Germany finds itself facing an astronomical challenge of plugging a massive power gap, one according to BloombergNEF that could cost the country over $1 trillion by 2030 . The urgency to address this energy crisis stems from a combination of factors, including the aftermath of the war in Ukraine and the dubious choice to transition away from nuclear and coal power plants. However, the predicament Germany now faces is largely a consequence of poor planning and inadequate foresight in the energy sector. As the nation scrambles to find solutions, it becomes evident that crucial opportunities were missed, poor decisions were made, and the costs of this oversight are now mounting.
Underestimating the Scope of the Challenge:
One of the fundamental failures in Germany’s planning was underestimating the scale of the energy transition required. The political decision to phase out nuclear and coal power plants, coupled with increased demand from electric vehicles, heating systems, and economically suicidal climate commitments, has created an overwhelming demand for new generation and upgraded power grids. The sheer magnitude of the undertaking, requiring the installation of solar panels equivalent to 43 soccer fields and 1,600 heat pumps daily, indicates a severe lack of anticipation and preparedness.
Germany has set aside more than €260 billion ($275 billion) to deal with the immediate risks of an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the ultimate fix will be much costlier — if the country can pull it off at all.
https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/germany-faces-1-trillion-challenge-plug-massive-power-gap-590590
BASF SE‘s plans to cut 2,600 jobs as it faces strains from the energy crisis is a sign of the urgency. The chemical giant’s operations in Germany swung to a loss during the second half, and it’s now closing a number of energy-intensive factories, including two ammonia plants and related fertilizer facilities, resulting in 700 job cuts at its main Ludwigshafen site.
https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/germany-faces-1-trillion-challenge-plug-massive-power-gap-590590
Lack of Clarity in Replacing Energy Sources:
Germany’s dilemma is exacerbated by its unclear path for replacing phased-out energy sources. With nuclear and coal off the table, the country is heavily reliant on importing liquefied natural gas, which comes at a higher cost. The transition to electric cars, heat pumps, and hydrogen production further adds to the energy demand. Yet, there is a lack of concrete plans for generating electricity during periods of low renewable production. The reliance on future gas plants running on hydrogen faces significant hurdles, including a lack of willing investors, the reliance on and nonexistent and potentially never existent technology, and the high costs involved, if those problems were to ever be solved.
Insufficient Investment and Unclear Regulations:
The lack of funding and investment in the energy sector can be attributed to high market uncertainty and unclear regulations, and of course the dubious prospects of profitability of intermittent wind and solar without major subsidies. These issues hamper the development of necessary infrastructure. Investors remain hesitant to commit to costly projects, leaving Germany in a state of flux. The need for clear regulations and financial incentives is essential to attract private sector participation at all.
Conclusion:
Germany’s $1 trillion energy challenge serves as a stark reminder of the consequences that poor planning can have on a nation’s energy future. The failure to accurately anticipate the scope of the transition and the absence of a clear path to replace phased-out energy sources have created a significant hurdle. Addressing this crisis requires a comprehensive reassessment of energy policies, including rethinking some of the politically motivated retirement of nuclear power, enhanced investment in research and development, and the establishment of clear regulations and financial incentives. Germany must learn from its past oversights and rectify them swiftly to ensure a resilient energy future for the country. Time is of the essence.
A lot of opinion here, but few facts.
Whose opinion is it?
nick,
if you understood power then it is all so apparent and has been for very many years, it just takes time for the crunch to come.
No one needs to look far to see that German manufacturing is dying.
Germany’s economy is de-industrialising. It is the inevitable consequence of moving away from low cost power generation:
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2023-06-01/german-manufacturing-shrinks-at-fastest-in-3-years-in-may-pmi
Manufacturing is down to Covid levels and continuing to shrink. No economy can have competitive heavy industry without burning coal.
Absolutely true. If any BMW’s or Benz’s are made in the EU in 10 years it will be in Poland or Hungary where they are still building FF power generation. Was reading an article about how the German Auto workers are starting to smell a rat.
People don’t yet realize yet that Nut Zero can only be “achieved” by stopping economic growth of any kind. Stagnant economy = no tax revenues to waste on greenie pipe dreams. It is going to hit like a ton of bricks soon.
I don’t believe it is possible for a large country to maintain a high standard of living without having a heavy industry base. Heavy industry requires cheap energy. You can’t run a steel blast furnace with a windmill.
Well Nick, we know your opinion….
It came originally from Bloomberg but got here via a media outlet in Bangladesh
i.e. The Business Standard
https://www.tbsnews.net/
It’s worth a snoop around there – you’ll never guess what I found.
Cue: Maniacal laughter
Simultaneously, I found (some of) NASA’s squirrels, Global Greening BS and Soil Erosion
In. Just. One. Picture.
There is soil erosion, aridification, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, flash floods, sealevel rises and those things, contrary to the utter insanity that is = Climate Science, caused the rising CO₂
Not only is somebody making total fools out an awful lot of people, but Gaia is completely pissed off with us and has signed our death warrant.
All we have to do is dig our graves & jump in there and, as we see daily on these pages, we can’t get in there fast enough.
Simply by growing and eating sugar – which we all love – who doesn’t like eating sugar?
Do you see Global Greening here?
(As attached in case the link is broken or disappears)
Oops, forgot to link the article it cane from…
https://www.tbsnews.net/features/heatwave-subsides-does-so-our-concern-greenery-649694
“A lot of opinion here, but few facts.”
Just like a Stokes comment. !
Nick,
Just look at the data for German electricity generation. It’s available online with historical data. During the last few weeks they have had a 9GW shortfall at times when the sun goes down. The UK is currently importing 6GW, a lot from the same countries as Germany will later.
Just as well it’s not winter
German power exports are down, but it is still a big net exporter:
Like everyone else with sizable wind and solar, they’re exporting when neither they nor any of their neighbors need it. Which is usually when the highest amount is produced.
Murphy’s Law in action.
And where will all those EU countries go for imports to cover the shortfalls after they’ve all gone down the same road of idiotic energy policies?
Germany exports renewable surplus to Norway at very cheap prices. Allows Norway to throttle back hydro and preserve the water. Then, when Germany has a renewable shortfall, Norway spools up its hydro and sells the electricity to Germany at very high prices. Great deal for Norway. Fo Germany, not so much.
Like all trade, it benefits both parties.
Yeah, if you call losing money on each kWh sold a benefit. And think of the cost of overbuilding your generation fleet.
Here’s a fact for you to ponder Nick.
In August 2022 coal powered generation in China increased by around 150% year on year to over 500 TWh. This monthly level of generation was higher than the annual coal power generation in any other country except India and the US.
And another one: China accounts for more than half of global coal demand, with its power sector alone accounting for one third of global coal consumption.
And: coal use worldwide has risen from 4699 Mt in 2000 to 8038 Mt in 2022
And: India’s coal consumption has doubled since 2007
And: China, India and Indonesia are the world’s three largest producers of coal and their coal use is only going one way
And: Global CO2 emissions from coal use rose by 268Mt to 11.2Gt in 2022
All info from various IEA documents
There are many facts here. You choose to ignore them.
Yes you’re right Nick but it’s obvious now they’re dragging their feet with renewables rollout compared to Australians-
Australia to have some of the highest electricity costs in the world (msn.com)
Why even some Australian States are a bit tardy compared to we virtuous South Australians leading the charge you’ll note.
It’s obvious the dawdling Euros have to lift their game and power prices if we’re to change the global weather folks. It’s just not fair that Australia’s poor have to shoulder all the burden here and I’m starting to contextualise the R word if this doesn’t change.
“Germany has set aside more than €260 billion ($275 billion) to deal with the immediate risks of an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the ultimate fix will be much costlier — if the country can pull it off at all.” 260 billion euros in taxpayers money. Not an opinion. A fact
“requiring the installation of solar panels equivalent to 43 soccer fields and 1,600 heat pumps”
That doesn’t sound all that much.
“daily”
Oh.
They can cover every open space with them, and they’ll still produce NOTHING when the wind doesn’t blow at the “right” speeds.
“. . . installation of solar panels . . .” — MJ
So,
Germany is in a zone of semipermanent low pressure.
They have long stretches of clouds and fog during the low Sun season, when they have less than 8 hours of daylight and the Sun angle is very low even at noon.
They have less potential to generate PV solar power than the north slope of Alaska:
And almost none of that potential is when they need it the most.
Something, Something, Germany for leadership…
Even after this!
Renewables account for around 45% of Germany’s electricity generation but electricity accounts for only around 20% -25% of the total primary energy consumption.
Overall in 2021 ‘low carbon sources’ (nuclear hydro solar wind geothermal tidal bio excl. firewood etc.) made up around 25% of total primary energy consumption that has fallen to the same as in 1970, the remaining 75% coming from oil gas and coal (Our World Data).
GDP per cap in Germany is in steep decline after decades of strong growth and the country has just recorded two quarters of negative GDP growth (Trading Economics).
The productivity chart tells the story: strong growth for forty years until 2008 when the “Energiewende” policy was legislated then steady slow decline (Trading Economics).
Economic suicide in real time. It’s kind of fascinating to watch.
As long as it’s “somewhere else.”
The rational parts of the U.S. need crash test dummies. Germany, CA and NY.
It is not a matter of “poor” planning. There was NO planning. The whole thing was built on hope and dreams. Numbats who have no idea of energy production were seduced by the idea that technocrats would work out how to apply Moore’s law to energy production.
Germany is headed for de-industrialisation like the UK. It has given up manufacturing to China. And China is smart enough to lock in the intellectual property development elsewhere for their own future.
Planning is the difference between Germany and China. China is dominating next generation automotive technology: While China demonises coal through its influence at the UN it uses coal as the building block to dominate global manufacturing:
https://www.voanews.com/a/silicon-valley-technology_how-china-dominates-global-battery-supply-chain/6195257.html.
Australia is only a small market for BEVs but most of the top selling electric vehicles landed in Australia are built in China.
There can be no transition in the west without China providing all the stuff built using coal.
There was lots of good planning. The question is whose. German energy dependence on Russia was a planned outcome of Yuri Andropov’ strategy of infiltrating Western green groups in the 1960ss and ’70s. Russia produced nothing anyone else wanted for commercial purposes except oil and gas. Andropov’s strategy was to cripple the European nuclear industry, Germany’s in particular, to ensure it’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
This is why Andropov was picked to be Leonid Brezhnev’s successor. He was the only one in the Soviet Central Committee doing anything effective against their NATO opposition. His only problem was that the Soviet Union collapsed and he died long before it came to fruition.
Charles,
You use the words “The lack of funding and investment in the energy sector can be attributed to high market uncertainty and unclear regulations”.
For contrast, in my mid-career we would have noted something like “Corporately, we are succeeding by using profits from good management to expand and introduce the best of new technologies, but we flag an emerging problem of increases in bureaucratic burdens that will need to be kept in check.It allunfolded as plain as could be. Ebgineers had less say in poroper design and construction, planning was steadily replaced by “ambition”, strangulating permissions became reqyuiured for increasingly trivial events (like the Snail Darter fiasco and the Spotted Owl charade).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_darter_controversy
…
https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/resources/ethics-and-the-environment-the-spotted-owl/#:~:text=Under%20this%20provision%2C%20timber%20companies,opposed%20by%20the%20timber%20industry.
…
Childish concepts like “Ethics and the Environment” were strengthened, because the concepts were so simple that a dreamy politician could work with them rather than mastering the mathematics of (say) the radioactive decay of used nuclear fuel rods over time. In earlier times, we saw occasional references to this simplistic kiddy stuff, so it is now nobody but us to blame for letting it live and grow “organically” into the monster it now is, killing many people already, with many more to come. We should have cut it off at the neck at an earlier stage.
The decision making process at national scale used to be a pyramid of organisational shape, with the cream at the top. These days, that has been levelled into an untidy, incomprehensible rubble of corruption, collusion, deceit with a current trend to cancel culture and mob rule through social media for harvesting tall poppies willy nilly.
The government should do something to fix it. (satire).
Geoff S.
Excellent news for AfD
A message from Michael E Mann
“”2023 will almost certainly be the warmest year on record,” said Mann. “That is likely to be true for just about every El Niño year in the future as well, as long we we continue to warm the planet with fossil fuel burning and carbon pollution.””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/15/record-temperatures-global-heating
Carbon pollution?
If CO2 is referred to as “carbon”, then H2O should be referred to as “oxygen”. So if you breathe in “oxygen” you will drown. Wait… that can’t be right.
A Disgace to the Profession
https://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession34-Mark-Steyn-editor/dp/0986398330
Michael Mann’s “work” has been discredited. Don’t give any weight to anything he says.
He, among others, created this CO2 crisis out of thin air. If you are getting hurt by Nut Zero, you can thank Michael Mann and his ilk. He’s still out there promoting his hoax.
I, too, recommend Mark’s book “A Disgrace to the Profession.” Also Andrew Montfort’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” Rud Istvan’s “Blowing Smoke,” Vaclav Smil’s “How Things Really Work” and Steven Koonin’s “Unsettled.” Official lies take time to rebut; it took 70 years for the Soviet Union.
The Guardian’s readership might take Mann’s utterings seriously, but 27 people out of the world’s population doesn’t amount to much of an audience.
Is that “hockey stick” Mann?
The lunacy of German energy plans and how dangerous they are to European economic stability, is on par with Germany’s casual unspoken about indebtedness growth since the Euro was introduced.
If you think the German Energy decision making is bizarre which it certainly is, then you will be amazed and shocked as this honest economist explains Eurozone Target2 and how Germany will handle the TARGET2 liabilities it has acquired. It amounts to over €1trillion.
It is a fun presentation enjoy it and ask yourself where do they go from here?
This time it seems Germany doesn’t need a third party to destroy the nation in its green war. They can do it all by themselves.
They are doing a good job of self-destruction.
California is probably not far behind.
The U.S.A. is currently destroying itself through a whole range of policy choices, well beyond just energy policies. It’s been accelerating over decades, and is nearing a crisis stage.
This article implies that with better planning and management, Germany would not be facing a trillion euro deficit, skyrocketing energy costs, and unreliability of supply.
The truth is that no amount of planning, better management, etc will ever make wind and solar a viable source for production of energy. Wind and solar will always be uneconomical and unreliable sources of energy because of the immutable laws of physics and economics.
Wind and solar cannot be competitive with nuclear and fossil fuels because of the low energy density of wind and solar compared to fossil fuels and nuclear. The unreliability can only be cured with massive low cost storage, which does not exist, or fossil fuel and nuclear back up.
If fossil fuel or nuclear backup is required, then nothing is gained except additional cost by wind and solar.
The failure of wind and solar as a viable path was foreseeable then, foreseeable now, and only willful blindness is causing Germany, the US, and the rest of the world to continue down this path.
Story tip
From the BBC
Trees found growing at record altitudes up Scotland’s Munros.
Trees have been found growing at record-breaking heights in Scotland’s mountains, according to new research by the University of Stirling.
The highest was a rowan 1,150m (3,773ft) up Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan, a Munro in West Affric.
On Braeriach, Britain’s third highest mountain, a sitka spruce was found at 1,125m (3,691ft).
The trees could be a sign of how hilltop woodlands lost over thousands of years might be restored.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-65903065
No mention of a warming climate with more CO2 being a good thing. No mention of the fact that those thousands of years include a change to a significantly colder and wetter climate. Plenty of blame for people letting their animals over graze, which is a problem in regrowth not in the die off 5000 years ago
Germany regulated itself into a death spiral, focusing on occasional just electricity from unreliable wind and solar weather conditions to run their economy.
The above article’s lead in sentence:
“Germany finds itself facing an astronomical challenge of plugging a massive power gap, one according to BloombergNEF that could cost the country over $1 trillion by 2030.”
Well, the United States currently has a population that is four times larger than Germany.
Do the math.
And California governor Newsom (Democrat) wants to require all new cars sold in the state after 2035 to be only EVs . . . with no real work planned to supply that accompanying increase of grid demand. What an idiot!
“Fools rush in where angles fear to tread.” — Alexander Pope, 1711
Yeah…and that idiot wants to run for President.
Yeah, Newsom wants to do for the United States what he did for California.
California’s population is leaving in droves because of the failed policies of Newsom and the radical California Democrats.
Newsom wants to bring his failed policies to the White House.
We don’t want any radical Democrats such as Biden or Newsom in the White House. Democrats in charge are a disaster in the making, as we see with the Trafficer-in-Chief, Joe Biden.
These consequences are the result of cramming an ideology down the peoples’ throats and not poor planning. It was by design, not accident.
“Poor planning” is such a kindly euphemism for the ongoing suicide of Germany as a significant nation
German companies are building more automobile plants in the United States.
German CO2 policies have driven them away.
German politicians are really stupid. But they don’t have a monopoly on it though, as all the Western governments are more or less going down the same path, although the obvious failures of the German policy may wake some nations up before it’s too late. Let us hope.
CO2-phobes are killing the West.
Germans should be fine with energy hyperinflation. /sarc
Let Ukraine and Poland provide the power and industrial output. Germans are too distracted with climate wars.
“Germany has set aside more than €260 billion ($275 billion) to deal with the immediate risks of an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but the ultimate fix will be much costlier — if the country can pull it off at all.” Since a country gas no money – it’s taxpayer money – the taxpayers have “set aside more the 260 Billion euros. Not “Germany”
Trillions, dollars, pounds, Euros, Deutschmarks, etc. have already been wasted on this fools errand!
Within a few years, much less than ten years, a need for 3 trillion will replace each trillion claimed today because economies will have failed to keep place and government spending without limits will erode the value of old currencies.