By P Gosselin
German electricity prices surge out of control, social instability threatens….German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators.
Sun and wind don’t send any electric bills, the green energy swindlers used to tell us.
Changing over to sun and wind energy would cost only one euro a month more, Germany’s former Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin once promised. All we had to do was accept their master plan.
Today the swindle is uncovering, and it may be too late to avert the massive damage that’s coming our way.
At Facebook, Helmut Bauer posted the most recent chart depicting Germany’s electricity rates for end-consumers. It’s a blood bath:
Electricity prices for German end-consumers, in eurocents per kilowatt-hour. Source: BDEW, Verivox.
What a mess; they’ve reached 41 cents a kilowatt-hour and it’s about to get much worse – especially for the people who can least afford it. Expect social unrest to boil over the months ahead as prices and shortages inflict pain on the poor. We’re in uncharted territory.
Hey, not to worry: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised that police will not open fire on demonstrators.
You should have listened to Naomi Seibt
British Government: Shiver in the Dark, to Save Britain’s Broken Green Electricity Grid
THE BIG CULL OF THE ELDERLY OF EUROPE WILL HAPPEN THIS WINTER
We predicted it in 2002 and 2013 – it was all terribly costly – in dollars and lives – and all entirely avoidable.
A willful squandering of the lives of innocents.
Crimes against humanity.
Wow – Who could have seen this coming? We did – in 2002, and in more detail in 2013 (below).
Ref. https://correctpredictions.ca/
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA
British Undersecretary for Energy and Climate Change, 31Oct2013
By Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng.
[excerpt]
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your
colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy
systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful
prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific
credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the
rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this
unfolding tragedy.
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae September 4, 2015
Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures. These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.
SMALL-AREA ASSESSMENT OF TEMPERATURE-RELATED MORTALITY RISKS IN ENGLAND AND WALES: A CASE TIME SERIES ANALYSIS
A new Lancet study by Gasparrini et al (July 2022) ominously reports that from 2000 to 2019 in England and Wales there were an average of 791 heat-related excess deaths and 60,753 cold-related excess deaths each year. That’s an excess death ratio of about 85 to 1 for cold temperatures. That’s an excess death ratio of about 85 to 1 for cold temperatures.
______________________________________
We’ve been watching this systematic culling of the elderly unfold for years, especially in Britain and Germany as green-energy schemes are promoted by the usual suspects.
Depopulation! First it was the global warming Climate-and-Energy scam, and then it was the Covid-19 Lockdowns-and-Vaccines scam.
Some may say that my above “Depopulation” accusation above is unfair or excessive.
Some may say that the Ruling Classes of Europe are not deliberately trying to cull the elderly through their Climate-and-Covid scams, rather they are just so deeply inbred that this “error” is an unfortunate side-effect of that intellectual deficiency.
The counter-arguments are:
· The Global Warming-and-Green-Energy narrative is a fifty-year-old fraud, which we published was false nonsense in 2002. Others including the eminent Richard Lindzen at MIT were publicly doubting the global warming falsehoods in the 1990’s. The warmist arguments were never credible, not even remotely so – they were always scary fictions with no basis in science.
· Uncommon sense says that no rational individual or group could be this wrong, this incredibly obtuse, for this long – the warmists knew they were lying from the start. They promoted their scary CAGW narrative for financial and political gain – “wolves stampeding the sheep”.
____________________________
Tonight [Sunday, 21st], this link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62626908
We are assured it’s not rationing.
But rebates for not using electricity in the UK when you wish to – and others do, too.
Need a smart meter, so, presumably, if too many still want to use electricity this winter, demand will be adjusted [never rationed, of course] – by blackouts . . . .
I live inside the M25, around London, and I have candles.
Auto
Candles will not keep you warm and household electric light does not use much electricity.
Preppers united against Big Oil will never be deheated!
How to heat a room with a candle? ( In 3 Easy Steps ) » Prepping Planet
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Use LED light bulbs; they draw about 10 WATTS for a 60 watt-rated lamp. That’s peanuts, compared to an incandescent bulb! The draw back is, that 10 watts wont keep you warm, but at least you don’t have to sit in the dark.
I put no stock in the idea their heart was in the right place. If they had a heart they wouldn’t be treating their own people like crap. In the end they will pay and I will laugh.
What happened here (going back to the 1990s), the chief strategy was ‘clean’ energy….not cost-effective energy, so the government lost it’s vision and connection to the general public.
Every idea added, created more cost. You can run a wind-generator/solar grid without having a back-up plan. This path lead not to nuke energy or coal energy, but to Russian-provided natural gas plants. So the cost factor just made a bigger mess of things.
Now? You can’t fix any of this, and the German governments wants you to buy E-cars to hook up to the grid, which will create an even bigger problem in a decade.
Yeah, things are ripe for public anger.
The government stopped viewing the general public as customers to be satisfied, but instead as subjects to be ruled over. Then suddenly, necessary characteristics of service, such as, affordability and reliability became subordinate features.
Subjects be ruled over for their own good. That makes the ruling class far more dangerous. If it were for greed or status, they could one day be sated and leave us alone, but if it is because they ‘know best’ how we should live our lives then we will never be free of them. We need to show them the door politically and never elect one of them again.
Sorry, greed is never sated.
Greed and moral authority is never sated.
“Now? You can’t fix any of this, and the German governments wants you to buy E-cars ”
Yes you can. Almost overnight. Just apologise to Russia and the Russian speaking victims of the Ukrainian provocations since 2014 and allow the Ukrainian people to vote out that clown Zelenski and his US backed criminal cartel. Then re-establish the Minsk agreements, which the people of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly to implement, (it was a main Zelenski manifesto promise!)
Then open up the nordstreams and be prepared to pay in rubles. Fixed.
As for the USA, they could stop starting foreign wars and start drilling. Bringing the local cost of gas down. The government could advocte for the people, rather than big business. Voting for Trump would be a start.
re: “As for the USA, they could stop starting foreign wars and start drilling.”
FIFY as follows: “As for the democrats (Joe “Po-ta-to” Biden et al), they could stop starting foreign wars and start drilling.”
See (nota bene to those not in the US and/or remembering of history), the democrats (JUST to begin with) were the home of slavery, the KKK and ‘Jim Crow’ laws.
” …the democrats (JUST to begin with) were the home of slavery, the KKK and ‘Jim Crow’ laws.” Laws which they are now trying to pin on the Republicans, who FOUGHT those evils tooth and nail, but the Democrats have now managed to brainwash all the minorities into believing their outright LIES! It’s such a pretty picture, isn’t it?
You are correct on Trump, but you are way off on Russia. They have shown their true colors and must be put down like a rabid dog. Europe created its own energy problems and will have to fix them without Russia.
Really, you’re trying to push the idea that Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine was the Ukraine’s fault?
This is the third time that Russia has invaded the Ukraine in the last few decades.
Yes, and like Communist China, they will not stop until they have succeeded in attaining their goals! Of course, Joe Biden certainly helped them!
Wow! A genuine KremlinTroll™ here on WUWT! Complete with upvotes to give it that astroturfing flavour.
We all know who benefits from dependence on Russian gas don’t we? And it ain’t Germany. We all know the real reason Russia is occupying the Donbas, don’t we? – Coal, Oil and gas.
Better watch out for those ‘friendly chinese troop exercises’ in Mongolia. That’s steeped in coal oil and gas as well and They could use the space too.
Russia is a nation founded on lies, steeped in lies and where the truth is politically irrelevant.
All that counts is a plausible narrative that makes Russa look like a victim, instead of a total psycopathic bully.
Correct Jay. It took only three words to avert Russian military action
“Neutrality” “Minsk II”
But no, Ukie-nazis begged to serve as NATO Cannon Fodder… and now “Ukraine” is being sliced to shreds by the Russians and Donbass allies. Hard to shed too many tears for these vicious fools.
No, the goal was not clean energy. The goal was renewable energy as obligated by the European Union. And the signalling of much political virtue as it was assumed the electorate would fall in love with windmills.
Going back to the early noughties, the facts were all known. Nuclear power was a far better option for low carbon energy. But the EU was against it, because no one was making Nukes in the EU except France and that was years ago.
There is some justice in this. In the US the next presidency will have to radically clean a mess they did not want and did not make. In Germany it is the greens themselves who will be dealing, or not, with the massive mess their policies have created. The coming riots will be a real eye-opener because an increasing number of people will know who caused the hardship and will go after the perpetrators.
I live in this country with the (previously) third biggest world economy and a fancy car industry, where socialism is alive and prospering under a clueless government, which, following the Merkel catastrophic years, have gone completely off the grid (sic) and got away with all this environmental bullshit for years, only to push the middle class and small and medium sized business into ruin, with the resultant economic decline. This government have been following their disastrous response over the past 2 years with this energy stupidity. It is time for the masses to counter this mass indoctrination and this farcical government under the new chancellor, which has been lying to the population, and conniving with big Pharma and big Energy in forcing the intellectually challenged into more mayhem, causing poverty and shortages, whilst sitting in their plush mansions in Brussels and Berlin and Bonn?
Philip: I agree with the sentiments, but the Germans themselves vote for Green policies by a 90% plurality. No one puts a gun to their head. They choose these policies. You can’t say it’s all brainwashing; Germans should be smart enough to understand the science and the engineering … in the US there is fierce resistance to Green New Deal policies… the Americans are not a lot smarter the Germans, but the American voters get it right. The Germans don’t.
because an increasing number of people will know who caused the hardship and will go after the perpetrators
HMMMM…I guess you missed the last US presidential election…in that instance the perpetrators installed a green dotard to rape the masses…I doubt they will tolerate any unrest in good ol’ Alemanha, they’ll simply use their MSM to brand protesters as white supremacists, I mean nazis, I mean, you know what I mean?
They’re not being as specific as the USA – they’re calling them ‘enemies of the state’ – a catch-all term for everyone that doesn’t instantly support them.
There will be a backlash soon. We will be seeing, “Proud enemy of the state,” signs soon. The tagline will be, “Enemy of the state, defender of the people.”
Take a look at the response to the winter energy collapse in Texas a couple years ago. The problem was an absence of spinning reserve, but the perception is that “natural gas failed, only a small percentage of wind generation wasn’t available”. In politics facts are an interesting aside, but only perception matters. There ain’t no cure for stupid.
re: “The problem was an absence of spinning reserve,”
WHEN a good number of spinning assets failed on account of cold-induced issues (like freeze-ups at generating stations)? I think you need to go back and look at all THREE past event’s reports, 1989, 2011 AND 2021 … Yes, MOST people don’t know there were three past events, the two worst being 1989 and 2021, that’s 32 two years between those two. And I was in Texas for all three …
“German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators.”
Hang on a minute, German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators? Oh yes, Holland is next door and they do shoot…
“Dutch police shoot at tractor during night of farm protests”
https://www.foxnews.com/world/dutch-police-shoot-tractor-night-farm-protests
What the hell has happened to enlightenment values in Europe? Innocent until proven guilty has morphed into guilty and cancelled until proven innocent. And even then the cancellation sticks for life. A different point of view causes anxiety and is often labelled as hate [speech]. Tolerance, respect and rehabilitation are words of the present and ideals of the past. Now in true Orwellian fashion, tolerance is venom, respect is hate and there can be no second chances.
Globalism straddles cultures with very different values – just ask Salman Rushdie – and clearly it favours islam above others – ask Israel. It’s square peg, round hole. And Western values do not fit.
Although on paper the UK left the EU the only change has been making some trade deals, everything else is unchanged – right down to the rainbow coloured police cars.
Waste of money
It got your attention, didn’t it?
Yeah, but in a bad way.
It gets our money
Looks like a clown car.
Which makes it even more dangerous. Clowns with the power of arrest.
Clowns with guns figure prominently in nightmares.
“German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators.”
The German Chancellor is a politician, right?
Name one you can trust…
Yet they are arming local police departments with tanks.
globalizm is owned and operated by a matriarchal culture that in no way favors patriarchy or any culture or religion that is
If you actually still believed that all those values were alive and well in Germany and across the EU then I can only assume you haven’t been paying attention. What happened to Naomi Seibt should have been a clear warning that things were not going well and about to get worse.
What happened to Naomi Seibt?
What happened to Ashli Babbitt?
Murdered.
I haven’t followed in detail, but it seems like the usual story for somebody garnering publicity for having the wrong opinions about global warming and maybe vaccines too. The usual insults/slurs.
Billed as the anti-Greta, (but probably a bit more educated), when you read a Reuters article “fact checking” and asserting that no of course she wasn’t banned/censored on social media for expressing the wrong opinions, you then know you’re treading familiar ground.
She is trying to sue Alphabet. Her media are live but moribund meanwhile.
She was targeted and cancelled, her videos were removed fron online sites and she was charged and fined for producing the videos which disagree with the German official viewpoint. Unless she pays the very large fines she may be facing prison for simply exercising her right to free speech.
Does Germany have provisions in law for protecting free speech?
“German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators.”
The very fact he mentioned it should scare everyone. That
possible response is being actively discussed as a viable option & isn’t just a plan collecting dust in some storage cabinet.
Oh, they won’t fire on ‘protesters’. They will only fire on “enemies of the state”. As defined by the government naturally.
I’m surprised the police would ride in a car tagged with that much grafitti.
Policeman Plod…
What the hell has happened to enlightenment values in Europe?
Today We call the Enlightenment Values in Europe “eco-fascism”
“All we had to do was accept their master plan.”
The master plan for the Energiewende was set out in a document in 2010. Implementation began in effect after the federal election in 2013. So what do we see in the above graph? Prices had doubled from 2000 (14) to 2013 (29). Then the graph flattens, and had only reached 32 by 2021. Then came the war in Ukraine.
Can you explain the German business exodus with the Ukraine war?
“Germany Goes Green, Businesses Moving Abroad
High energy costs in Germany are pushing businesses to move production abroad, with BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, announcing it won’t be expanding its business domestically, but instead investing in other countries.
https://financialtribune.com/articles/world-economy/3679/germany-goes-green-businesses-moving-abroad
That was in, er, 2014
“Energy Prices Trigger Deindustrialization In Germany – due to energy inflation.”
https://energynewsbeat.co/energy-prices-trigger-deindustrialization-in-germany-due-to-energy-inflation/
That’s more today-ish.
Germany is screwed, Nick. Prove otherwise….
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop………… De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970
The plan is proceeding.
I wonder, NIck, if you remember President Trump warning the Germans, at a UN presentation, about the danger of depending on Russian natural gas, and the snarky little trolls from Germany laughed at him? Are you still laughing?
No, they are not laughing now. They see reality now every time they open up their electric bill. And it’s going to get worse.
The Europeans ought to go back and review all the advice Trump gave them at the time and take that advice to heart. Trump sees the Big Picture where few others do. You should listen to Trump. You will be better off if you do.
Right on, Tom, and here’s some advice to aspiring business managers: read the book “Art Of The Deal”, and pay attention to the parts about never bluff and treating the other side in negotiations fairly.
All Germany needs is more solar and wind to drive those prices down 😉
Maybe they can move the country to the Sahara. I hear it’s greening nicely.
Plenty of sun, although it’s a little dusty there.
But… they could give it a shot, I suppose. Germany could use a vacation.
Wholesale prices rose long before the Ukraine war. In May 2020 the monthly average day ahead price for DE-LU was as low as €17.60/MWh. A year later it was back to a more normal €53.35/MWh before it started ramping up rapidly: €82.70 in August, €221.06 in December 2021. It even managed to drop back to €177.48/MWh in May 2022, after the war had been running a while.
As per UK. 29 “Energy” suppliers went bankrupt in the UK between July 2021 and January 2022. Ukraine didn’t start until a month later in February 2022.
Fundamentally they went bust because they had gambled on buying gas in the spot market. That works in a falling market, the moment it starts rising and you have customers contracted at lower rates than you can supply you are screwed.
Some things that might be more relevant:
Due to the government mandated coal phase-out, 11 coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 4.7 GW were shut down on January 1, 2021. But the coal phase-out ended up lasting only 8 days, after which several power plants had to be reconnected to the grid due to a prolonged low-wind period.
That is back then they already were at the margin for capacity during Dunkelflaute.
Another foreshadowing of Energiewende capacity problems
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/01/19/germany-weighs-electricity-rationing-scheme-to-stabilize-its-now-shaky-green-power-grid/
Of course they ended 2021 just as they began it, by shutting down more capacity- half their remaining nuclear.
“Of course they ended 2021 just as they began it, by shutting down more capacity- half their remaining nuclear.”
A *really* stupid choice. Whoever made this decision is a *real* idiot.
Whoever made this decision is a Marxist.
When the supply of power is reduced, the price of it rises. The cost of power is included in the price of everything, thereby increasing the cost of everything, this generates more tax revenue.
Biden said inflation is an asset, remember? He wasn’t kidding.
Its an asset for Marxist ideology.
But they are now safe from tsunamis and storm surges.
only 32 in 2021? Hey Nick, here in Ohio I was paying less than 6….until Biden moved in. It then doubled overnight to 10+ in 2022
What you’re pointing to is the combined effect of subsidies and a drop in the price of gas. Renewable charges increased over the entire “flattening” period, but the gas price over the same period trended down significantly to the mid-point of 2017/18. It’s how they were able to even afford the renewables push, as the cost of the required backup generation was relatively low and gave some breathing room. You can see the cost of production rising again from 2017.
The falling gas price over that period was why new entrants to the uk “energy supply” market (really just middle men) thought they could get rich quick. Falling gas price, so get low price contracts with new customers, buy in spot market at falling rates.
Gas prices start to rise, no hedging, gas costing more than contract prices with customers, bankruptcy. And pretty quickly too.
Gas prices continued to fall with rising global LNG shipments, bottoming out in the lockdown glut of 2020. Supply margins started eroding due to lack of maintenance and new drilling, partly because of the oversupply and lockdown and cash squeeze, but later because of lack of permits and ESG measures.
Meanwhile renewables in Europe had a shockingly bad performance in 2021, leading to high gas use for balancing and inadequate stocks for winter, which really helped drive gas prices higher. A further factor was a sharp increase in Chinese LNG demand, sucking supply away from Europe.
These conditions made the gamble of invading Ukraine look much more favourable to Putin. They caused the war, not the other way around.
I think that we can blame the Ukrainian War on global warming…
The point is that there has been a strong and steady increase in energy cost, coinciding with the implementation of renewable energy.
If it hadn’t been for the greens gutting the reliable sources of energy there wouldn’t have been a big jump in energy prices when Russian war started.
Adjust it for inflation, Nick. Then you will see the truth. I’m guessing you will want to avoid that.
It is the plot that was featured for Gosselin’s article. If you think inflation changes the picture, take it up with him.
Can’t you read Nick, the price more than DOUBLED before Ukraine war showed up which is a sure sign of a developing inadequate power production capacity.
More than quadrupled before the war… Compare with the 2020 lows and it’s more than 12 times.
Of that, the price actually doubled between 2000 and 2013, when the Energiewende began. It then went from 29 to 32 by 2021. That says that the Energiewende almost fixed the problem.
No problem was that price doubling and now coming energy shortages that will spike the price higher.
You ignored the DOUBLING which means you are being irrational and now it is at 41 not 32 as it was just a few months earlier and going up.
14 to 41 in just 21 full years, you going to ignore this change?
I consider it catastrophic price increase.
“You ignored the DOUBLING”
No, I simply pointed out when it doubled. It went from 14 to 29 by 2013, in the years before the Energiewende. Then there was a big building of renewables, replacement of coal and nuclear, and presto – there was a Pause. Which lasted until the very obvious cause of the war in Ukraine.
Notice the price hasn’t started to go down despite all the “renewables” construction” for 8 years and still the price goes up.
Haw haw haw haw……
Dude for once can you get something right?
More wind capacity was added in 2017 than in 2018,19,20,21. Germany realized their blunder by 2018, but politically couldn’t stop it, only reduce the rate of increase. Then Ukraine happened.
Nick is, as usual, wrong.
‘The policy called “Energiewende” (energy turnaround) was first devised in 1980. After years of discussion, it was implemented in fits and starts over 2 decades by both public and private entities. As the article says (with effects seen in electricity costs), “Germany has {sic} already made significant progress on its GHG emissions reduction target prior to the introduction of the program, achieving a 27% decrease between 1990 and 2014.”
The legislation passed in 2010 was just the latest phase of the program. It too proceeded slowly in fits and starts, with the full effects just now being seen. More phases will be necessary in the future (at mind-blowing cost) to achieve its goals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende
Larry: Thank you for the money response to Mr. Stokes. By pretending a policy adopted in 2010 to take effect in 2013 just sprang from nowhere in 2013, MR. Stokes can say “look at 2013 on”, and ignore any explanation of the chart from 2000 on (does he explain this anywhere?). He then races ahead with, “hey it’s Goesslin’s chart”. This way the doubling driven by renewable policy (prior to giving it a german name) can be ignored as if it didn’t happen or can’t be explained by the great Transition that began no later than 2000. A classic example of Stokesean posting to deflect the author’s point.
If Mr. Stokes were doing a good faith analysis, he would think about how energy markets work, and the fall of price increase would show up in 2010.
Mr. Gosselin: Didn’t those same folks assure the poor that subsidies would cover this? I’m sure that will arrive in time. Western governments are so virtuous, they create problems for the poor, just so the fix isn’t misdirected.
“Mr. Gosselin: Didn’t those same folks assure the poor that subsidies would cover this?”
Good question.
Already wholesale prices have been bursting above those levels. €563/MWh on Friday. Winter baseload is €620-640/MWh, and peak over €1,000/MWh for Q1 : divide by 10 for US or euro cents/kWh. TTF gas reached €250/MWh for the winter, equivalent to about $85/MMBtu.
Since electricity pricing is at a premium to gas generation cost (first estimate – double the gas price) it reflects probabilities of shortages requiring shutdowns of industry and offices or even wider blackouts. In France the prices are even higher, with winter peakload trading over €2,000/MWh.
1000 kW in a MW.
The statement was “divide by 10 for us$ or € cents per kWh”
563/10 = 56.3 cents/kWh. There are 100 cents in a dollar or euro. x100/1,000 = /10
‘… spiraling out of control’!!
Rather, “reflecting economic reality”.
Someone at WUWT should write an essay on this:
https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WCD-version-06272215121.pdf
The crash-test dummy needs to crash. Then the rest of us can all learn a good lesson about what not to do with our electrical grids.
Agreed, but the crash-test dummy crash will not be seen on TV or if it is it will be spun as bad people not going along with the plan. There will be no objective, factual economic, political or technical information provided.
The rest of us will have the same grid rammed down our throats no matter what.
It’s also interesting to note that while birth rates have declined slowly over the years to well below replacement levels, in early 2022, birth rates have plunged.
It’s past time to consider whether such events are driven by happen chance or something else.
Neil Oliver eloquently expresses this something else with Mark Stein (4 minutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utjJ5LagMGI&ab_channel=GBNews
Gazprom have announced they’ll be shutting down gas supplies to Germany next month for ‘routine maintenance’ – what’s the betting that maintenance will show a problem that will take longer to fix, similar to the delay in getting the Nordstream turbine back? Should be an interesting time for Germany at that point – their government might not survive the winter.
German politicians have really gotten themselves and their people in a bind.
Their obsession with reducing CO2 output is the cause of the problem.
There’s no evidence CO2 needs to be reduced, yet German politicians and politicians of all Western nations are bankrupting themselves in an effort to reduce CO2.
The obsession with reducing CO2 among the ruling class has become a mental illness. It is a disconnect from reality.
Since Habeck absolutely hates nuclear, too, I find his claim that it would only save 2% of the gas used quite biased.
Maybe he should check out this stat that indicates the level
of German fear:
Another disconnect from reality is the apparent European belief (hope) that the Ukraine/Russian conflict will end before winter sets in, and normal energy natural gas flows will be resumed to avoid a serious crisis.
They’ve already crashed, the billing comes later (but soon).
The Germans have received exactly what they voted for. They were not mislead. They chose this.
And the same goes for the Americans complaining about inflation, you voted for this. You were not mislead. And it looks like Democrats are going to survive the midterms so you are going to vote to approve the economic disaster.
No, about 5 cities in the US voted the Biden government in.
Half the country didn’t want Democrats.
Your fractions are wrong. 1/4 didn’t want Trump, 1/4 didn’t want Biden, 1/2 didn’t want either.
That still makes half not wanting Democrats.
No, 3/4 not wanting Democrats, 3/4 not wanting Republicans.
I would argue that votes too are tools of control bought and bartered, and that government propaganda campaigns, paid for by tax payers, are another from this tool box.
Certainly, politicians tell stories aimed to mislead on top of everything else. Corruption is wide spread, but not so much so that democrats will not lose control of the house.
The problem with what you say is conflating government and society. Same as war: governments start wars, people fight them.
People’s votes are almost worthless, not because politicians stuff ballot boxes, but because one vote every few years is meaningless when governments interfere so much in daily life.
If you had one vote every few years for which politician would control merchandise at the one store you are allowed to buy from for the next four years, and your two choices were (peanut butter, bicycles, tuxedos) vs (soy milk, 4×4 pickups, hazmat suits), you’d hold your nose in disgust and make your choice based on feelz and emotions.
U.S. citizens did not vote for this.
Some were misled by the narrative of “return to normalcy”.
Some didn’t like the personality of Trump.
Mostly, fraud won the day for the democrats.
There were several avenues for fraud that were utilized by the democrats. If you haven’t seen the documentary 2000 Mules, you will be enlightened if you do.
I don’t know where you live but your information is lacking additional content.
tgaslolii, sad but true.
Further down in this thread, is a suggestion that you watch the film “2000 Mules”. A Majority of (Real) Americans did NOT vote for ‘this’. btw, the past tense of mislead, is “misled”.
“And it looks like Democrats are going to survive the midterms”
Fox News estimated yesterday that for the House of Representatives, Republicans are projected to win 220 seats, and Democrats are projected to win 187 seats. If that turns out to be true, then the Democrats will not survive the midterms. Instead, the Democrats are going to have the House of Representatives investigating every aspect of Democrat corrupt and criminal behavior over the last six years.
Never thought I’d be shorting the entire German manufacturing index, but here we are.
Robert, every cloud has a silver lining (for alert cloud-gazers).
A major program to build new nuclear power plants and upgrade transmission line infrastructure would be the logical thing to do for everybody not just Germany. Eventually the supply of fossil fuels will dwindle combined with increasing demand- not good. But we will still need petroleum for products. If AG CO 2,turns out to be a problem ,we will have mitigated some of the cause(yea ,comma splice)
Some times there are no perfect solutions. You have to deal with some risk. But the people running what is left of our western democracies are a bunch of spoiled brats that have never actually had to make things work in the real world. So prepare for the worst.
We’ve got 300 to 500 years before that happens. No need to start panicking yet.
Perhaps, with the increasing amount of stupidity being slung about, Humans will be long gone from this Earth in a lot less time than your estimate on ff.
Why would you need to build lots of transmission lines if you have lots of nuclear?
You only need to do that if you opt for renewables so you can handle transporting them from remote generation locations to centres of demand, trying to find a market for surpluses in ever more distant locations, and trying to tap into some source of backup capacity.
With nuclear you can site your plants fairly close to demand and the grid is only needed to help balancing and providing rare unplanned outage backup. The grid you need is probably already mostly in place already.
The renewable power advocates are always claiming that the wind always blows somewhere.
As a result, you don’t need to be building power lines just to the nearest wind mill field, but to all of the wind mill fields.
In a sort of related story UK decided to put a windfall tax on Fossil Fuel companies but it took less than 24 hours for the market to shake it off. The companies will either increase tax write-off activity or increase margins passing most onto the consumer (remember it’s a very tight market).
That’s something that leftists never seem to learn. When you increase taxes on businesses, the businesses just pass those taxes on to the customers.
Beyond that, governments can only tax companies with a domestic presence. so increased taxes makes it harder for domestic companies to compete in export markets and easier for foreign companies to compete in the domestic market.
Which same, was clearly demonstrated under President Trump’s Policies. That it is all being ignored/savaged under brandon, is also being clearly demonstrated. So Sad.
Amazingly, the chorus of fools that shout “see, we should have transitioned away from fossil fuels sooner!” is still massive. There is no fixing stupid even when the evidence will be all around this winter.
Delusional people don’t know they are delusional.
German Chancellor assures police won’t open fire on demonstrators.
=========
Your check is in the mail.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
I won’t **** in your mouth.
How many governments feel the need to reassure the citizens that their government will not be firing on them?
The lack of common sense and logic worldwide just totally amazes me, and has for some time.
Going from a dependable source of energy to a less than reliable source, does not make sense. But, then, when I look at who this insane plan benefits, I get it. The grifters of the climate religion are making huge amounts of money for delivering nothing of value to the people where the scam is being implemented.
That is all that needs to be known and recognized by all. Its all a scam, and has been for over a century.
This winter season, Olaf Scholz may be tested on his statement regarding the police not
“opening fire on demonstrators”. The police, worldwide, probably already are preparing for the coming protests. Including some range time.
Just sayin’.
Subsidies increase what you subsidize; ask the French about rats in Indochina, ask the British about cobras in India.
So in the US, increased student loan subsidies increased the number of college students, but since most of the newcomers were unqualified in any STEM field and only wanted the diploma at the end, you got woke degrees, whose proud owners expected good jobs and were hell bent on spreading the woke gospel rather than admit their education was worthless. I don’t know how other countries subsidize college, only that they do.
Around the world, all advanced countries subsidize science, with the same result: newly minted scientists looking for that sweet government funding, and STEM fields are too competitive and too hard, so a lot of woke “scientists” drifted into the hottest funding available, and here we are, with a few “real” scientists seeing the chance to gather crowds of sham scientist followers.
So this makes me wonder how much of the “jump” in price starting in 2013 has to do with ageing infrastructure that has to be decommissioned/replaced since solar/wind have a lifetime of about 15 years (if I recall correctly).
But just reflect a few minutes on our ‘news’ media’s failure to report on this periodically. They know – everyone knows very well that the US is following the trend, and they could have rendered the public a great service via a warning flag or two of skyrocketing power bills. Well, but, the public might not have elected an ‘environmentally conscious’ Democrat in the last election, nor one who had promised a vast looting of the Treasury stash to benefit the politically faithful.
It must be sweet to focus on hate-Trump stories while the Vesuvius of power costs merrily rumbles and clears its throat.
Of course there is also the good news:
People managing the German electric grid will have much more excitement than in the past. No more boring days at work.
“May you live in interesting times!”
But solar and wind energy costs less ….. doesn’t it?
I have never seen a proper comparison. The kind of comparison your typical Fortune 500 management committee would expect to see when business cases are presented.
If you were doing such a thing, you would have to show two systems, A and B. A would be wind + solar + backup generation (whether coal, gas, whatever). System B would be just coal and gas.
In both systems you have to include all the costs, and the outputs have to be exactly comparable in terms of reliability of supply.
Then you do NPV analysis to take account for the fact that the costs may be incurred at different times in the equipment life. And you find out what the difference is.
I have never seen this done. Never even heard it proposed by the green persuasion. But this is what it takes to show that wind and solar are cheaper. That a system which contains them is cheaper than a system without, on a Net Present Value basis.
Its like not only do the greens refuse to do proper statistics, they also refuse to do basic accounting. If you were to present a business case using (for instance) levelized costs of energy to a Fortune 500 investment committee, you’d be out on your ear shortly afterwards. In the mad mad world of climate policy you get admiring articles and media coverage from the liberal press, and get cited as an expert, and everyone picks up on it and uses it. Despite its being obviously to anyone competent in financial analysis total nonsense.
I did a rough calculation – the short answer was that then – about ten yeras ago – what I call the holistic lifetime price of wind – that is wind with all the extra goodies like gas powers stations to make it work – was three times nuclear or gas. Solar was 5-7 times worse.
With gas prices out of control, it is of course now worse than that. Gas is now way more expensive than nuclear or coal.
And if you have nuclear, you really don’t need ‘renewables’ at all. Waste of money for no benefit.
German physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, blogs about science and also does videos. On Saturday, August 20, 2022 she posted “No Sun, No Wind, Now What? Renewable Energy Storage”
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/08/no-sun-no-wind-now-what-renewable.html
“Solar panels and wind turbines are great – so long as the sun shines and the wind blows. What if they don’t?”
The … “term for a cloudy and windless day. Dunkelflaute. That’s a German compound noun: dunkel means “dark” and “flaute” means “lull”.”
“A Brief Climatology of Dunkelflaute Events over and Surrounding the North and Baltic Sea” Li et. al. Delft University of Technology (2021) doi: 10.3390/en14206508
“The German weather service estimates that it happens on the average twice each year, that the power production from wind and solar in Germany is less than 10% the expected average for at least 2 days. Every once in a while these situations can last a week or longer. Of course this isn’t an issue just in Germany. This figure shows the average monthly hours of dunkelflaute for some European countries. As you can see, they are almost all in the winter. A recent paper in Nature Communications looked at how well solar and wind can meet electricity demand in 42 countries. They found that even with optimistic extension scenarios and technology upgrades, no country would be able to avoid the problem.”
“Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power worldwide” Tong, David J. Farnham, Lei Duan, Qiang Zhang, Nathan S. Lewis, Ken Caldeira & Steven J. Davis Nature Communications hhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26355-z
“The situation might actually be worse than that because climate change might weaken the wind in some places and make dunkelflaute a more frequent visitor. That’s because part of the global air circulation is driven by the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. The poles heat up faster than the equator, which weakens the gradient. What this’ll do to the wind isn’t clear – the current climate models aren’t good enough to tell. But maybe, just maybe, banking on stable climate patterns is not a good idea if the problem you’re trying to address is that the climate changes. Just a thought.”
“Ok, so how can we deal with the dunkelflaute problem? There are basically two options. One is better connectivity of the power grid, so that the risk can be shared between several countries. However, this can be difficult because neighboring countries often have similar weather conditions. A recent study by Dutch researchers found that even connecting much of Europe wouldn’t eliminate the risk. And in any case, this leaves open the question whether countries who don’t have a problem at the time could possibly cover the demand for everyone else. I mean, the energy still has to come from somewhere.”
Last September there were three weeks of below 10% wind continuously across most of Europe. Most of that was well below 10%. It resulted in a substantial increase in gas burn for power generation, eating into the supply for winter storage and creating shortage and high prices right at the onset of winter.
Which is why when Griff and Nick say that the rise in power prices is due solely to a rise in the price of gas, and so nothing to do with renewables, they are being disingenuous.
The reason why a rise in the price of gas has such a large effect on electricity prices is that in order to move to wind and solar, you have to install huge amounts of gas generation, and use it. This then makes you very exposed to fluctuations in the price of gas.
You can only evaluate the expense of renewables by comparing whole systems, you can’t just take bits of systems, compare them, and wave your arms.
How long before “dunkelflautefu**ed” enters the German lexicon?
Schadenfreude as Energiewende Dunkelflauted.
A perfect tabloid headline…
Sure, it’s an economic disaster and millions will suffer. But, look at the powerful virtue signal they’re sending.
1) It’s not as if the citizenry of Germany weren’t warned about the inevitability of greatly increasing energy costs under Energiewende.
2) Despite this direct evidence of the outcome of trying to shift to a “green, renewables” energy basis for a highly industrialized country, the current US Administration and Congress go blindly down the same path.
Prices have to bite, and bite hard for people to realise they have been bitten.
Sometimes it takes several bites til one identifies a bed bug.
Treatment of bed bugs is expensive, extensive and causes recurrent fear of future bites.
Bed bugs and greens will suffer severely in time.
Hell, even V. Putin told Europe point blank and publicly as far back as 2010 that he didn’t understand how they were going to heat their homes.
Disagree… they are racing down that path with eyes wide open, and the media leading the charge.
I’m sure this won’t help
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/08/21/russia-will-shut-off-natural-gas-supply-to-europe-for-three-days-due-to-maintenance-n1622717
Russia Will Shut Off Natural Gas Supply to Europe for Three Days Due to ‘Maintenance’
They will restart though………………………. if they don’t find any faults!
What is the betting on how many ‘faults’ they will find?
Could be a “demonstration”, no?
People will only realize their mistakes when they face actual consequences for being stupid. I’d bet quite a few Germans are now thinking “What was I thinking?”.
This is the best thing that could happen to Germany.
People come to their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay, 1843
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
He would have written a whole chapter on our modern predicament. One of my favourite bits
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm#prophecies
When saving the earth, costs always go up. Obama said this quite clearly in his interview about green energy before he was elected. Since Joe Biden is nothing more than globalist Obama’s third term on display for everyone to see, what else did you expect?
https://youtu.be/CNSZ62xiD4M
Seems pretty simple. Western governments will soon nationalize energy companies, just like Venezuela did. Watch for corresponding tax increases. The next step will be access to your bank and investment accounts. Watch for wealth taxes.
This is what the greens wanted all along, comrade.
Wealth taxes are a direct tax and therefore unconstitutional. Wealth is not income which needed a constitutional amendment to levy. Good luck with amending the constitution to tax wealth.
Several major candidates for president campaigned on instituting a wealth tax. These days, they can always appoint a judge who will back even the most blatant violations of Constitutional rights.
Even if this doesn’t happen directly, they all know that when they keep printing money, it devalues the dollar and destroys savings even more effectively than a direct tax. 1970s-style inflation is their goal.
Even Obama, who thinks all this green idiocy is in fact brilliant policy, told his folks that this would be the outcome, that we would be impoverished by how expensive reliable energy would become. He said it with a grim on his face as if going hungry in the cold and dark was his benevolent gift to the voters.
Trump was the one who did everything he could to warn the euro brats off of this plan to no avail.
Ya got what ya voted for.
Just dropping a ‘marker’ here; we’ll see how all this turns out ‘down the road’ so to speak.
Home heating oil in New York has risen 65% in the last 6 months.
Home heating oil has risen 110% in the UK. Was about £0.40l and I had to buy at £0.95/l. Its all comeing bacxk down now though to the point (wholesale gas and oil) where Russia will not be able to fianace a war on it any more.
Butter is up 65%.
I am expecting that most raw agricultural products will double or treble over the winter…
There is a helpful way to look at all this. Let’s say we have two sorts of politicians – those who will say anything to get elected, and who believe that somehow the world will comply with their promises once they are in power, and those who will say anything to get elected, but do understand that the physical world runs on different rules, which must ultimately be respected.
That’s cheaper than green California, lol.
Oahu, Hawaii was 40 cents a kilowatt-hour until last week when the coal plant was closed. Immediately announced a 7% increase. We won!!
Unfortunately the government primarily, but corporate interests also, continue to promote disinformation that ‘green’ energy is just as cheap and viable as fossil fuels.
Apropos of certain Kremlin inspired comments down the page, let me post a couple of names of two YouTube bloggers – one a US ex military investor turned war analyst, and the other a Ukrainian commercial pilot whose understanding of what is going on, on the ground, is pretty good.
Jake Broe
Denys Davydov
“Freeze in the Dark” can be a very educational experience for Germans who vote for green eco-fascist policies year after year by a 90% margin