Germany’s Energiewende program exposed as a catastrophic failure

EU climate alarmist champion Germany has its Energiewende program exposed as a catastrophic failure with enormous costs

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

An audit of the EU’s leading climate alarmism energy policy program concludes that Germany’s Energiewende is a colossal and hugely expensive debacle.

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“Germany’s Federal Audit Office has accused the federal government of having largely failed to manage the transformation of Germany’s energy systems.”

“A little more than a year before Germany’s climate-policy “milestone 2020”, the auditing body has concluded a catastrophic assessment of the government’s energy policy. Germany would miss its targets for both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and primary energy consumption as well as for increasing energy productivity and the share of renewable energy in transport. At the same time, policy makers had burdened the nation with enormous costs.”

The audit further concluded that the program is a monumental bureaucratic nightmare where “The Federal Government, incidentally, does not have an overall grasp of the costs or any transparency in this respect.”

“The scope of the legislation is also striking,” Scheller stated: “At national level alone, 26 laws and 33 regulations regulate the generation, storage, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy. There is, however, “no place where everything comes together, no place that assumes overall responsibility”, Scheller criticized.

“For example, there are “no quantified targets, no measurable indicators” for the energy policy goals of affordability and security of supply, Scheller criticised: “Here we are poking around in the dark.” For five years now, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology has been responsible for the green energy transition, but the ministry is “in no position to determine what it must do to ensure that the goals of the Energiewende are demonstrably and economically achieved”.

“Overall, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is trying “to give the impression that the current coordination and control of the energy transition is essentially designed at optimal level,” the auditors conclude. “Failing that, the German and international public could get the impression that Germany is simply incapable of successfully shaping and implementing the Energiewende that is planned society-wide and for the long term.”

Germany’s electricity rate have skyrocketed to the highest levels in the EU largely driven by the Energiewende debacle.

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As is always the case the climate alarmist renewable energy advocacy main stream media in both the U.S. and  Europe will do everything possible to conceal this disastrous policy debacle from public view.

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October 1, 2018 1:23 am

As in so many things the cost of producing gods has to be considered. In Australia the workers are by Western world standards very well paid. Now while we are blessed with ample coal which is so close to the surface it can be easily extracted,it produced cheap energy and largely cancelled the high cost of labour. But the Greens whos’e long term aim appear s to be to destroy the economy, have largely stopped the use of such cheap fuel.

So today the bulk of our manufactured goods come from China and India where they do not believe n the Greens fairy tales.

MJE

Reply to  Michael
October 1, 2018 8:30 am

Producing gods is expensive…. 🙂

rbabcock
October 1, 2018 5:26 am

And this morning GE just took a $23B charge on their power business. They tried selling windmills and storage batteries plus their turbine business is taking a huge hit on a reduction in fossil fuel plants.

ResourceGuy
October 1, 2018 7:24 am

Oh and the German economy is built on exports and, oh, the early adopter role of Germany in solar was for older high cost, low efficiency panels that are losing efficiency at about the rate of gains in other countries that use market-based decisions for the rate of adoption of current technologies. Thus Germany is sliding backwards on energy efficiency savings and cost competitiveness for exports. Good luck with that…..in the colder winters approaching. BTW, 19th warmest year does not heat your home much.

D. Anderson
Reply to  ResourceGuy
October 1, 2018 10:44 am

Oh, and the US is not going to stand for German protectionism anymore.

“Oh and the German economy is built on exports “

D. Anderson
October 1, 2018 10:43 am

About the graph – How did Hungary and Poland get so smart and WTH are you doing Australia?

Phil Salmon
October 1, 2018 2:59 pm

CAGW is based on wrong science, CO2 is more a friend than an enemy of the environment.
CO2 warming is too small to be harmful and too harmless to be harmful.
I get that.
But …
Electric cars are good, not bad.
Imagine being able to buy/rent a house/flat next to a busy road without having to worry about all the nitrous fumes and particulates. With less risk of metal particulates getting into the brain and causing Alzheimers.
Electric cars won’t reduce the CO2 going into the air – it will happen at power stations instead of urban streets.
But they will improve air quality where people live.
They will drive (already are driving) new technology growth.
Lets see if they can be made safe and reliable.
And there’s always China to dump all that toxic metal waste /sarc.

simple-touriste
October 1, 2018 9:14 pm

Failure? The whole thing is the most ostensible scam and violation of European Union rules, ever.

The rules don’t allow a government to subside a business outside precise criteria and through a process that involves the Commission. The way big industrial consumers were protected from the increase of energy price caused by so-called “renewable energy” is a subsidy.

There are many rules on the taxes and esp. the VAT rates in Europe. You can’t do what you want.
You can apply different taxe rates to different products. You generally can’t apply different rates to different consumers for the exact same product. You can’t say that your small businesses and citizens pay a high rate and big businesses pay the old normal rate, corresponding to the price without the ecoloonacies.

You can’t pick and chose who pays for your silly policies.

It’s a travesty. The fact that it isn’t on the news Every. Single. Day is also a travesty.

Johann Wundersamer
October 1, 2018 10:42 pm

“Energiewende” is not the solely one political debacle in Germany.

The economic catastrophe to “Wiedervereinigung” was orchestrated willently.

Johann Wundersamer
October 1, 2018 10:50 pm
François
October 2, 2018 12:56 am

To think that France has now to export power to Germany (thanks to our ill-reputed nuclear plant!)!!
Not to mention the coal pollution that we receive from Germany when the wind blows westward!!…

simple-touriste
Reply to  François
October 2, 2018 10:03 am

Yes the ecoloons and heathloons are all over the place denouncing fine particulate and their health impact.

I saw a radiologist on TV who explained that there were many cancer cases caused by pollution and that a study (one!) proved it. He also said that with the new cars there was less PM10 but more PM2.5 and even smaller ones and that it was even more unhealthy. (He didn’t seem to be able to realize that nobody was monitoring the smaller particulate pollution a while ago.)

The TV program went on to say that WV cheated on CO2 and NO which are both GHG.