Essay by Eric Worrall
German politicians still haven’t learned – they seem utterly determined to burn down their entire economy trying to make green energy work.
EU approves 28 bln euro German renewable energy scheme
By Kate Abnett
December 21, 2022 10:41 PM GMT+10BRUSSELS, Dec 21 (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Wednesday it had approved the German government’s 28 billion euro ($29.69 billion) support scheme for renewable energy, which is aimed at rapidly expanding use of wind and solar power.
The policy, which replaces an existing renewables support scheme, runs until 2026 and is designed to deliver Germany’s target to produce 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
The European Commission said the scheme was “necessary and appropriate” to promote renewable energy and cut planet-heating emissions, and that its positive environmental impact outweighed possible distortions of competition.
…
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-approves-28-bln-euro-german-renewable-energy-scheme-2022-12-21/
It might seem odd to non Europeans that Germany had to ask the EU’s permission before spending their own €28 billion, but I’m guessing the expenditure fell afoul of EU state aid rules.
Why should we get excited about €28 billion? Germany is allegedly already spending €1.5 billion per day in public debt financed energy subsidies, to shield businesses from skyrocketing energy prices. So in a sense this additional €28 billion is a drop in Germany’s rising ocean of debt.
But that €28 billion is evidence Germany is still run by incompetents That €28 billion could have been used to build 3-4 large nuclear reactors. Those new reactors would have been enough to provide some breathing space, and likely would have been enough to plug the €1.5 billion per day subsidy haemorrhage. They would have been a big step towards restoring long term grid stability and affordability.
Instead of coming to their senses, German politicians are still making every wrong move they possibly can. They still can’t bring themselves to admit their green energy plan has not worked, and will never work. They are determined beyond reason to double down on failure.
28 billion. That’s chicken scratch compared to what sleepy Joe and gang have done in the last two years.
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What’s the definition of insanity?
Oh yeah…doing the same thing the same way every time and expecting a different result.
Doubling down on stupid is twice as stupid and just as insane.
“That €28 billion could have been used to build 3-4 large nuclear reactors.“.
Or twice as many coal-fired power stations. Or even more gas-fired power stations.
Yup. But when they need it that’s not going to stop them importing electricity from surrounding countries using such methods of generation. Pure hypocrisy.
What will they do when the surrounding countries don’t have any spare electricity to export?
Ans.: … freeze in the dark.
There’s no point building gas powered generators, since there’s no way they can import the gas to power them.
Lots of frackable gas across Europe.
Tell that to the British government.
North sea gas
Tell that to the British government.
From one of the many media articles about the LNG terminal built “in record time” in Germany this year (direct link) :
It’s amazing what you can do when motivated by the sheer volume of excreted matter hitting the rotating impeller … or by a blocking high moving in for a week (or two) over your wind farms, and all of the “impellers” stop rotating …
PS : It’s even worse when that happens near the winter solstice, i.e. when the “Solar” contribution to your electricity grid is at its annual minimum, as the British (re-)discovered twice in the last 4 weeks.
Will the amount of LNG imported be sufficient to replace the gas they got from Russia?
I have no idea, but the start of an answer to your question can be found in the link I provided with my comment :
As the saying goes, “Hope is not a strategy”, but at least putting the infrastructure to potentially replace 50-60% of the gas previously supplied by Russia within 22 months of the Ukrainian invasion … by building five LNG terminals due to “permitting exceptions and forgoing environmental impact assessments” … probably qualifies as “a good start”.
Thanks – I missed seeing the link, not the first or last time I will miss something. Without going into any additional detail, they still appear to be SOL for this winter, even with the second FSRU, and the 50-60% figure seems optimistic to me, but my lack of knowledge about these things is extensive.
NB : My initial reply came across a lot harsher on screen than it did in my head. Thanks for your restraint in your response.
I agree with you.
Getting the infrastructure in place is only one aspect of the “supply chain”, albeit one that bypassing unnecessary red tape, especially “environment impact reviews”, can greatly reduce.
1) Suppliers have probably got their future production “fully booked” for years to come right now.
This will be even more true for “approved” suppliers (Australia, the US of A, Qatar, …) while major producers are on a “boycott / sanction” list (Russia, Iran, …).
2) There are a limited number of LNG tankers in the world that can liquefy the gas at point A, transport it to point B, and then re-gasify it.
I suspect that “infrastructure” is also fully booked for a long time into the future.
3) 200 days to build a “FRSU” gasifier is good, but you still need the pipeline and storage facilities behind it for the new hardware to be useful.
That takes time that Germany (and many other countries, especially in eastern Europe …) do not have.
It’s complicated, no one person will have all of the details at their fingertips to “fully” address a multiple-factor issue like “Germany replacing the gas they got from Russia”.
I think they are close. The storage is being used at 1% per day or about 100 days. With the gasification plants coming on soon, that should slow the draw down. I calculated the numbers last summer but I think 1 LNG tanker a month should be enough.
Assuming they can get that much LNG to their plants.
Maybe. But Green opposition would have prevented that from completion for several years, during which their economy would have failed disastrously.
But the problem is that they can’t get enough gas so how is building more gas plants a solution that you’re recommending?
Same goes for coal, except that Germany does have coal but it is the dirtier brown variety and not really a good option.
Schadenfreude is an apt German description, when ongoing Germany climate silliness is viewed from an afar skeptical stance.
Germany has plainly NOT learned the first rule of holes:
When in one wanting out, first stop digging.
The Germans are digging so rapidly, that geothermal energy may become financially viable.
When have Germans ever learned a lesson over history?
They are compelled to be ritually and regularly, humiliated at the alter of their own hubris.
The technical and manufacturing superpower of the EU about to be crushed by the very country they have sought dominance over for hundreds of years, again.
Europe is about to be fractured, yet again. Russia lit the fuse, it will now stand back and watch the region rip itself apart again.
I couldn’t resist. I am married to a German. The apt phrase is you can tell a German…………….but you can’t tell him much.
This is really funny if you give it a moments thought. The rule is there to prevent national industries getting a competitive advantage. The fact that the EU approved it means they recognise subsidising W&S is not going to provide a competitive advantage.
In fact, this subsidy will further hobble German international competitiveness. If EU had German interest at heart they would have refused on the basis that they need a strong Germany to survive in a competitive world.
EU is gradually isolating itself from the rest of the world. Asia and Africa are where the action is. They just have to get their own financial systems in order so they can isolate that from the woke west.
Re EU state rules … “The rule is there to prevent national industries getting a competitive advantage.”
Sheesh! Why would very productive countries join in a union of slackards? This all by itself guarantees eventual failure. When Greece failed as an economy, the cash to bail them out came from Germans who culturally have been
inventive and hard working (although maybe the ubiquity of infrasound from all those windmills cancels neurons and levels the playing field).
And from what we learned today from Christopher Monckton’s post here, those €28 billion will lead to about a twenty-nine 30-millionth of a degree C change.
Regards,
Bob
They’re German. Having a long, long, long history of going ‘against the current’, even well past when doing so is bad for their geopolitical health.
THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT IN THE BUNKER
Its OK, Jimmy Jones is serving Kool-Aid
The astonishing irony I see from this move is that it was legendary German physicist who was credited with the sage observation that –
The EU is a failed state, and we in the US are racing them to the ash heap.
Damn I hate plusing that one buttttt..
EU approval was the easy part. The hard part is getting bids at the auctions and permits for those few awards through the bitterly contested courts. Rural Germans hate wind. Step one is they’ll have to bump up the support price about 25%, Urban voters may also fall out of love with wind.
copy
“The undersubscription of the tender exacerbates the problem of the sluggish expansion of the urgently needed wind turbines further,” Kerstin Andreae, CEO of energy industry association BDEW, on Wednesday (12 October) …
…In practice, wind tenders are notoriously undersubscribed. Despite the ongoing energy crisis, the September tender for 1,320 Megawatts (MW) of capacity yielded bids worth just 772 MW.
Due to the generous renewable energy state funding in Germany, bids are price capped to counterbalance the state aid. The federal grid agency noted that the average bid was close to the permissible price cap of 5.88 cents per kW/h at 5.84 cents.
Why accept €58.40/MWh when power is regularly selling for €200+/MWh? Why is state aid needed at those prices?
Before WWI a South African, Hendrik van der Bijl, studied in Germany where he completed his PhD. He was brilliant and set up the incredible electricity supply in South Africa providing cheap and reliable electricity. What has happened to the brilliant Germans like those he worked under? Van der Bijl would have rejected all the climate alarmism had it been promoted in his day.
Why does a little voice in my head keep telling me I’m seeing a repetition of history here? Committing more deeply to a narrative when you see it failing.
The green in Green schemes is progressive, reliable, renewable. Environment, second, third, and people are collateral damage.
They’re doing everything they can to make themselves unattractive to any potential invader, real or imagined.
Because The. Very. Last. Thing. that Germany wants is for it to be associated with triggering a 3rd World War
Which to all intents is what’s raging right now because of the 100’s of $$$ Billions that Brandon is pumping into Ukraine and the 100’s millions £££ that the UK is pumping in there too. Germany also, to say they’re on thin ice right now is massive understatement.
But it’s Politically Correct and Woke thin-ice so that’s alright
The human animal cannot lie and so it was with BAE – the UK’s premier military and aerospace company:
Headline:BAE Systems to recruit 2,600 apprentices and graduatesBBC link
They can do that, take on 2,600 new employees who will add nothing to the company for years because of the immense cash flow coming from UK Government spend on arms that are being sent to Ukraine.
While UK Gov is ramping up every tax already in existence and inventing new ones almost daily
And it’s even more glaring and galling in that most of the UK workforce (nurses, ambulance drivers, train drivers, postmen, border control) are out on strike because of low pay combined with an inflation driven recession.
Even before old folks are sitting alone in freezing cold houses eating pet food and parents cant afford the £2 per day needed to buy a school lunch for their kid
(Maybe just as well as all the kid will get is a (small) plastic plateful of processed carbs that will make them fat, lazy and stupid and further lead them into chronic depression)
Yet BAE, the arms maker and supplier, can splurge god knows how much on new staff.
That’s all BAE does, invent and build arms. If they just diversified into putting cat-food into tins it would be ‘something’ of actual use and real value.
everything is wrong
So neither the German politicians or their EU equivalents can admit the truth. I wonder WHAT will eventually make them do so? Meanwhile, their expenditure in only 19 days will see their E28 billion expended and they’ll be back for another bite of the cherry. Or perhaps they don’t need to get approvals for that E1.5 per day expenditure. If they keep going like that, they will totally destroy the German economy before the end of winter. The German populace have always seemed to welcome a saviour, however ridiculous!
History is full of countries which never admitted their mistakes, which followed bad ideas all the way to ruin and collapse.
I wonder WHAT will eventually make them do so?
New politicians.
France is beginning to bail the EU out with the restart of the failed reactors – maintenance issue/inspection issue. Unfortunately, they are not going to learn from this.
But those restarts appear to be only temporary. There are now fresh outages scheduled for February, which might not be the best time to have them.
The Unreliable “Green” Energy Scam is just like the Marxist religion from whence it sprang; if you don’t achieve success, you weren’t doing it right and need to repeat, ad infinitum! Insane!
“Renewable” I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Germany already has 2 times base load of installed renewables, widely spread out across germany to maximize its up time, and yet that only produces 40% of their electricity
Doubling it will gain nothing
I wonder if the EU decision makers, or their German masters, have ever heard about the laws of diminishing return?
We are Ze Germans, We make Ze laws OK Heine?
We haf not made that one, therefore it is not to us, applying!
I’m not sure.
If their efforts in doubling down are to increase affordable and reliable enery, it should be obvious to a reasonably bright slug that you are correct.
But if the aim is to collect as many as possible brown envelopes from Ruinable Energy promoters before the whole shebang goes t¹ts up, I’m afraid you are wrong.
Putin may be short but he has a long reach…
It is probably the end of Germany’s dominance in Europe
I’m waiting for someone to come up with a really viable scaled up “Renewable Money Scheme” We could certainly do with one these these days.
My own scheme which is called “A Job” is a bit dicey but has just about worked in the past but in no way could be scaled up; as “The Jobs” must all be viable themselves.
Maybe griff can tell us why the cheapest source of electricity needs €28billion in government subsidies.
Yeah, renewables for optimal home comfort …
The joke’s on you Eric. You seem to think that the German Greenies are too stupid to realize they’re creating an economy that can’t support a big percentage of the population. To the contrary, they know exactly what they’re doing and are proud of plans to depopulate and de-industrialize the entire West. And they do this with the support of 90% of the population.
Meanwhile, the BRICS led by Russia-China laugh with delight at the Suicide of the West.
Germany’s problem is not moving away from fossil fuels, but moving away from nuclear. I blame Germans falling for social media meddling by the Kremlin after the Fukushima incident.
Jim Jones would have felt right at home in the EU and would have especially enjoyed watching the slow motion self immolation of a once thriving economy.
“That €28 billion could have been used to build 3-4 large nuclear reactors. Those new reactors would have been enough to provide some breathing space, and likely would have been enough to plug the €1.5 billion per day subsidy haemorrhage.”
Knowing your fellow EUers seem to be terminally stupid is a huge business opportunity. Build a couple of hundred billions worth of nuclear power plants to sell backup power for their neighbor’s renewables. Fix the price at the subsidized retail rate for renewables so it looks like a bargain.
“Instead of coming to their senses, German politicians are still making every wrong move they possibly can.”
One wonders how many of them are getting Russian money, have Russian sympathies or are puppets of Russian finance Green loonies. See: http://www.debunkingclimate.com/russia-articles.html
CATL is building a super factory in Germany.
It will produce Sodium-based batteries.
The price per kWh of storage is just 30$, lifetime is 6000 cycles.
This makes it merely 0.5 Ct per stored kWh.
Nobody will need any carbon-based fuel or even nuclear power as soon as this factory produces enough batteries. One can store the intermittent renewable solar and wind energy.
Sorry, but the carbon-based energetics is essentially over.
What sort of loony are you, or you forgot the “sarc” tag?
“carbon-based energetics is over”?
So with what did they construct the steel and concrete factory?
MUD WALLS?
How do they propose to transport the batteries anywhere?
Levitation?
“Nobody will need any carbon-based fuel or even nuclear power as soon as this factory produces enough batteries”
You invented the perpetual motion machine??
Electricity storage is not 120% efficient, so between the multi Gw of power demand peak hours of 1 day, how do you propose to charge up said batteries at night and for weeks in foggy Germany when there is no wind?
Magic?
The kind of post you spammed onto here was absolutely typical of German style stupidity, while it’s Lignite keeping the lights on currently, especially after they shut down 2 perfect working NPP last christmas!