By P Gosselin
“Catastrophic report”: Whopping 88% of those surveyed see move to green energies as unachievable!
Green energies no longer have the support of Germans due to high costs and technical limitations. Image: P. Gosselin.
Most Germans used to be enthusiastic supporters of the country’s Energiewende (transition to renewable energies), especially in the early days when they were brazenly misled about the endeavor’s humungous costs and technical limitations.
Those days are gone.
“Catastrophic report”
As the government gears up to try to pass legislation that would force most homeowners to carry out extensive renovation to their homes and upgrades to their heating systems, the Energiewende is suddenly no longer looking like a bargain and is no longer welcome by the vast majority of Germans, according to a Forsa survey. The sun and wind don’t deliver energy for free after all.
Austrian alternative media AUF 1 reports via Telegram (emphasis added):
The current Forsa survey on the subject of the transition to green energies gives the German government a catastrophic report card. Almost 90 percent of Germans no longer believe in the so-called energy transition – a historically low figure. In a similar survey in 2011, almost 40 percent still hoped for its success. Among the few who are convinced is Chancellor Scholz. ‘We can and will succeed in the energy transition,’ he recently announced in Berlin.
German industry, on the other hand, is less confident, warning of a total exodus of the manufacturing sector due to the expected electricity shortage and enormous energy prices.”
AUF 1 reports here at its website that “only ten percent still believe that Germany’s energy needs can indeed be covered by sun and wind energy”.
“”…force most homeowners to carry out extensive renovation to their homes and upgrades to their heating systems””
We get a lot of this nonsense and nobody can answer a very simple question: what if the householder doesn’t have the money? And there are, shall we say, quite a few in that position
You adroitly state the blindingly bleeding obvious issue that these corrupt politicos dare not address – unless they intend to instruct the CBs to fire up the printing presses to produce money out of thin air to prime their own economies to produce the “renovations”. What happens if the “renovations” are imported from , say, China…..hasnt “worked” so well for “western” economies so far ( Solar panels, EVs, textiles, white goods, energy heavy products such as steel..)
Global price/wage equalization. The average of 7 billion earners is not an average UK salary.
What really gets crazy and highlights what this grotesque train-wreck is at all is that me and you can go buy, install and run a heat pump for barely more than £500 inc tax
They’re called Split-Unit Air Conditioners.
They are exactly that. They come as 2 parts, one goes in the room you want to heat and the other hangs off an outside wall.
(No especial reason why the outside unit couldn’t sit on the ground on a couple of concrete flags)
The two parts are connected via an umbilical carrying all they need (typical = 4metres long) , are pre-loaded with refrigerant, are rated at 3kW of heat output, plug into a bog-standard wall socket and are controlled via diddy little remote.
Any competent handyman (with an assistant) could fix one up inside an afternoon
A couple living in modest (typical UK) house would only really need one in the living-room.
It would make that room cosy and the heat would leak into and permeate the rest of the house.
They can be programmed to keep a low level of background warmth (typical 16°C).
If its cold or you want more either ramp it up or use a small fan heater.
Same applies for bedrooms but if ‘House = Huge’ hang another one in there.
Their great beauty especially for the UK is that they will also run as dehumidifiers – damp is what makes houses feel cold.
Obviously you also get an air-con in case The Climate really does change and we look like being fried.
Professional installers will charge about £1,100 to supply and fit if you don’t feel safe
The kits usually comes with the required 4″ masonry drill-bit you need to get the umbilical through the wall plus sealants etc to fill it up again
Compare to what you’re repeating about ‘Government Guidance’
What Trump said about the USA (A Hot Place) applies to the UK, except it happened here over 20 years ago with Tony Blair
They also run with expensive electricity.
You may also run your frigo at high intensity and “heat” you room with the backside liquifyer…
I’ll stick with gas, myself.
“Generators in the Contracts for Difference subsidy scheme get an annual increase in the guaranteed ‘strike prices’ they receive for their output.
This year, many have received price rises of more than 10%. For example, the huge Hornsea 1 offshore windfarm saw an 11% price increase, which will boost its revenue by nearly £100 million per year.(1) Hornsea 2, due to come on stream in 2024, had a price rise of 14%.
With market prices for electricity now below £100 per megawatt hour, several windfarms have strike prices worth £209. There are several tidal power stations in planning which have been promised higher prices still. The Drax biomass power station has seen a 12% increase to £142.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/04/06/the-great-renewables-rip-off-continues/
“The Drax biomass power station has seen a 12% increase to £142″
without getting into a hopeless argument over the merits or demerits of woody biomass- we’ve been there done that- I wonder how they justified that increase- are they paying more for chips from America? Maybe they just think they can get away with it if other energy producers are raising prices.
I believe the strike price is index linked or similar
good reason why prices for one product or service should not be linked to another- I bet their price for the chips has not gone up- maybe their employees got big raises- or at least the bosses and owners of the company- when prices get linked the entire system can spin out of control
Drax should have stuck with the dead, ancient “biomass” instead of killing living trees for it’s biomass.
Actually despite the indexation increase in their strike price they are unlikely to operate the unit covered by a CFD over the next six months. The reason is that it is benchmarked against a Baseload Market Reference Price that is assessed 6 months at a time based on quotations during the previous 6 months for baseload power, and with the price just published at £207.17/MWh they effectively face a tax of about £165/MWh. If markets get really tight and they can sell output for a good premium to the BMRP they might fire up the unit.
Yes, natural gas is by far the most efficient way to heat buildings and water. Pipeline delivery provides 92% efficiency in delivered heat and appliance efficiency exceeds 80% with modern furnaces and boilers operating at around 95% for a net efficiency of 80+%. Compare to electricity which generally delivers less than 40% efficiency before it reaches your house, Also consider that in the best case gas is the primary back-up to wind/solar so it provides 60+% of the energy actually consumed for electric heat. Your much better off burning gas at the end use location.
delivery to end use location?
Heat pumps can provide up to 400% efficiency BUT generating electric power with gas is a bit over 50%. Power transmission might cost 20% of your power. Efficiency drops on heat pumps as the temperature approaches freezing. In short you come out ahead when it’s warm and you don’t need much heat but much below freezing the unit will be running full time and be lucky to keep up. Heat pumps are great for a warm climate but I don’t think that describes the climate in the UK.
Disclaimer: I have a heat pump and it works well here in Phoenix but I am glad I we had oil heat in Wisconsin.
I have a heat pump and my home is just a bit north of Washington, DC. I’d say I am at the northern range of a heat pump in the US, but it works great for me.
It doubles as an air conditioner in the warm months, and my electric bill is $143/month for an all-electric home built in 1990. it’s three levels, with a finished family room in the walkout basement.
I think the real trick is insulation. Our builder put it in the joists between all the floors, wrapped the ductwork in it, and blew about a foot or so of it into the attic. If we lose power on even a single-digit day, it takes a few hours to even get down to 65F.
You do understand the heat pump units you are touting operate poorly and use MUCH more electricity in northern latitudes, right? Why not just use what actually works in those northern latitudes? Oh, yea, the ginned up climate religion, that’s why.
Nope, can’t have that. One government, one solution for everyone.
“damp is what makes houses feel cold.”
yuh, in cold weather- but in winter with the heat on, raising the humidity will make the house feel warmer because that moisture also warms up- so I have a humidifier going in very cold weather and I feel the difference
Water vapor is the bane to climate control cooling is a household. My home does use several split units but only when it is warm and humid. We personally only use the dehumidify setting to bring down the water vapor in the home. That makes it feel cooler by removing the water vapor that holds warmth in the air.
The heating option for these type of units is very expensive to use on colder days. We will use our fossil fuel heating system for the immediate injection of warmth. The water vapor in the air is generally lower in colder months but what is there will help it feel warmer for a longer time.
Split units have their place as a cooling engine but like all heat pumps are definitely ineffective and expensive as a heat source.
One of the main reasons for running a humidifier in very cold weather is to reduce static shocks. The very dry air results in high voltage and painful static. The electrostatic charge that can build up on a vehicle’s metal insulated from earth by the tyres can be rather more electrifying that Olivia Newton John in Grease. Unfortunately the humidifier solution is usually not available, so discharging the static over as wide an area of skin as possible is the only remedy.
Yep, a fueled furnace sends moisture right up the chimney. A humidifier replaces that moisture and makes it feel warmer.
In summer a dehumidifier removes the moisture making the air feel cooler. Actually, an air conditioner also removes moisture, al la the need for a water drain!
A new, efficient heat pump system of 2000 BTU capacity (retail) costs more than $10k without installation. How many subsidies of 90% or more can be applied before the government runs out of money?
They won’t, of course. They will simply tax more.
For less than half that cost, one can purchase a 14KW generator that will run on gasoline, propane, or natural gas — that is, a switchable, multi-fuel system that can run on any of those fuels. Installation would be near the same as quoted for a heat pump, but without penetrating walls. For another couple thousand, a homeowner could add a 96V Carbon Foam battery system and inverter for standby power. If heating or domestic hot water is supplied by a gas boiler or water heater, the waste heat from the generator can be used to supplement the boiler.
Excess home power could be sold back to the government owned utility, and support the grid, rather than overdrawing from it.
All old, proven, available tech, easily optimized and customized for site.
12000 BTU. not 2000. A full house system.
AND Costco in the US has a 22kw generator with transfer switch for $5,000.00 US delivered. It only runs in LPG or Natural gas though.
A Kohler or Generac dual fuel system is about the same. Arbitrarily picked 14 Kw, a 22 KW system is huge, but it is a good comparison. Small U.S. home size using a full forced-air system. Even then, the heat pump is augmented by either gas or electric heat.
A 12000 BTU heat pump will only work for a small house, but if augmented will support all but extreme conditions.
UK systems I’ve seen mostly use hot water radiators in every room. The mini-split system for 500 dollar or pound system specced above will heat or cool about 500 square feet (convert to square meters on your own), but will still need redundant heating and air handling for the coldest days.
A 12000 BTU heat pump will only work for a small house
A heating heat pump won’t do a thing for the largest use of home energy, domestic hot water, nor will it charge an EV.
12000 BTU will heat the average insulated house about 20 degrees C above outdoor temp. Not going to make for a happy homeowner as his outdoor temp drops below zero and keeps dropping because of the polar vortex…..
Plus performance drops as Temp Difference increases, until your heat pump is finally not much better than a resistance heater.
So I take it you have one?
Were quite comfortable here. I fired up my fireplace insert this morning here in north central Indiana and am quite comfortable and using just a little electricity to run the blower.
I had a 4,000 Sq ft house. Installed 2 reverse cycle split systems, 1 at either end of yhe house.
Only used systems for a couple of hours each morning until the wood fired heater took over.
Cost a motza to run though. Have to be used judiciously.
Heat pumps are absolutely useless for heating where I live.
Reverse cycle split system airconditioners are great PROVIDING you don’t have to deal with extremes of temperature-
How Air Con Temperature Settings Impact Costs – Canstar Blue
Now Adelaide in South Australia has a Mediterranean climate so heat pump aircon is a no brainer. Particularly in peak summer demand when rooftop solar is running them. However last winter we had a particularly wet winter and for the first time ever I had a tenant complain their ducted RC aircon wasn’t heating. Turned out the outside compressor unit heat exchanger had iced up completely. So get you hair dryer on it dearie as our units don’t have de-icing function like you would need in the Snowy Mountains or snow and ice countries. Heat pumps have their limits.
The government will take the property. This may be an outright confiscation, or disguised as a no- or low-interest loan in return for title.
Jamie Dimon, Chairman J.P. Morgan, Letter to Shareholders.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/04/seize-property-build-wind-solar-farms-jp-morgan/
Since bankers are involved, another way to confiscate private property will be simply to use an outstanding home loan as a reason to intimidate owners into taking out an even greater amount to make changes, or simply to foreclose. All perfectly legal under new property and income tax laws, and grandfathered in.
Forget households – At a recent congressional climate hearing US government climate representatives estimated that the US would need to spend 50 trillion to make the green transition happen
The government will print more money to subsidize it, and the poor will pay for it through more inflation.
” … before the government runs out of money? They won’t, of course. They will simply tax more.”
I had to chuckle. The idea of taxing to raise money is so 40 years ago. All of it is debt now.
It fits exactly the policies of Klaus Schwab and the WEF: You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. Those who can’t afford the costs will have to sell. This will lead to an implosion of the real estate market which will lead to more “forced sales” because the value of the houses will no longer guarantee the mortgages. There’s only one solution here: passive resistance. Don’t do anything until they force you, and even then resist, take them to court. If everybody resists, they can’t do anything. They are few, and we are many …
And then finally .. vote them out of office ASAP.
I toured Germany about 5 years ago and noticed quite a few solar panels along roads and off ramps. One time, I was able to get off the tour bus to get a closer inspection and noticed they looked quite dirty. How effective can dirty solar panels be? Mind you it was a dreary day, so there was not much energy.
Green jobs
Retraining window cleaners to clean solar panels?
Thinking windshield washer technology. Progressives aren’t about to get their pretty little virtuous hands dirty and they surely wouldn’t ask it of the mindless who support them.
They’ve got imported Turks and Nigerians for that.
Remember when they were going to use “solar roads” to generate all the electricity they needed? Good times, right?
good question- I presume somebody has researched the degradation of the energy production on dirty panels? no? Oh, I suppose it would be difficult to get funded for that. 🙂
I suppose in an environment with a lot of rain they’ll “self-clean” but what about in arid locations with a lot of dust/dirt/ blowing around?
Haha, self cleaning. Not long ago here in Kansas, I went out to my mailbox and noticed mud spatters on the top of the mailbox. Odd, I thought, it just rained. Well, those mud spatters were Texas dust that was carried via the storms up to Kansas and precipitated out with the rain onto my mailbox and everything else that was exposed. I am sure that included a lot of solar panels.
If it rains every day then there would be no more problem. Oh wait, solar panels, rain, clouds.
The places with the most sun have the most dust. D’oh!
“in an environment with a lot of rain”… of what use are SOLAR panels???
Also recall Germany was an early adopter for rooftop solar so they have decades of annual declines of efficiency in those panels from a low efficiency and high cost starting point. Unfortunately, there is no signal indicator for viewers to show low power output of panels or non-working or disconnected ones-but the owners know it. We don’t know if they are doing anything or not until they are disposed of or replaced with new subsidy panels and when the inverters failed well before panel disposal. Let’s see the tally board of subsidies over that long a period for the early adopters.
I would love access to the database – though there probably isn’t a database showing panel efficiency vs time? The trouble I have with conspiracy theories involving giant corporations using superior data access to control markets is that the theories rely on someone gathering, saving, maintaining and analyzing actual data plus a qualified data analyzer who cares enough to do good work.
Subsidizing the purchase of products neglected by owners unable to maintain them.
Don’t worry, it was all “free”.
Lemme see if I got this right. No support or understanding for a non-working extremely expensive solution to an non existent problem pushed by a self absorbed elite who keep calling you racist for asking obvious questions.
My,my what a bad people those Germans. I sure hope that he politicians will vote for better Germans next time ….
Except they are mostly committed communist, so even though they don’t agree with their policies they will still vote for them because they believe that anyone that is not a communist is a Nazi, even though Nazis where for all intensive purposes communist themselves.
Maybe this is a sign that the “Fourth Turning Tipping Point” has begun?
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-fourth-turning-tipping-point/
Two page summary of Strauss’ and Howe’s “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy”.
People in Europe are actually waking up, far too late, they at least will be awake as they are loaded onto trains and taken to their new “homes” for re-education.
No they won’t.
Oh, yea, they will. Bayonets tend to keep sheeples from dozing off as they are loaded.
He has a habit of changing his mind- as he has recently regarding another situation the name of which I won’t mention. 🙂
Among the few who are convinced is Chancellor Scholz. ‘We can and will succeed in the energy transition,’ he recently announced in Berlin.
**********
Who else in German history made a promise that didn’t pan out? Didn’t Hitler promise that the Third Reich would last 1,000 years? History repeats.
“Didn’t Hitler promise that the Third Reich would last 1,000 years? ” It may… it seems to me that there are countless “Nazis” still wreaking havoc, though I admit it has only been about 80 years of continuance.
Not convinced of the methodology / degree of accuracy in this survey of the masses, but it is worth a progressive’s time to study the manner and degree to which the masses can be manipulated by bureaucrats, the media and academia to ignore painful reality while toeing the line.
Those of us who consider ourselves to be “aware”, do not need any sort of ‘study’… it is all around us.
It gets better: focus on “e-fuels” now
Germany’s e-fuel fetish ain’t new. Just ask the Führerhttps://www.politico.eu/article/the-nazi-roots-of-germanys-e-fuel-fetish-olaf-scholz-christian-lindner-german-politics-climate/
coal to <s>gasoline</s>hydrogen with carbon capture.
STORY TIP
*****ABSOLUTE ZERO EMISSIONS MITIGATION PLAN FOR UK
ABSOLUTE ZERO
Delivering the UK’s climate change commitment with incremental changes to today’s technologies.
2030-2049: All Shipping and Airports decline to zero…
Read on…
REPORT BY ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL RESOURCES COUNCIL
31 pages – [Detailed timetable – page 7] https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/299414/REP_Absolute_Zero_V3_20200505.pdf
Executive Summary
We can’t wait for breakthrough technologies to deliver net-zero emissions by 2050. Instead, we can plan to respond to climate change using today’s technologies with incremental change. This will reveal many opportunities for growth but requires a public discussion about future lifestyles.
Note: Their plan is very similar to the Nelson Tasman Climate Action Plan framework.
https://nelsontasmanclimateforum.ning.com/resources/absolute-zero-emissions-mitigation-plan-for-uk
“We can’t wait for breakthrough technologies to deliver net-zero emissions by 2050″
We? can’t? wow.
Scholz is a Putin Pup. Still hoping the war will end and Germany can go back to pretending it runs on windmills while actually running on Russan gas.
Oh well…
Nothing like getting smacked in the forehead with the 2×4 of reality: For our entire lives, we’ve been told that wind and solar energy would be practically free if only we’d make the investment. Well, the the Germans did and now their most ironic industries are shutting down and “energy poverty” is a thing. The only question is if the pain will extend to their leadership. Because if it doesn’t, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
And of course, our green leaders here will ignore it all.
“most ironic industries“
Those depending on working with metals.
It was always their looney prescriptions that would bring these lefty climate changers and their hubris undone. Rather ironic that a couple of commie countries would compress and concentrate their problems and bring it all to a head suddenly.
Somewhat related:
How Putin made Europe go green faster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkgFaC-Jug4
by the German based DW channel.
Making it seem that Europe is now far better off regarding green energy. It fails to mention any of the negatives. It clearly believes going green is the solution, not going back to FF or nuclear. It fails to mention how undependable green energy is.
Who the hell are the ~10% that still believe wind and solar will drive a modern industrial society?
The well off who get to virtue signal silly-
Average Australian paying the wealthy through green energy taxpayer subsidies (msn.com)
One person still watching msn?
Let’s see where this goes now that the people have come to realize the basic things we could have told them before they signed up for this disaster now unfolding.
German energy use peaked T 4.3 TWh… it is around 3.5 TWh today. China doesn’t have this problem. They use coal
https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china