Germany’s government energy policies will keep heating up inflation…the country’s promise of cheap, clean energies was a phony bill of goods.
Inflation will remain high
The worst of inflation is behind us, and it all Russia’s fault to begin with, Germany’s socialist/green government likes to claim. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Don’t expect Germany’s inflation to return back to 2020 levels. The CO2 tax increase and highway truck toll fees will soon be enacted. Image: Destatis here.
The message they want to tell us is that inflation will soon ease back down to more normal levels, and everything will go back to being rosy again. But as is the case with all denialist socialist regimes, don’t count on it. The recent inflation has little to do with Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, and almost all to do with its radical policy of eradicating fossil fuel and nuclear power.
And that policy will continue well into the future, unless there’s a regime change in Germany.
CO2 tax to double in 2024.
The first reason Germans should not expect inflation to ease is the coming CO2 tax increase, slated for the start of 2024.
The CO2 price will increase every year. According to finanztip.de, “The price is to rise again on January 1, 2024. According to a draft bill from the German government, an increase to 40 euros per ton of emitted CO2 is planned for 2024. In 2025, the CO2 price is to be 50 euros per ton.”
It could reach 65 euros a ton by 2027.
This will make energy far more expensive for all Germans, and in every aspect of life. It also will also continue to drive energy-intensive industry out of the country.
Exploding highway toll fees for trucks
Not only will the CO2 tax increase make transportation more expensive, but so will the highway toll fees for heavy trucks, which will rise 83% at the start of 2024.
According to Blackout News, (citing Welt): “The fee for heavy trucks will rise sharply at the turn of the year, by 83 percent. This endangers smaller transport companies. There is also unrest in the trade sector about the massive increase in the truck toll. Both sectors know who will ultimately have to bear the additional costs, namely the consumer.”
Retailers are protesting loudly. According to trade experts, “Companies could pay up to an additional 40,000 euros per truck as a result of the toll.”
Germany’s exploding prices have little to do with economic cycles. The inflationary spiral is being driven by short-sighted, misguided government energy policies based on junk climate science.
The right wing are gaining greater support in Germany, as local elections have just shown
The greenerati have had their day, they are being purged by an increasingly poor, cold and hungry silent majority – it will spread thank god
I am sorry to doubt your optimistic scenario, Energywise. The Germans (part of my heritage) are abstract thinkers. A strength far overused turning into a disastrous weakness on many occasions.
They can believe strongly in a theory long after the evidence clearly refutes it. Now Russia/Ukraine is causing inflation, later something else. The doctrine is that wind and solar are cheaper than fossils. Evidence doesn’t enter into it. The doctrine is to be accepted. If necessary, imaginary effects will be created to maintain the doctrine.
Not only do they fervently believe in Climate Changery, they also ‘know’ that AfD is fascist and beyond the pale. No matter what actual policies are proposed, no matter how ‘diverse’ the politician. No matter how fascist the acceptable politicians are in reality.
I don’t expect to ever see a conservative (classical liberal) government in Germany. Would be interested in the views of our German readers on this, though.
Agreed! Left Germany (part of my heritage) decades ago. Unfortunately Germany, Canada the US and Australia are drunk on the kool aid and have embraced the Gaia climeastrology religion. Germany and especially Australia are becoming third world countries masquerading as first world countries.
Difficult to watch a country, commonly thought of as an engineering center, spin downward into self-induced oblivion. This CO2 tax, in several varieties, is becoming more common. The tax is punitive on the consumer side and strong-arm robbery on the government side. What is really needed is a mileage tax on EV’s. Don’t wait for it.
I’d say Germany is the basket case we have made it. Perhaps they’re even nostalgic for the good old Weimar days when they took their pay packets home in a wheelbarrow?
“NATO having a defence spending target for its members is bad for the environment and building more weapons to donate to Ukraine risks damaging the climate, a report by a group of think tanks and pressure groups warns. It is alleged that while the militaries of NATO produced 200 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2021, it will rise to a predicted 226 million tons in 2023, driven by rearmament and increased activity spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The paper claims that figure could rise to 300 million tons a year by the end of this decade. The findings of the yet-to-be-published report are revealed by Germany’s Spiegel news magazine”
…
Pushing to re-arm to defend the West against Russian aggression is contrary “to Germany’s climate goals”
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/nato-zwei-prozent-ziel-gefaehrdet-wohl-weltweite-klimaziele-a-ed3b9a93-59c6-4e0d-b063-bc15a4f9508d
As Hermann Hesse put it: “Nur für Verrückte” [Demian, 1919]
Or… For madmen only
My mistake…..
“Nur für Verrückte” [Steppenwolf, 1927]
Haven’t read them in years but would recommend The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) and Narziss und Goldmund.
Meanwhile in Britain Luton airport car park is destroyed by fire and a thousand or so cars with it.
https://news.sky.com/story/luton-airport-fire-emergency-crews-respond-to-huge-blaze-at-car-park-12981928
The article says the fire started with a diesel car which means that it started with an electric car. No doubt spreading to a few others.
Sky news is just about as woke as it gets
“We don’t believe it was an electric vehicle,”
Nice try.
It’s very big news and he’s spot on with this-
It’s OVER. The Luton Airport Fire just KILLED the EV market. Here’s why. – YouTube
As he says Joe Public naturally believe it to be lithium batteries now whatever starts it-
Truck full of Tesla Model Ys explodes into Flames – but hybrids 100x more dangerous – YouTube
Won’t do the climate changers and their fan club media any good trying to gloss over it as insurance underwriters sure won’t but car buyers will soon tell the story.
I liked one comment on your first link:
“It matters not whether the fire actually started with an EV. Any fire, once it has spread to an EV in an enclosed space such as a multi-story car park, will have the same result.”
I wonder if the carpark has EV charging bays although it could have been a hydrogen car or terrorist bomb from the video-
Is this the car that started the Luton airport car park fire? Moment vehicle explodes before £20m multi-storey structure collapses – sparking travel chaos for up to 50,000 passengers with all flights cancelled until 3pm | Daily Mail Online
We’ll see but if that was an EV exploding the industry is finished.
This was Terminal Car Park 2 – newly built but I don’t think it had any EV charging points. Car Park 1 has a few installed but no fire.
Could turn out to be one of those friendly Hamas types but nevertheless there’s still questions to answer as to why it spread like it did after the initial bang. Video footage will eventually tell the story.
The nature and spread of the fire is not what I have ever seen in a diesel fire.
I’m sure at some level the order for disinformation – where the hell is Marianna? – has already gone out.
“We don’t believe it was an electric vehicle,”
Is this the car that started the Luton airport car park fire? Moment vehicle explodes before £20m multi-storey structure collapses – sparking travel chaos for up to 50,000 passengers with all flights cancelled until 3pm | Daily Mail Online
Definitely a diesel vehicle as you see them go bang like that all the time and spread to different carpark levels collapsing them for sure. Just like those RoRo car carriers full of diesel cars.
Putin did it
Back on topic seems German Green Trinkwasser protesters might have been rather prophetic and may yet get their way-
“We are here, we are loud, because Tesla is stealing our water,” protesters called.
“You’re stealing our water”: Germans protest against Tesla gigafactory | Reuters
It certainly takes a lot of water to cool them down once they get fired up.
The increasing trend of household electric rates from about 16 eurocent in 2000 when the stupidities of the ENERGIEWENDE started, to about 40 eurocent at present, with the ENERGIEWENDE still ongoing, had nothing to do with Russia and the Ukraine events, starting in Feb 2022
Germany has become uncompetitive on world markets already for years, due to unlimited UNVETTED, immigration of uneducated, unskilled, culturally different people from all over the world. The German ethics of hard work and perfection are KAPUT
Finally, the people are beginning to rebel and voting for AfD, which is their only hope.
That party needs to get at least 35% of the votes to form a coalition government with other rightist, save Germany, parties, to start Germany on a rational course.
The same needs to happen in France, the UK, the US, etc. A TSUNAMI OF CHANGE
Immigrants are usually very hard-working.
Some immigrants are. Many others do not fit in, live off social programs, as they do in Norway, where I was living.
Closing nuclear plants, clear-cutting forests, solar in Germany?
Merkel approved all of that and, now lapdog Scholz
The US is putting pressure on its NATO and other allies and consequently, some start saying: look, the [far-right] Alternative for Germany, AfD, party is rearing its head.
Lapdog Scholz even allowed the US to blow up 2 pipelines, that supplied much-needed low-cost gas to the German industrial economy and the economies of other EU countries
Without that gas, Germany and much of the EU is KAPUT
The EU needs financial-blackhole Ukraine as a member, as it needs another hole in the head.
Inflation has everything to do with central banks printing money to pay the bills (stimulating the economy, that’s what they call it). All those euros/dollars compete for the same products, causing prices to rise.
Socialism will always run out of money.
Everyone, even the financial media, seems to think that higher prices are indicative of inflation. That’s not the case. Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply. It’s how governments spend more without increasing taxation or borrowing. In situations with a stable supply of money an increase in the price of some commodity will result in a decrease in the price of other products. Supposedly governments want a small amount of inflation to discourage consumers from putting off the purchase of goods in the hope that they will be cheaper in the future. A consumer economy is propelled by the purchases of consumers, not their savings. Engineered inflation is an exercise in mass psychology. One of its most famous examples was Roman Emperor Septimus Severus calling the country’s coinage and re-minting it with less valuable metal additives.
I’ve been told that deflation is worse than inflation.
And since monetary policy is hardly a precise instrument, it’s better to err on the side of inflation.
So you prefer that everything you buy to get more expensive and your savings to lose purchasing power.
Congress established three key objectives for monetary policy in the Federal Reserve Act: maximizing employment, stabilizing prices, and moderating long-term interest rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
Robert, chose any two, three is not an option, sorry that’s reality. Like we learn in project management: cheap, fast, high quality, chose any two.
Causing your (fiat currency) savings to lose purchasing power until it will make them worthless paper.
Energy cost increases are in direct proportion to renewables being installed. How much longer will the narrative that “renewables are cheaper than fossil fuel” be allowed to continue?
Germany has a dysfunctional political.system. No one Party can achieve a mandate because there are too many parties. The resulting coalition requires so much compromise that fundamental change is not possible. The AfD (Altertnative for Duetsland) could have saved Germany but their dramatic gains this past year are too little to late.
Diesel doesn’t go bang. It doesn’t vaporize the way gasoline does.
You would need to heat the diesel in a sealed container
Canada is on the same self destructive path as Germany. Only Canada has huge oil reserves tied up a 4 levels of government plus the courts.
I want the ignorant experts and professionals running Germany to increase taxes and fees even faster. There is no sense in prolonging the inevitable. Nothing in Germany is going to change until the average guy has had enough and puts a stop to this crap. I am surprised that the German population has put up with this thuggery as long as they have.
The carbon import tax in Europe will accelerate the economic decline of Europe. They will isolate themselves from Chinese manufacturing and the associated economy of scale.
European manufacturers with any survival instinct are setting up operations in China and that guarantees that Chinese manufacturing continues to embed hard won intellectual property at rock bottom prices.
China established a new high electricity production in July of 846TWh. That is now double US production.