By P Gosselin
Germany’s gas reserves are emptying at record speed: 1% per day as the current wind/solar energy lull means more gas gets burned for electricity, heating.
Image: cropped here.
Pleiteticker.de here reports how Germany’s natural gas reserves “are emptying at record speed” because wind and solar power have been on the scarce side over the past few weeks. This means gas turbines have had to jump in to pick up the slack in electricity production – not one the German government had hoped as it wrestles with the heightening energy crisis.
“Germany is converting gas into electricity in record quantities,” pleiteticker.de reports. “Thanks to high pressure system ‘Erika’, the current December is colder than it has been for years. […] In recent days, gas storage facilities have therefore been emptying much faster than before. From December 12 onwards, more than one percent was withdrawn from gas storage facilities in Germany every day.”
“Last week, almost one third of all electricity was generated from natural gas. These are record figures,” writes pleiteticker.de.
If the cold persists through the winter, gas reserves threaten to become extremely tight before spring arrives.
But instead of blaming the energy woes on failed government policies, federal network agency head Klaus Müller criticizes the situation on the consumers, and worries “the gas storage may not last the whole winter.”
“A national gas shortage in winter can be avoided if, firstly, the savings target of at least 20 percent continues to be achieved,” the Federal Network Agency says. Here the government’s solution clearly is that citizens should accept freezing even more when it’s bitterly cold out.
Over 800 million euros paid for unproduced energy in 2021
The problem with wind power is that either too much or too little is produced, due to the weather. As mentioned above. the past weeks have seen little wind power being produced, and so gas turbines had to be fired up to keep the grid supplied.
But when it’s too windy, something needs to be done to keep the grid from being overloaded: wind turbines have to be shut down. That’s costing Germans 807 million euros this year because the excess electricity that could have been fed into the grid by the wind parks legally has to be compensated.
Pleiteticker here writes: “For the amount of electricity that the operators could have fed into the grid, they still receive compensation from the grid operators according to the statutory tariffs. And this sum is higher than ever this year: 807 million euros. Record value. For electricity that never existed.”
And the problem is getting bigger, according to the Federal Ministry of Economics.
“At the time of the worst energy crisis Germany has seen in a long time, when companies and consumers are hammered by energy prices like rarely before, Germany is paying money for energy that also doesn’t get produced,” comments pleiteticker.de.
So far Germany’s response to the energy crisis is plans to build many more turbines, with talks of even tripling its current installed capacity, which of course would only triple grid volatility, thus making it far more unstable than it already is and so create an even much bigger mess.
One would have hoped that between South Australia and Texas, that people would have learned the hazards of non-dispatchable weather dependent power sources.
It’s all the rage to jump without a parachute.
Yup.
“The relentless push to replace coal, gas and nuclear with solar and wind power, hoping that battery technology improves, is a bit like jumping out of a plane and hoping a parachute is invented on the way down.”
— Adam Creighton (from Tom Nelson’s twitter page)
Scissor
But, but… they will sew one before they hit the ground. Don’t you understand how “science” works? /sarc
Ironically, at least a parachute is known to exist, and conceivably might be assembled in-flight, unlike the technological infrastructure the NutZero crowd envisions; much of which doesn’t even exist. [New York’s mythical DEFR comes to mind: dispatchable emission-free resource]
You’re dreaming of an honest impartial media….
Tom, learning moments are so old fashioned! Progressives have had a lot of success by feeling what the ‘right thing should be. German authorities over past months have basically hoped for a mild winter. If things fail it’s because of selfish consumers, or the war, or far right agitators or saboteurs … Models tell them what should be happening.
“…learning moments are so old fashioned! Progressives have had a lot of success by feeling what the ‘right thing should be.”
______________________________________
“Ready fire aim.” That one was popular in the ’90s
They blamed it on other problems. Their precious could not possibly have been to blame!
The gaslighting over Texas 2021 was shameless. Sure, there were problems in other areas with weatherization, but freezing rain and still air do not go well with wind turbines. Electric, rather than gas turbine compressors on gas pipelines were another failure attributable to the greens.
What happened? Unicorns don’t fart while hibernating in the winter?
Europe isn’t looking good right now. Even if the worst comes to pass, I still doubt most will understand. You’ll see even more and louder calls for “more renewables” and to “end dependence on fossil fuels”
Can’t fix stupid. At what point do the people of the EU get tired of this “climate” crap as an excuse for the politicians to steal the people’s money to fund useless boondoggles?
What makes you think the peoples of the EU have any choice or say in the matter? They really don’t. That’s a major reason the UK voted to leave.
That is why I voted leave only to find that Bojo, Carrie, Kwasi Kwarteng and dozens of tardigrade civil servants decided to outdo every single piece of Euro-lunacy that they could lay their incompetent mitts on. Pray for more cold weather. It is only when TSHTF that we may see our way out of the ghastly maze of incompetence and deceit
Pray for more cold weather. It is only when TSHTF that we may see our way out of the ghastly maze of incompetence and deceit
______________________________
A while back someone in these WUWT comments said, “Nobody can be that stupid for that long, it has to be the goal.”
Exactly, Steve. There comes a point where Hanlon’s Razor is too dull to cut anymore…
But we (in the UK) stil have no say in the matter, given that all but 6 MPs voted for the cyanide pill of Net Zero.
Who are the Sane Six? We need to praise them.
Badenoch declared it as “unilateral economic disarmament”…..which is a pretty good summary. No idea how she voted when May brought in her stupid law
There was no formal vote. It was by acclaim.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.
Badenoch joined Graham Stringer in querying the cost:
Many of my constituents, especially schoolchildren, will be delighted by this announcement, but others are rightly sceptical about the costs. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that the plan will be achievable and affordable?
Sadly , the people nominally in charge do not seem to have grasped the concept.
Exactly why I voted to leave the EU to take back proper democratic control and they still won’t frack.There will come a point when the majority realise they have been taken for a ride by our political masters who still adhere to much of the EU claptrap or is it craptrap?
While fracking is the correct answer, for the UK and rest of northern europe the the oil and gas boom of the last 60 years or so came from the North Sea
So its a far away place from ‘the countryside’
The tories of course have their core support the rural landowners and farmers and unlike the US where the gas in the ground is owned by who ever owns the land above its not the case in Britain and similar anglo saxon countries. The crown owns it , along with the swans or something, but the the crown was once the personal property of the actual monarch for a long time now its just the ‘government’
So you dont have a land owning class who will be enriched by selling the rights underneath , so theres nothing in it for them. merry hell will ensure if they so much as try to drill, even if under modern methods a single field corner can support a rig that drills horizontally for long distances.
The left wing parties oppose it for reasons related to ‘leaving it in the ground’ etc while the tories wont upset their country base and their own eco loons
Rampant in the U.S. of A. as well… Stupidity appears the most dangerous virus.
Germany opens new LNG terminal in record time to replace Russian gas | DW News
Also, wo sind Just Stop Oil?
Glued in a nice warm gallery, somewhere.
Probably with a non-vegan, oil-based glue 😉
They were kept at bay by law enforcement – coastguard, customs, police. All those red arrows…
from what I scanned at Zerohedge theyre RENTING the processing plants
so as if the overprived LPG wasnt costly enough add rentals to that
pity uk/ussa bombed nords isnt it
“Germany’s gas reserves are emptying at record speed“
It’s a cold winter this year – with a capital cold.
Met Office issues danger to life alert as snow and ice to batter UK in -13C Arctic blast
Woburn in Bedfordshire recorded a minimum temperature of -12.7C (9.14F) on Thursday. Temperatures of -10.7C (12.7F) were reported overnight on Tuesday in Andrewsfield, Essex.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1710646/met-office-weather-warning-ice-snow-britain-cold-weather-forecast-today
Its been sub zero for well over a week, but nobody has described the current freeze as… ‘extreme’. Two hot days in the summer got their attention, though. For my part, it’s been nice sitting round the open fire – belching out the plant fertiliser. A coal and wood fire is now cheaper than the gas central heating, and probably has far more emissions, too!
Today it finally made it to +3C, but there’s more cold on the way. This is what their global warming looks like.
The current cold spell – ongoing – will dent their annual average. It might have scraped a 40C max but thats been more than offset.
Yeah, a multi-decadal sirocco from Morocco (a fixture of Eurpean weather for centuries – didn’t Bing Crosby sing about it?) raised the spirits of beleaguered weather alarmists for a few days a few months ago. Now polar vortex cold reality is is wrenching their enfeebled minds.
With desperate activity to secure fossil fuels to prevent millions of “Climate Policy-Caused Casualties” in Europe, does anyone seriously think they will jump back into a renewables program if they get everyone halfway warm? I read somewhere over a year ago, with spent windfarms needing replacement, renewables firms going broke and investors shying away, that there was little appetite for the meme. At the time, it was said that peak renewables was in 2017. I’m predicting the 2017 peak is permanent.
Better call in the NYT and NPR to blame natural gas and ignore the data.
Let the Ukrainians teach them about energy savings in winter.
As noted before, this was predictable. Extra cold EU weather pattern based on past consecutive year La Niña. This winter is year 3. Extra, extra cold.
Nonsense
https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/temperature
Always best to discover the weaknesses of any critical component of your society when it matters least to your well being. Here, I would argue that Europe/Germany are learning in a moderately difficult period the weakness of their energy sector. It is not the worst time and it is far from the best time.
Best of luck Europe.
Using This data source: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
We see that CO2 levels have been increasing each of the past four decades; in spite of the billions spent to reduce it.
Avg Annual increase 2.45 PPM Dec 2012- Nov 2022
Avg Annual increase 2.06 PPM Dec 2002- Nov 2012
Avg Annual increase 1.55 PPM Dec 1992- Nov 2002
Avg Annual increase 1.51 PPM Dec 1982- Nov 1992
The data was presented each month as the Avg of a daily reading.
The data is recorded monthly since March 1958.
The peak annual reading usually occurs in May. The Avg for the past 12 months was 418.38 PPM while the May peak was 420.99
Hi DipChip
You are quite right. CO2 growth has been increasing while the rate of change in emissions has been levelling off.
I have been looking at the relationship between emissions, atmospheric CO2 growth and Temperature. for some months.
In spite of the carbon isotope ratio argument, I am starting to think that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 growth) might not be caused by emissions but caused by an imbalance in the equilibrium relationship between CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 in the oceans.
It is true that there is a correlation between emissions and CO2 growth but emissions are growing at twice the rate of CO2 growth. Also, the correlation of temperature with CO2 growth is better.
The old saying of “correlation is not causation” might well apply here.
It could be that the rise in atmospheric CO2 might have coincidentally happened at the same time people started people started burning a lot of oil, coal and methane.
But there may be a way of finding out.
If CO2 emissions are causing atmospheric CO2 growth then doesn’t that mean an increase in CO2 emissions should result in an increase in CO2 growth? And would not a decrease in emissions should result in a decrease in growth?
With this in mind I made a scatter plot of change in CO2 emissions against change in CO2 growth.
The coefficient of determination ( R2) for this scatter plot is 0.00029
The R2 tells us the how much of the variance of the dependent variable (CO2 growth) is explained by the independent variable (emissions).
It is also the square of the coefficient of correlation (R2), aka the correlation, which is 0.017
Now if I was wanting to believe that emissions were causing the growth of atmospheric CO2 I would want these numbers to be a lot bigger.
There is a much better relationship between temperature and CO2 growth than there is between emissions and CO2 growth.
There is a much better relationship between change in temperature and change in CO2 growth than there is between change in emissions and change in CO2 growth.
Below are Dropbox links to graphs that show relationships between emissions, temperature and CO2 growth.
If you download the document you can see the data on which these are based by double clicking on the graph, right clicking on it and then selecting “Chart Data Table”.
Change in emissions vs change in CO2 growth The coefficient of determination ( R2) is 0.00029
The correlation is 0.017
Change in NCEI temp vs change in CO2 growth R2 is 0.38 The correlation is 0.62
Change in GISS temperature vs change in CO2 growth R2 is 0.44 The correlation is 0.66
Change in UAH NH Ocean temp vs change in CO2 growth R2 is 0.46 The correlation is 0.67
Emissions vs CO2 Growth R2 is 0.57 The corellation is 0.75
UAH NH Ocean Temp 1979 to 2021 vs CO2 Growth R2 is 0.58 The correlation is 0.76
GISS Ocean Temp 1959 to 2021 vs CO2 Growth R2 is 0.66 Correlation is 0.81
NOAA/NCEI Ocean Temp 1959 to 2021 vs CO2 Growth R2 is 0.67 The correlation is 0.82
A good portion of those billions went to China where they just pay a fair price for the coal they mine rather than the inflated global price. That is how they have become the global manufacturer of everything.
All the stuff bought and installed with those billions can never extract more energy from the weather than they consumed in their creation. So China has to burn ever more coal to keep the illusion alive. I doubt that situation can go beyond the end of this century because China will run out of coal and need to take it from other places.
Germany has enough coal reserves currently to power China for another 6 years. Getting all the coal in Germany will require removing the current junk that is being bought with those billions as it sterilises the coal beneath.
I wonder how long it will take for a majority of people to appreciate that CO2 is a well mixed gas in the atmosphere. Burning coal in China to make stuff used in Europe does not reduce CO2 in Europe.
far easier n cheaper to mine coal in Africa and seeing as worldbank imf and the rest wont invest its handed it to china on a plate
Because of inflation and fears of recession, energy consumption is down in most industrialized countries. This has given some of us a break in prices and eased inflation.
What is going to happen when economies try to recover? Governments continue to restrict the development of more fossil fuel resources. Investors are turning away from costly renewable energy projects and government subsidies for them are ending. As soon as recovery begins energy supplies cannot increase to meet the needs. Energy prices go up, inflation picks back up, and the economy is slammed back down.
‘Saving’ us from this will be the countries who do allow the development of fossil fuel resources; OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia. Our economies will become even more dependent on them.
We are on this course and there hasn’t even been a whimper.
We should be very careful about hyping the idea that they will run out of gas. It sets the bar very low for them. I think it’s very unlikely to happen.
If they remove 1% per day and if they are at around 80% full at the moment (caution, I don’t know that figure), then it would be around the 7th of March before they would run out. By then, Spring will be in the air. And if 1% per day is an unusual drawdown rate, what is the likelihood of that continuing for 80 more days consecutively? It’s likely that there will be a warm spell sometime during the 80 days where the storage can be replenished a bit and carry them into April or May.
A lot of facts are missing to make a valid assessment of course. This rate of drawdown is net of any replenishment and we don’t know the split between pipeline/LNG supplies going directly to consumers vs going into storage first.
Setting the metric for lawmaker’s failure at having consumers freeze with literally no gas supply is probably to hand these losers an undeserved “win”. As sure as the crocuses will pop up through the melting snow, if the climatistas make it through to Spring without running out of gas, it will be trumpeted as wind power saving the day.
A very sensible comment, especially...”it will be trumpeted as wind power saving the day”. That is exactly what will happen and that will be used to justify even more investment in bird choppers.
A bit of information is that the gas storage level in Germany was at 90.23% on 16 Dec.
I doubt there is risk of running out of gas. However German industry is suffering and some probably in terminal demise. The current account has fallen off a cliff:
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/current-account
A basic fact is that weather energy extractors cannot recover more energy in an operating life than they consumed to get them operating. So it is net negative energy. All supported on China subsidising their manufacturers with low cost coal costing just CNY700/tonne this year and throughout 2023. The price is fixed by government decree and considered a fair price for the miners..
“As sure as the crocuses will pop up through the melting snow, if the climatistas make it through to Spring without running out of gas, it will be trumpeted as wind power saving the day.”
The narrative the climatistas offer will go like this: Because the wind energy that actually did get produced represents X days of natural gas which didn’t have to be burned, then wind energy saved the day.
It’s a narrative which is almost impossible to counter when the target audience isn’t inclined to look very far into the details.
Using wind backs out baseload nuclear and coal. It requires the use of either gas or inefficient use of coal as backup. It also results in more wind curtailment as capacity rises, since storage is uneconomic on anything other that short duration timescales.
Apparently, working storage capacity for Germany is 1.3 bill cf
https://www.offshore-technology.com/comment/underground-gas-storage-europe-2/
Annual consumption last year was around 8.75 bn cf but that may be variable consumption daily rates so I assume the storage is mostly for winter when the draw down is at a faster rate than the normal supply can deliver.
They have some own supply , I think from their share of the north sea fields and can import from Norway and netherlands offshore fields too.
very good comments. and germany wont run out of gas because it is burning so much coal. they burn so much that, in fact, on the graphs they have to divide it into two types of coal, soft and lignite, so that it looks like less!
The Germans stand a reasonable chance of getting through this winter. Much more difficult will be restocking for next winter. This year they had the benefit of 1.75TWh/day via Nordstream for six months before the Russians cut back and eliminated deliveries.
The rats are jumping ship……
Quote:”brick-like wads of €50 notes were found not by the vice squad, but by detectives investigating allegations of corruption in the European Parliament.
Telegraph
Why would any sane person want to bribe MEPs? They have no power to influence policy, which is all run by the bureaucrats at the European Commission. Waste of money if you ask me.
They (whoever they are) should have been bribing the bureaucrats…
Qatar isn’t what you might call sane – by Western standards
Perhaps without natural gas they can turn to CO2 to help keep warm.
“Thanks to high pressure system ‘Erika’,…”
When did we start naming high pressure systems!? I’ve met some high maintenance systems named Erika, but I was under the impression that only hurricanes and cyclones were named. For those who have questions about high maintenance systems, I would refer you to “Texas Tornado” as performed by Tracy Lawrence.
“When did we start naming high pressure systems!?”
Good question.
There are numerous high pressure and low pressure systems around the globe. Do these people give names to all of them? What’s the criteria?
Just wait…every raindrop will have a name soon. Whether there be too many or too few of them it’ll all be our fault caused by the evil climate change.
1902…That honor goes to a man named Clement “Wet” Wragge, the Government Meteorologist for Queensland, Australia, between 1887 and 1907.
eg Oct 9 1902
‘The Antarctic disturbance Melba, named after the divine songster, will be the ruling factor over the southeastern quadrant of Australasia generally. Vessels bound west through Bass Straits from eastern ports will surely meet Melba and some persons will not only have reason to remember the superb singing of the original but also recollect the howling and the whistling of the winds of her cognomen. The Antarctic disturbance, James, now south of Wellington, will soon have passed into west longitudes.’
https://qz.com/1220115/why-we-name-the-weather
Note the title of the article: “The strange process of naming extreme weather events”
Quote: “Headline writers and news anchors love giving dramatic names to winter weather, but where did this tradition come from?”
Quote: “Until 2015, different European agencies and individuals had been giving their own names to winter storms, somewhat at random. Popular Irish weather presenter Deric Hartigan picked his own names, for example, while the German media used an unofficial naming regime from the Institute of Meteorology at the Free University in Berlin, which has been christening all high- and low-pressure systems since 1954.
The decision to give winter storms official names in the UK and Ireland was made after the St Jude’s Day storm in October 2013, which caused 17 deaths across Europe. “Not having a single authoritative system,” the Met Office wrote at the time, “was causing confusion, with the media using names from different schemes to describe the same storms.” The agencies were worried, with good reason, that this confusion would make severe weather warnings less effective.”
So that’s why Europeans are naming storms. The confusion was in the naming with different names used for the same storm. They could have eliminated the confusion by not naming the storm since there is only one storm at a time, people ought to be able to keep up without a name, like they do here in the United States.
We have an unnamed big cold weather front coming to the U.S.and everybody knows about it even though it doesn’t have a name. It doesn’t need a name.
Quote: “In 1947, the US Air Force Hurricane Office began using the military phonetic alphabet to name North Atlantic storms in internal communications only. The system was made public during the 1950 season, when three simultaneous hurricanes in the North Atlantic caused much confusion.”
Naming hurricanes makes sense for just this reason, but when an artic cold front comes to town there is only one of them, not two or three at a time, and it doesn’t need a name. Just call it the next arctic cold front.
Ridiculous quote: “The naming convention could well change again in future. In 2014, a team of gender researchers found that* storms with “feminine” names caused significantly more deaths than “masculine-named” ones do. Their study suggests that this is because hurricane names “lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action.” In other words, you’re more likely to take cover if Hurricane Patrick is bearing down on you than you would be if it was Hurricane Patricia.”
These people are ate up with the dumb ass!
Quote: “Wragge was likely the first person to give storms human names”
Actually, Wragge was naming hurricanes, not thunderstorms and arctic fronts. Naming hurricanes makes sense because there can be more than one of them in the area at the same time. This is not the case with arctic cold fronts.
Thanks for the excellent link, Duker.
Funny how there’s no mention of the coal currently being burnt in Germany to help keep the lights on!
Breakdown of conventional power shown here.
That chart again confirms the guaranteed output of wind and solar is ZERO.
Some maths challenged individuals think that by adding more W&S they can defy the simple maths that ZERO times anykthing is STILL ZERO.
“ZERO times anything is STILL ZERO.” Wait! Isn’t that what I used to recognize as real Math?
Yes. That’s why it is now ignored. Cannot have “real” math. It’s racist. To a watermelon, zero times anything is whatever the want it to be.
Wait until they try to redistribute zero for “fairness”. That’s when its time for maximum laughs.
Intermittent/unreliable/renewable energy. Go green, then Green, then green, then blue. Caveat emptor.
Do German politicians constantly run out of gas in their cars too?
This level of incompetance should be criminal. That is presuming that this is not some intentional plan to spread misery and death in which case it would definitely be criminal.
Are we getting a little carried away with this headline. Earlier reports indicated 90 days supply. That would be a rate of 1% for the winter. Seems like the storage plus the LNG facility would keep them toasty?
If they can afford it!
Yes, the question is how much would they normally expect to consume during cold winter weather? Supplies are normally continuous with storage acting as a buffer. Germany’s supplies may be reduced but they are not zero.
the forced temp lowering in all buildings is what caused that “maritime disaster” lol of the aquarium shattering
nice warm water in glass met icy cold outside air and low room temps
The solitary LNG FSRU is really not enough. They are planning for five of them, IIRC . Then the problem will be to find the LNG to feed them.
Curtailed electricity – specifically payment via penalties on broken contracts – is a major structural problem for wind and solar PV barring magical grid level storage.
The latest data I had found showed Germany curtailing 3 million MWh in 2015; 807 million euros, presuming say 25 euros/MWh – implies roughly 3 million MWh of curtailment so seems ballpark. In reality, the curtailment payments tend to be much lower so 2021 curtailment is probably much higher – maybe 5 or 6 million MWh.
Next winter will be worse
Have they stopped teaching “1984” in schools? How can the public still be fooled by such slogans as “Less is More”?
Never read “1984” (it was not introduced) in the ten years at public school, and not until I was over 50, but certainly learned not to be fooled by ‘NON-SENSE’, as a young child.
Kip, I’m not sure they’re not teaching it. They’re somehow teaching it and using its techniques while doing so. I’ve run into several leftists who know it well, yet play the perfect Party member and accuse the right of using those tactics.
Germany extended the life of their final three nuclear reactors until April 2323 as a “backup”; they were originally slated to shut down December 31 this year. But Chancellor Olaf Scholz refused to consider operating them past that date.
Here is Germany’s current generation by source. Bad news: at 5:45 PM with 0 output from solar, fossil fuels account for 64% of the total generation (40,469 MW out of 64,185 total). Nuclear contributes 3,698. If you hover over a time on the graph you get the detailed numbers.
Missed this typo: “until April 2323” should of course be “until April 2023”.
Obviously an accurate prognosticator in his own mind… all will right itself by next April.
In the year 2525…
According to the article, the German nuclear industry says that the remaining nuclear plants are not technically suitable for use as reserve generation assets.
Another possible problem is that if the bulk of the nuclear fuel in the reactor cores has already been consumed to the boundary of its safety envelope, in anticipation of a permanent shutdown, then running the plants beyond their scheduled closure date could present nuclear safety issues.
“High pressure system Erika”?
They’re going to be down to naming the cooler blob of air over people’s back yard pools pretty soon. (Trying to decide whether to name mine Whorf or Troi.)
Set Germany aside. The UK has bigger problems.
“Last week the UK depleted a fifth of all its stored gas in just six days, prompting concerns that a longer chill could leave the country in a precarious position. By comparison, the European Union used about four per cent.”
Now who could have predicted this (sarc):
“Largely to blame is the country’s new-found reliance on renewables. Wind and solar are incredibly volatile and difficult to predict.”
“When there is a lack of wind – or sun – that puts other sources of energy generation under pressure.”
“Unlike reliable imports of gas from Norway, with whom we spend billions each year, it is not as though friendly nations can send over a shipment of wind or a batch of sunshine.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11549923/Arctic-blast-leaves-Britain-bracing-power-cuts-officials-blame-WFH-Met-Office.html
High pressure no wind has always been the norm in winter in Europe as far as I know.
Skeptics of wind energy in France always mentioned it but “muh nuclear lobby“.
the stupidity of govt is only surpassed by those who are victims OF said govts allowing it to continue to rip them off by the minute and walk free
payback should be a real b*tch
The EU has huge reserves of natural gas under their feet. Yet they import gas produced by fracking while fracking is illegal in the EU.
Fracking is apparently like slavery. Illegal at home, but OK when used to make imports cheaper.
Here’s the German stock position. Peak withdrawal day highlighted at 2.8TWh, with 224TWh in stock. Now dropped to 2TWh/day. It will be interesting to monitor the new LNG terminal at Wilhelmshaven that docked a couple of days ago.
Now imagine if they’d converted to hydrogen which only stores a third as much energy in the same volume…
The goal is scarce and expensive energy, in order to reduce the surplus population.
Praise Gaia!
There’s an old German joke that tells a story of Otto and Frits.
A very sad and upset Otto tells Fritz that he discovered his wife with a lover in the couch at home and warns him that he will not accept this fact and that he will seek a drastic solution. Days later, Fritz asks Otto what he did to solve the deception. Otto, very proud, tells him “problem solved: I sold the couch.”
Similarly, Germany can seed all its territory with wind turbines and will not be able to generate a single additional MWh above a well-defined limit for renewables, limit they already reached quite a while ago. Above that limit, only electricity costs will continue to rise, not renewable generation and they will not be able to continue decreasing its fossil-based thermal generation. Nonetheless, I wish them luck.
The sad reality is that the overwhelming support for renewable energy support in legislatures around the world comes from those making the choices while having NO CLUE as to the physics behind energy production and consumption. It is useless to rant against their decisions which are based on fantasy, rubbish, and hopeful statements. Without education and knowledge, the ruling class obeys the lobbyists who use the taxpayers’ money to bribe the legislators… a perfect circle leading to Charybdis. The solution is to remove from power those making ignorant choices, but first the hoi peloi must be educated to understand why the blunders are being made so they can make a reasoned vote. To prevent an educated populace, education is moving to DEI, CRT, and ESG, anmong other acronyms.