Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t observa; How is that wind and solar working for you Germany? Just under half a trillion US dollars of government subsidies and counting, to make Germany’s broken energy system affordable for end users.
Germany’s half-a-trillion dollar energy bazooka may not be enough
Story by By Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany is bleeding cash to keep the lights on. Almost half a trillion dollars, and counting, since the Ukraine war jolted it into an energy crisis nine months ago.
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And it may not be enough.
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“The national economy as a whole is facing a huge loss of wealth.”
The money set aside stands at up to 440 billion euros ($465 billion), according to the calculations, which provide the first combined tally of all of Germany’s drives aimed at avoiding running out of power and securing new sources of energy.
That equates to about 1.5 billion euros a day since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Or around 12% of national economic output. Or about 5,400 euros for each person in Germany.
…
Germany wants renewables to account for at least 80% of electricity production by 2030, up from 42% in 2021. At recent rates of expansion, though, that remains a remote goal.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/companies/germany-s-half-a-trillion-dollar-energy-bazooka-may-not-be-enough/ar-AA15iEFh
Germany’s only hope of saving their economy from utter ruin is to restore supplies of Russian gas as quickly as possible, so Germany can return to play acting they are on track towards a green energy future. I hope Ukraine isn’t sharing too many important military secrets with their German allies.
Renewables as a source of power remind me of the stage play Peter Pan. Clap louder, and keep Tinker Belle alive! Asking how this was anything more than an irised spotlight is spoiling the mystery!
The Greens really do act as if they can keep Tinker Belle alive by suppressing any doubts. Asking questions proves you are a vendido for fossil fuel interests, and an all around bad person.
The world is run by a bunch of idiot school yard bullies in green shirts, bullying and mocking the smart kids who don’t believe in climate or co2 cooties.
The world is run by a bunch of idiot ArtStudents, to whom what people believe, or can be induced to believe, is the only metric.
It all went downhill after the Great Flood.
Well said. I’m behind you Cap’n Hook
Maybe they can rush some coal-fired plants back into operation! If they haven’t blown them up already.
They already tried that, it’s not enough. They could build co-located coal gasifiers for their gas plants, that is the quickest route to energy security, but this would represent a long term commitment to return to burning coal. Germany would rather destroy their own economy that admit they are wrong about renewables.
Same goes for the nuclear plants.
Correction: German politicians would rather destroy their own economy that admit they were wrong about renewables.
And then there are those whose whole motivation is to destroy the economy.
Edenhoffer from PIK in Germany admitted as much, years ago. So did Maurice Strong in Canada and Costa Rican Marxist Christina Figueres in the UN Cuckooland.
Restarting coal and nuclear plants is a short term fix. Germany has plenty of coal in the ground, and some Natural gas. They need to start producing their own fuel again to fix it long term, not just burn what other countries mine/extract. When they start production again, then I will know they are serious. Until then, its duct tape & bubble gum to hold it together until the green utopia of all solar & wind arrives…sometime right before the next stone age.
…or even ones that burn wood chips. Drax and Lynemouth power stations stopped running their CFD funded units when their subsidies turned into taxes. The green line is the “market” price that their CFDs are benchmarked against. The CFD prices are the yellow and light blue lines. You can see that as the Baseload Market Reference Price got close to the CFD strike prices they started to cut running hours: the subsidy no longer covered costs unless actual market prices for power were high enough. This winter the BMRP is £405/MWh, based on forward trading for the winter conducted in the summer when we had a massive price spike. The result is that these plants have shut down. Only the extremely high peak prices during the cold snap got a small amount out of Drax earlier in the month.
The units that are subsidised via ROCs continue to operate normally, because the ROC subsidy on top of elevated market prices gives a very handsome profit.
A further confirmation of the economics comes from looking at the hour by hour day ahead prices, which have only sporadically poked above the BMRP.
Will we ever stop de-nazifying Germany? Will we ever stop loading guilt on them?
You really can go too far and I think we have.
Who mentioned NAZIs? Germany is in a desperate situation, and that may have contributed to some curious lapses in their allegedly wholehearted support for Ukraine – that is all I was suggesting.
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/europe/hundreds-of-missiles-germany-might-send-to-ukraine-no-longer-operational-reports/amp
How do you think Germany and the Germans became so determined to take in the [third] world?
The more down votes the better it seems. At least on here.
I don’t see anyone talking about Germany’s immigration policy either.
the germans sure cant..unless its the approval side like CC anything in disagreement is sh*tcanned
Because the answer to adversity is to blame all your troubles on the Jews? This is a free, modern country almost 80 years removed from World War II.
Adversity and mental illness might explain Kanye West. It has nothing to do with a political class that’s so entrenched in the green religion that it’s inflicting these wounds on its own people.
You’re trying too hard to connect one apple to one orange here.
This is nonsensical. Any damage Germany is accruing in this affair is entirely of their own doing or lack of doing.
Doing in the sense of going against their own short, medium and long term economic interests regarding energy.
No doing in the sense of helplessly standing by when even the potential for choice is destroyed a la NS1 & NS2 attacks – and not even saying anything.
Yes, you are right. We had no influence on them, whatsoever. What was I thinking?
Had no influence on who?
I don’t know what posts you are responding to, but they don’t seem to be any thing written here.
You are right. We had no influence on them, then, or now. German culture has a great feature, they believe in The One Truth, and once someone says they have it, doing what that person says, right or wrong. There is no dissent.
Mutti Merkel, ex Stasi, (Ex?) communist decided to build windmills to placate the Greens and import Russian gas to cover up its deficiencies
.
Putin was delighted, It gave him economic and political control over Germany. And his funds to the Greens made them popular as well.
However Ukraine and its British and Polish trained Army, wouldn’t play ball.
Quelle dommage! And the USA had the temerity to field test all their latest military toys on the Russian Orcs. How sad was that?
The air over Europe is full of the sound of geopolitical turkeys cominig home to roost.
It now seems that half the Woke and Green organisations are directly or indirectly funded from the Kremlin, or Arab oil states, and the EU politicans have been taking bribes left right and centre.
UK Union leaders are all card carrying communists, bent on destroying Capitalism, funded my Moscow. .
This is all far more reminiscent of the Mafia than the third Reich. Instead of hooking Germans on Afghani smack, they are hooked or Russian gas, and the friendly neighbourhood Mafia thug, is engaged in a turf war to get hold of the oil gas and coal in the Donbas.
Leo Smith: “The air over Europe is full of the sound of geopolitical turkeys coming home to roost.”
Radio WKRP reporter Les Nessman on the ground covers a live turkey drop made from a helicopter flying over downtown Cincinnati:
WKRP Turkey Drop (1978)
Radio WKRP station manager Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
I didnt think chickens could fly either , but a feral one around the place certainly did when I chased it with a broom
Domestic chickens, turkeys and geese have their flight pinions clipped when they are poults.
Many people fail to clip flight pinion when they purchase chicks for a home flock.
Unfortunately, many of the meat birds, especially hens, have trouble landing and bruise their breast bone. If infection sets in, all too often, the bird usually dies soon afterwards.
Wild turkeys and unclipped chickens, especially roosters are excellent fliers.
Most adult fowl, from chickens up to swans can do a lot of damage with their wings. People have suffered broken bones from turkeys, geese and swans.
Only correction to your post is leaving out the US when it comes our politicians and NGOs taking bribes from the Kremlin.
And some recent naughtiness in the Baltic?
Nope.
Yes, fingers were pointed. None of the finger pointers asked themselves who had the most to gain from destroying the pipelines, at least temporary.
Only one country desperately wanted to drastically reduce natural gas profits from reaching Russia.
It wasn’t America.
The whole French press has been promoting “renewables” for decades… funded by Russia? Just stupid?
N word #2.
‘Will we ever stop loading guilt on them?’
Probably not. The people who are most horrified that average Germans didn’t line up to protest Nazi totalitarianism are probably the same people who are equally silent about the West’s ongoing march down the ‘Road to Serfdom’. The irony is that the price of protesting against the heinous Nazis was infinitely higher than that for protesting against, say, most of the woke nonsense originating from ‘academia’.
They had ways of making you stay silent
I suppose that these days the Chinese have ways of making you Tok.
Er what?
No one is suggesting they burn Jews, instead of coal.
Correction strativatius.
It is the German government has gone to far .
It is nothing to do with nazafying but I would expect quite a lot to do with communism .
Remember that East Germany was under communist rule untill 1989 when the Berlin wall came down .
34 years of Communism and 33 years of socialist leaning government since .
Why else would the German Chancellor agree to use Russian gas instead of developing their own or at least maintain their Nuclear Power Plants and plan to build more .
Germany has been a European industrial power house but with their self made energy crisis the out put from their factories will drop which will hurt the whole country and flow on to effect Europe .
Correction ,
44 years of Communist rule . 33 years of socialist leaning government since .
All western countries are mixed model economic systems , some private some public.
US has plenty of examples , you even have public prosecutors where some countries use private law firms who are contracted to run prosecutions
Public paid for foot ball stadiums for private teams are a particular oddity.
And the US agriculture system is riddles with socialism for the private farmers.
1/3 of electricity consumers are supplied by state of municipal power business
examples are LA Power and water , TVA etc
Why did US and other western countries rely on Saudi oil since say the 1950s ?
hence the cost in treasure and lives ($ trillions) for the various interventions from Beirut, Kuwait, Iraq and also Afghanistan.
All because it keeps Aramco pumping. Why otherwise would it have more attention for its troubles than say Rwanda
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean
But that couldn’t happen again
We thought them a lesson in 1918
And they’ve hardly bother us since then
–Tom Lehrer – MLF Lullaby
Now, Graham! Be fair!
After all, the threat of major Tsunamis in the Bavarian Lakes just HAD to be addressed!
You know it maked sense!
/s
Yes, the German politicians shutting down their nuclear reactors has to be one of the more ignorant decisons made recently. Whoever thought that was a good idea is a real idiot.
$500B!!!
That’s enough for 100 reactors!!! Possibly more since that many at once could profit from volume production savings.
Instead the money is going to an expensive bandage to cover-up the incompetence of various past and current German governments, though cudos to the current gov for having the courage to open up some coal power again.
Only because they got rid of that Stazi informant. If she was still Chancellor, they’d be applauding the Russian invasion… of Germany.
Took ’em long enough to ditch the evil old bat…
Mind you, I should admit that we have had GangGreen Beloved Leaders in the UK for a Generation. None of whom were / are bright enough to run a whelk stall.
It’s Idiocracy all over the Western world.
…environmental policy and its far-reaching unintended consequences. Of these interventions, the most damaging are emissions trading schemes and the unprecedented investment in renewable energy, both of which are significantly increasing consumer costs and causing consumption to plummet. The EU’s emissions trading scheme adds about €17 billion a year to energy costs within the bloc, and the UK’s newly independent version is expected to cost a staggering €6.7 billion in the current financial year. In addition to this, the EU has spent an incredible €800 billion providing income support to renewables since 2008, a total that is still increasing at €69 billion a year. The UK alone is paying over €12 billion every year topping up incomes for wind and solar. – John Constable and Debra Lieberman
The Energy of Nations (quillette.com)
Who coined the word “Schadenfraude”. Be careful in what you wish for Greenies and Danke-schonn Mrs Merkel. Let us hope for a speedy dumkopfsblitzen and saner times ahead
and just look at the wind map – not one single isobar between Norwich and Sarajevo.
oh dear oh dear oh dear
The government will just print more money. Problem solved?
Possibly not. They are in total chaos becaus they did that for Covid, and now we have strikes everywhere (in the PUBLIC sector) because the inflation has hit their willing workers pockets! One could never have thought this would happen!
Maybe if they burn it for heat. Otherwise probably not.
The so called Dunkleflaute is a regular occurrence, days where wind & solar output are in miserably low single digit %
Fossil fuels are the highway to a distant fully nuclear future
Renewables are a bit of a misnomer – there are many naturally resourced finite materials in both wind turbines, solar panels and their infrastructure – whilst the 1000s of years worth of toxic waste produced by both, that litter landfills in far flung third world nations, will blight the natural world for many generations to come – recycling of renewable components is minimal, so when those finite natural resources run out, what then?
Of course nuclear materials are also finite in natural resources, so if humanity is to survive beyond the next few hundred years, it needs to hope some other form of global energy has been found, or Engineered, because if not, it will truly be a return to the caves moment – this of course will be much sooner if the green blob cultists get their way
‘Dunkleflaute’
Gotta love the German language. This reminds me of the time I saw the German TV version of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ during a business trip.
A German Alpine Skier almost killed a UK game show host:
Via advanced fuel cycles, there’s sufficient uranium already mined and in storage as used fuel at existing nuclear plants to produce tens of thousands as much electricity as compared to a once-only fuel cycle.
Your statement seems to imply that you believe nuclear power resources could be exhausted in a few hundred years. This is not so, 10’s of thousands of years is more likely.
Renewable energy technology doesn’t produce enough energy to construct itself. It is simply put, unsustainable.
Love using the Eco-Nazi buzzwords against them…
Ther are approximately 10,000 years of fissionable and fertile materials, economically extractable, if breeder technology were used.
And as far as Fusion goes…well there’s a lot of water.
We don’t need to worry about how people will solve problems ten millennia hence. We need to worry how we’re going to avoid the intentional demolition of Western civilization planned for the next ten years.
Guess where subsidies come from? And who gets hurt most?
Don’t say they weren’t warned. “They” being all the countries that rushed to rely on solar and wind power for their energy needs. Useful idiots one and all.
World Leaders in stupidity. They are so proud of their greenness, their veganess and their ability to dominate Europe.
Time they got taken down a peg
In the 1980’s, West Germany was an economic powerhouse, able to absorb the bankrupt former East Germany into a unified Germany with little economic disruption in the early 1990’s, while dominating the economy of the European Union, and the deutschmark was the dominant currency, against which all other European currencies were devalued until the Euro was introduced.
Then Angela Merkel, from the former communist East Germany, became Chancellor for decades, and now Germany struggles to keep the lights on. Maybe she was an Angela of darkness…
This makes the development of nuclear power in France, which supplies over 75% of that country’s electricity, look like a stroke of genius. I wonder whether France will sell some of its nuclear-generated electric power to Germany this winter at a hefty price!
Incidentally, the radioactive wastes from France’s nuclear power plants are buried in Germany, while the Germans have been closing their own nuclear power plants. What were the Germans thinking?
The antinuclear movement predates Merkel by at least a decade or two. but your point is entirely reasonable. Even if Merkel was a planted politician by Russia, she could not have done any more damage to the German economy than she already has. Germany’s economy has already begun to implode, given the production suspensions and terminations by BASF and Krupp-Thyssen. And when it collapses, it will take the EU down with it.
When Reagan deployed Pershing II missiles to Germany the Greens went nuts and kept it up! In 2007 my team and a couple others were tasked with finding security weaknesses in the transport and storage of those units. It was serious business.
The SF warrant officer on our team had served a tour as an observer as per the Potsdam agreement. His knowledge was probably the reason our team was selected to be one of those tasked for that mission.
Russia targeted West Germany above all others with its anti-nuclear propaganda.
It shows. Britain was probably their second biggest target
I recall reading that nuclear facilities in France were not maintained over many years. A proper strategy is an every-other-year shut-down — inspect, fix, upgrade, and refuel. This requires coordination with other power suppliers to respond during the weeks a facility is going offline.
You can investigate, but I don’t think there is much nuclear power available to other countries from France because too many of the facilities were in disrepair.
Go here for more:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx
Scroll down to “Nuclear outages in 2022”
You may have read it, but it was simply not true.
When EDF took over UK reactors, they went for an aggressive program of preventative maintenance. Availability went up from 78% or thereabouts to over 90%.
The reactor issues in France are due to old age and regulatory ratcheting. Relattively trivial issues have been siezed upon to force a shutdown. This was inline with Macrons ‘no more nuclear’ policy that has mysteriously reversed 180 degrees…There is no point in singling out one country or another – renewables and only renewables were EU policy. And officially still are.
And remain as a protected species on UK statute books despite Brexit.
.
Germany needs Russian gas and Russia wants to sell gas to Europe. This is why the belief that Russia sabotaged its own pipeline doesn’t withstand scrutiny.
The pipeline can be fixed in a matter of weeks.
The propaganda that they have gained from the from the damage is worth way more than the cost of fixing the pipeline.
Precisely so. Russia isn’t good with armies, but its the world best propgandist.
Look at how its managed to get Marxism into every single institution in the free world.
Governments no longer care about managing their nations affairs, only about appearing to be on the side of the angels. The political agenda has become the Marxist agenda
No its not. You know very little about marxism beyond the word itself
The undersea pipelines were a suplement to the existing land pipelines and avoided transit fees to Ukraine and Poland.
The Poles especially were extremely upset over the Baltic pipes, even though its not their concern.
Theres your culprit as the gas continues to flow through their territory , which they do can use some for their own use, but they are a coal power country still, but domestic and commercial users like gas
There is no Russian gas flowing through Poland. Exports were stopped by Gazprom in April and not resumed.
Are you back to your ‘Polish mode’ again, Duker?
Or you guys are working shifts?
Nordstream 1 ( actually 2 pipes together ) has been running for years.
Nordstream 2 never got started.
So Western Europe has been getting gas from the land pipes all year the plan is to replace russian gas sometime in 2024 Theres been some ons and offs but short periods
Both Nordstream are now out of action of course and thats the ones you are thinking that are ‘cut off’
Jarek, still trolling for Poland , It was Germanys business where they got their gas and how, not Polands. Poland of course wanted to be Chinas lackey with rail hub for its Belt and Road through train service… so how did that turn
Wait till EU strongarms you over the heavy coal use , oh dear…no friends Poland just like the time they allied themselves with nazi germany in 1938…having to kiss Goerings ring when he signed up in Warsaw
( not surprising that 20% of Polish population has long left for the west and replaced by Ukrainians workers
I doubt that. The Russians completed a survey about a week ago using the vessel Nefrit as the base for ROVs. They spent a deal of time in the immediate area of the ruptures, but also carefully tracked back up the line to the shallower water South of Gotland. I suspect that a significant length of pipe may need replacing (if only because of the difficulty of splicing in 70 metres of water), which itself will take many months to manufacture. Then it must be laid and tied in and tested. If you start now, you might manage to complete the project in late summer.
I would expect the Russians to say something soon about the conclusions of their survey. The fact that there will be a big lead time does mean that the pressure will be on the Germans to decide if they can do without it for next winter. Procrastinate, and it won’t be there. Decide they need it, and they will be dancing Putin’s tunes to make it happen, including paying for the repairs.
Meantime the Hoegh Esperanza docked at Willhelmshaven today to provide Germany with its first LNG discharge and regas terminal once it is hooked in to the pipeline they built to connect to the main gas network. Several more are planned, so much will depend on progress and on securing supply to use them.
As the plan is only replace Gazprom by sometime 2024 , its a few years away yet before they can piss Putin off….and always with EU there will still be ‘waivers’ of some sort.
Probably the Poles will still be warming their butts with Putins gas well after 2025. hahahahaha
Oh dear. The pipeline was not in use, is easily reparable, and was a wonderful piece of gaslighting (sic!)
If Germany is getting poorer at 1.5 billion a day, who’s getting richer at 1.5 billion a day? Remember that phrase ‘follow the money’?
Somebody finances groups that pressure a nation into a situation like this; who would that be? Maybe some bright lights ought to be trained on where that money goes.
Renewable energy companies.
Renewable energy company directors.
Germany most likely will have to stump up for Russian gas, but they won’t betray Ukraine
There has been plenty of Russian LNG landed in Europe. Belgium, France and Spain are the big buyers, topped up with some cargoes to the Netherlands, Portugal and even Greece. Belgian landings are almost certainly helping out German supply. However, it does not make up for the loss of pipeline supply from Finland, through the Baltic states, Poland, Nordstream and across the Black Sea to Romania and Bulgaria.
The bizarre feature is that in the midst of war, supply via Ukraine still carries on to Slovakia and Austria.
yes Germany can get some LNG sea terminals , all the rest cant really but are keeping a low profile under energy sanctions ‘waivers’
If anyone fancies doing some digging, there is something rather creepy going on with UK electricity supply and demand
In a nutshell and just from looking in randomly but usually around the time of evening peak, demand seems to somehow track what the windmills are producing.
From a few days ago when wind was basically = zero, demand peaked at about 40GW.
That was with all the stops pulled out with regard inter-connectors, coal and pumped storage, oil and OCGT = sources of absolute last resort.
Yesterday and today the wind picked up (over Northern Scotland) to about 7 or 8GW and from about 16:00 up to now at 20:00, a demand of 45, 46 or even 47GW has been satisfied.
And and and, the 40GW peak only spanned 17:00 to about 19:00 wheras now they running 45*GW for 4 hours continuous.
And the only thing that changed was the wind.
UK demand roughly follows outside air temps and those have been frigid (UK wise) for the last week so it’s not like a Really Cold Spell came upon us.
What gives – have they actually invented ‘dispatchable wind’
or is ‘someone behind the curtain’ pulling out plugs and throwing switches?
Good observation, Peta. The ‘demand’ is actually just usage (and here). Back in the days when electricity systems were designed and run to supply electricity when people wanted it, usage was a good indicator of demand. Now that electricity is only produced in quantity when the wind is blowing, the pattern of usage has been distorted, and actual usage is now governed a lot by electricity availability. That is what is now showing up in ‘demand’ data.
There has been an element of paid for power cuts, but it has been relatively modest. You should not forget that grid demand doesn’t account for embedded generation in the lower voltage network. So it doesn’t include all the demand met by STOR diesels for example. Those are just a demand reduction from the grid point of view, just as with almost all solar.
up from 42% in 2021.
This looks impressive but a single number hides two key factors:
The latter point is the main factor in destroying the economics of dispatchable generation. Norway is the only region with enough hydro power to possibly benefit from the intermittency by conserving perched water.
Getting above 30% intermittent generation requires significant overbuild because curtailment becomes a constant feature rather than a rarity.
Germany is in rapid decline.
The Norwegians are no fans of helping out the Germans with their power supplies. All it has done is import high prices into Norway. There is now a movement to isolate Nordpool from the EU and UK altogether.
“Green extremists” is redundant, and “green energy” is neither.
It always pays to hop in for your chop early with the green pork barrel before reality bites with affordability-
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/business/energy-environment/california-rooftop-solar-subsidy.html
That’s because lefties don’t want to make the fixup for their typical stuffup retrospective and upset those already on the gravy train. Those folks have feelings.
usa/uk made sure germany cant get supply by wrecking nord 1 n 2
ukie lines on slooow and didnt they limit or shut the supply to Orban as well
To be more exact – NATO is the culprit. Sure, SBS and SEALS did the wet-work.
As Biden said “we have our ways” to stop NordStream pipelines. These pipelines were then blown up, massive international industrial sabotage, a crime that costs Germany now $1.5 billion a day.
The $9 billion pipeline investment over a decade is collateral damage.
Poland is wink-winking selling it’s new Norway pipeline gas at what price one wonders, and less than 30% of what Germany’s industry needs.
Poland’s ex-Foreign Minister, Sikorsky, husband of Mm. Appelbaum of NATO’s The Atlantic Council, tweeted “Thank You USA” on the day of terror, as the new Norway Pipeline simultaneously opened – coincidence?
Poland To Supply Crude To Former Rosneft Refinery In Germany
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Poland-To-Supply-Crude-To-Former-Rosneft-Refinery-In-Germany.html
Germany simply stole Rosneft’s property – talk about the dumbest heist ever!
The pipeline was already stopped when Putin ordered the taps be turned off.