the more expensive and unreliable the result.
The UK is committed to a policy of rapid expansion of expensive electricity from renewables, which will inevitably lead to rolling brown outs and black outs. However, this is still 5-6 years away, Germany was just quicker off the mark in embracing insane and unsustainable energy policies.
Yeh, I recently did a post on Fritz Vahrenholt, a recent converted heretic from Germany. He touches on some of the problems with renewables. It isn’t just the cost. Nor is it simply the amount of the source of energy. Their solar panels wreak havoc on a grid system. This is something many people don’t readily understand. Grids have a specific design depending not only on how much is coming on the grid, but also where.
A properly maintained grid to ensure quality of service must have strategically placed equipment on the grid such as capacitors, regulators, and re-closures (switches) and the like. Wire size is a huge consideration. When you have an indeterminable amount of energy coming onto the grid from indeterminable places, your grid is at a horrible risk. Add this variable influx of the solar to the wind and you’ve got a very unstable grid.
It does make one laugh a bit. The Über successful renewable industry in Germany has mandated that of the future power plant construction in Germany over 70% will be from traditional energy generation sources.
Something really, really bad is going to have to happen first. The Warmists are blind to the disaster they are building toward. Let’s pray that when it happens it doesn’t take the global economy down with it. Thing is, when an energy infrastructure is allowed to downgrade to this point, reversing course when it happens could take some time — which there may not be a lot of.
“Screwed, blued and tattooed”. The EU, Japan and soon, the US will have to pay the price for the drunken stupor which is the “green energy movement”.
So sad, most people are too gullible, or busy and are led to the disaster of the greens like sheep to slaughter. Utopia sounds so good I guess they cannot help themselves. Not many think for themselves anymore.
With Obama, Lisa Jackson and the EPA in control of things over here in the US, we are going down that same road right behind Germany. Coal plants are being taken offline here in the US at a rapid rate in the name of CAGW and supposed mercury pollution. Expect energy poverty and massive increases in electricity prices here as well if they get four more years. In addition, Dr. Chu , the secretary of energy thinks we need to be paying $8+ per gallon of gas. You don’t have to be a climate scientist to realize what effect that is going to have on our economy, the poor and the middle class.
The CAGW movement will ultimately fail, not because the facts regarding the science prevail, but because of issues like this. A healthy economy can afford stupidity now for some phantom benefit promised a century later. A sick economy results in a larger proportion of the population whose only concern is having enough food to eat, shelter, and not freezing to death. Those are the things that cause the populace to dig in their heels and say “enough!”
Sad that we have to be pushed to the brink to recognize that there is a bring and back away from it.
No solution, no matter how environmentally friendly is “sustainable” if the people paying the bills cannot afford to make the payments.
An earthquake happens in Japan. All the nuke plants shut down in Germany. Now they need to buy more gas from Russia.
Huh?
I’m so glad with france’s nuclear 8 cents/kwh for consumer. Now hope that moron Hollande doesn’t do a greenwipe on our nukes.
“The Warmists are blind to the disaster they are building toward.”
You’re being unfair to warmists, they WANT disaster.
Maurice Strong, U.N. environmental leader and IPCC creator: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
The so-called “Green Energy Industry” is somewhat like the big charities in America. A strong, inverse relationship exists betwen the annnual salary and perks of the nonprofit CEO and its percentage of funds that actually go to charity. The greater the political power of the radical, leftist green energy activists the less likely their emotion-based green energy scheems are likely to work. And, the greater political power of the radical, leftists greens, the less science-based are their taxpayer funded schemes and crazy dreams.
In simple terms: Big salary for non-profit charity CEO —> Low percentage of funds to poor.
And likewise: Big political influence of radical, leftist, greenies —> Low percentage chance or green schemes working.
The solution is to get rid of non-profits with paid staff and get the donations to the poor. And, to ignore the screaming of the radical, leftist greenies and go ahead with science-based energy policies.
James Sexton says:
May 12, 2012 at 8:58 am
This is something many people don’t readily understand. Grids have a specific design depending not only on how much is coming on the grid, but also where.
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Here in BC the local power company (BC Hydro) makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year as a result of the problems the US has in turning power on and off on the grid.
When the wind and solar energy down south in the US crank ups, they have surplus generating capacity. They can’t simply shut down the conventional power plants. So to avoid burning out all the electrical equipment in the western United States, they need someone to take their surplus.
Depending on how much surplus there is, this drives down the prices for wholesale electricity, to the point where it goes very low – even to zero – or even negative!! Yes, when there is excess capacity in the grid, the power companies will pay money for someone to take the power.
At this point BC Hydro buys US power and stores this in the hydro dams in BC. This is possible because the hydro power can be ramped up an down quite quickly as compared to conventional plants.
Then when the wind and sun stop, the prices of wholesale electricity on the grid shoot up, as power stations struggle to meed the demand. Now they face the opposite problem, burning out equipment as a result of brownouts and blackouts. At this point the power companies will pay almost anything for power, to avoid the cost of damage.
At this point BC Hydro turns the hydro dams back on, selling the power back to the US at high prices. The same power they bought earlier from the US at low prices.
So, while it may look like solar and wind are generating power, in fact they are not because of the fluctuations they cause in the grid. This changes the spot price of electricity such that the solar and wind power is actually costing money to produce, by driving the spot prices up an down.
When Germany freezes in the dark the media will ignore both them and the weather killing them, and their dead will be as unmourned as all previous victims of the AGW hoax. How many headlines did you see about last winter’s deadly Eastern European freezes, as compared to the Russian heat wave? When people die after their Green-induced power cut-off, does the death certificate list the cause as ‘Climate Fraud’?
ferd berple says:
May 12, 2012 at 10:01 am
James Sexton says:
May 12, 2012 at 8:58 am
This is something many people don’t readily understand. Grids have a specific design depending not only on how much is coming on the grid, but also where.
=========
Here in BC the local power company (BC Hydro) makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year as a result of the problems the US has in turning power on and off on the grid.
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Lol, yeh, similar acts of stupidity are occurring in the east as well. I recently had a conversation with a employee of a New Brunswick energy company. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has played a big part in that insanity. It’s like the U.S. is exporting capital to Canada. You’re welcome. What are friends for? I think in the U.S. an incremental lobotomy is required for energy decision makers, increasing the amount of grey matter excised as one moves closer to the coasts and northward.
This is very good news. It will learn them.
As bad as things are in Germany, California may actually experience large area brownouts and rolling blackouts first. One of their big nuclear plants is shut down right now and they have taken too many conventional plants offline in the last decade or so. When the heat of the summer kicks in, the demand for cooling, especially from all those internet server farms, may strain the regional grid to the breaking point. The big question there, as in Germany, is whether the people will realize who is really to blame and change their voting choices accordingly. Even then it will take years, maybe decades to reverse the damage. And in the meantime the rolling blackouts will continue and business will flee the area for places with a more stable electrical grid.
Let their electric power fail. Let it be a monument to their own stupidity.
James Sexton says:
May 12, 2012 at 10:27 am
ferd berple says:
May 12, 2012 at 10:01 am
James Sexton says:
May 12, 2012 at 8:58 am
This is something many people don’t readily understand. Grids have a specific design depending not only on how much is coming on the grid, but also where.
=========
Here in BC the local power company (BC Hydro) makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year as a result of the problems the US has in turning power on and off on the grid.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lol, yeh, similar acts of stupidity are occurring in the east as well. I recently had a conversation with a employee of a New Brunswick energy company. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has played a big part in that insanity. It’s like the U.S. is exporting capital to Canada. You’re welcome. What are friends for? I think in the U.S. an incremental lobotomy is required for energy decision makers, increasing the amount of grey matter excised as one moves closer to the coasts and northward.
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Here in Ontario (California with snow) we are the ones paying others to take our power because of the Green Energy Act. Ontario consumers pay ever increasing rates and Michigan, Ohio, New York etc get paid to take our power and then charge us twice to take it back. Aren’t windmills grand?
I should also add that the Beck generating station in Niagra falls is frequently dumping water that would other wise be used to generate $0.02 electricity in order to accommodate the ups and downs of wind and solar. OT but if it wasn’t for the Beck station and its isolated original 25 cycle generators Ontario wouldn’t have been as quick to recover from the blackout a few years back. Power from Beck was used to restart the Bruce nukes.
WTF says:
May 12, 2012 at 11:22 am
Here in Ontario (California with snow) we are the ones paying others to take our power because of the Green Energy Act. Ontario consumers pay ever increasing rates and Michigan, Ohio, New York etc get paid to take our power and then charge us twice to take it back. Aren’t windmills grand?
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It is the leftists vision of efficiency. While worthy of ridicule, it would be downright hilarious if not for the damage those idiots inflict on the rest of us.
One of my favorite quotations:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=28907
Putin suggests Germans replace nuclear with firewood
01 December 2010
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has told German businessmen that they may have to rely on Russian firewood for heating if they do not want to construct new nuclear power plants or bring in Russian gas supplies. At a business conference organized in Berlin by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Putin recognised that “the German public does not like the nuclear power industry for some reason.” He continued: “But I cannot understand what fuel you will take for heating. You do not want gas, you do not develop the nuclear power industry, so you will heat with firewood?” Putin then noted, “You will have to go to Siberia to buy the firewood there,” as Europeans “do not even have firewood.”
Over recent decades the IPCC, Mssrs Gore and Hansen, and their various minions and acolytes have regaled the world with a continuous litany of projections of the endless death and misery which will befall humanity as a result of CAGW. In this one respect I have always had to agree with them. Of course, the burgeoning misery and death that humanity has, is, and will suffer as a result of CAGW has almost nothing to do with anything that is occurring with the climate but is due almost entirely to the ill considered and ultimately futile schemes which have been, are being, and are proposed to be enacted as supposed solutions to a looming “crisis” which growing evidence suggests is not only not likely to be a catastrophe, but in the larger scheme is not very certain to even be a problem.
Biofuels have fostered starvation and habitat destruction. Wind and Solar have wrecked their well enumerated havoc while sapping massive capital away from more productive uses producing, for the effort applied, minimal and unreliable energy at exorbitant costs leading to energy poverty and, as noted above, entire well developed economies brought to within inches of complete collapse. All while destroying more wildlife every day or two than Deep Horizon did from start to finish.
Envirofascist bureaucrats are multiplying faster than rabbits. Demanding, and in most cases acquiring, ever growing powers to control every single aspect of every single human life on the planet and non human life as well, although they have thoughtfully elected to exempt themselves and all their “consensus” mates from such petty considerations.
There are many other ways that CO2 demonization has and is negatively affecting the human prospect, but I think the point has been made. While whatever warming we have experienced to this point has been minimal and mostly beneficial, (would anyone suggest that if we could return the GAT to 18th or 19th century levels it would be an improvement to do so?) the human misery and death already wrought in an entirely futile effort to try to influence the future climate in all probability already exceeds the worst that the climate could do,no matter where it ultimately lands at the end of the millenium.
My Real Science comment below was on cap & trade, but it applies here, as the “Renewable Energy Law” is akin to and walks hand in hand with insane cap & trade schemes:
Civilization’s Wrecking Ball
The radical cap & trade bill that passed the U.S. House in the early summer of 2009 dictated that there would be mandatory 83% CO2 cuts by 2050 — back to 1867 per capita use levels, back to when all we had was a few trains sputtering around, no cars, no planes, lights, vacuums, refridgerators, air conditioners, electric stoves, computers, TVs. No power stations… at all.
This would have taken a wrecking ball to civilization. No joke. The notion that appliances and engines would gain tenfold in efficiency is pure poppycock. Cap & trade would have started to immediately cut into our industrial base, causing widespread shut downs of industrial facilities of every stripe. Energy prices would skyrocket, and that is putting it lightly. Availability of products, of nearly every kind, would be severely retarded. Scores of millions would suffer unemployment or underemployment as the economy cratered. But this is exactly what the fear-mongering Chicken Littles desire. It is the leftist dream. Some quotes:
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States… ” –John Holdren (1973), Obama’s Science Czar
“Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilisation? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens? ” –Maurice Strong, ex UNEP Director
“My [goal is to] destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness… returning throughout the world.” –David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster… to bomb us into the stone age, where we might live like Indians… with our localism… our gardens, our homemade religion.” — Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue
Think that this desire to return to stone age is not alive and well? Look what’s happening right now in Tombstone AZ. See the Fox report at the link with John Stossel reporting! In Tombstone, pipes for their water supply were destroyed in a fire and subsequent mudslides. Obama’s “wilderness officials,” despite the fact that nearly zero animals are living there now in fire gutted region, will not let them repair the pipes unless “horses and stone tools” are used. A wheelbarrow was deemed “too mechanized” and not allowed. Absolute insanity. See the link: http://www.allamericanblogger.com/21262/dc-tells-tombstone-az-they-can-repair-water-system-as-long-as-they-use-horses-and-hand-tools/