Germany’s Green Blues

 
900px-Schneebergerhof_01

By Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ask a self-professed environmentalist what kind of energy policy he’d like to enact, and he’ll likely describe something like Germany’s 2010 Energiewende, which set ambitious emissions-reduction standards, provides immense subsidies to solar and wind power generation, and mandated the phase-out of the country’s nuclear plants. How’s it going? Via the Economist, very poorly, as one should have expected of legislation with conflicting mandates:

[Recent market-orientated reforms do] not address the more fundamental flaws in the Energiewende. The first is that even as the share of renewable energy in electricity generation rises, overall production is so far not getting cleaner, as measured by emissions. One reason is the snap decision after the disaster at Fukushima in 2011 by Angela Merkel, the chancellor, to phase out nuclear power (which emits no greenhouse gases) by 2022. While renewables can easily compensate for this missing nuclear capacity on windy and sunny days, other energy sources are needed for the rest.  Environmentally, gas-fired power plants would be the next best option, but they are more expensive to run than coal-fired plants. And so Germany continues to rely on dirty lignite and only slightly less dirty hard coal.

You read that right: Germans are paying a fortune to subsidize solar and wind power, but — in order to fill the hole left by nuclear power in their base-load — are burning more coal than ever. It’s like a diet that leaves you so hungry that you impulse-buy Hagen Daz. More from the Economist:

The policy of the Energiewende […] had three goals: to keep energy supply reliable; to make it affordable; and to clean it up to save the environment, with a target of cutting emissions by 95% between 1990 and 2050. “All three goals will be missed,” he thinks, making Germany’s energy transition “an international example for bad policy.”

Someone — I believe Glenn Reynolds — quipped that he’ll take environmentalists seriously when they start taking the implications of their doom-saying seriously. Agreed, but I’d add an extra condition: Their solutions should have to be serious and rational.

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  1. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    The tipoff to any new idea being terrible is including the descriptors:

    • Smart
    • Green
    • Emerging
    • Revolutionary
    • Paradigm

    If you can’t sell the idea without buzzword bingo go back to the drawing board.

    • #1
  2. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    It seems to me any power which becomes clean and easy they don’t like.

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    • #2
  3. Rick Poach Member
    Rick Poach
    @RickPoach

    Tom Meyer, Ed.: Their solutions should have to be serious and rational.

    So then, never – and I agree. The modern environmental movement is, as are so many things on the left, a religion.

    • #3
  4. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    Well he is a war-profiteer.

    • #4
  5. Rick Poach Member
    Rick Poach
    @RickPoach

    Bryan G. Stephens:It seems to me any power which becomes clean and easy they don’t like.

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    Absolutely true. Because the environmentalists’ goal is not “clean energy,” but a walking away from progress. Any abundant source of energy furthers human progress over nature, and therefore must be destroyed. If either wind or solar actually delivered consistently and abundantly, make no mistake that their rhetorical necks would be next on the Eco-Marxists’ sacrificial altar.

    • #5
  6. Rick Poach Member
    Rick Poach
    @RickPoach

    Austin Murrey:The tipoff to any new idea being terrible is including the descriptors:

    • Smart
    • Green
    • Emerging
    • Revolutionary
    • Paradigm

    If you can’t sell the idea without buzzword bingo go back to the drawing board.

    Renewable, sustainable, clean…

    • #6
  7. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Reality’s a bitch.

    • #7
  8. Douglas Inactive
    Douglas
    @Douglas

    And will the Germans admit this was a failure? Nope. Nor will Americans that want to emulate them.

    • #8
  9. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    Douglas:And will the Germans admit this was a failure? Nope. Nor will Americans that want to emulate them.

    Governments never use the word failure to describe any program. They talk about unexpected results due, obviously, to lack of adequate funds being expended. For instance: Hillary’s prescription for the sluggish economy following the Trillion $$$ ‘Stimulus’ of the Obama administration, et al.
    So, no, they never admit they could have been wrong, just underfunded. Fork it over, peasants.

    • #9
  10. Addiction Is A Choice Member
    Addiction Is A Choice
    @AddictionIsAChoice

    I’m reminded of a wonderful piece from the Ayn Rand Institute on the significance of “Earth Hour.”

    The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization.”

    It’s all part of the ANTI-Industrial Revolution!

    • #10
  11. Paul Erickson Inactive
    Paul Erickson
    @PaulErickson

    Douglas:And will the Germans admit this was a failure? Nope. Nor will Americans that want to emulate them.

    It’s only failing because they aren’t trying hard enough!!! Why 11 years to close down the nukes?  Shut ’em all down by 2018!!! That’ll bring down energy costs for sure!

    • #11
  12. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Rick Poach:

    Bryan G. Stephens:It seems to me any power which becomes clean and easy they don’t like.

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    Absolutely true. Because the environmentalists’ goal is not “clean energy,” but a walking away from progress. Any abundant source of energy furthers human progress over nature, and therefore must be destroyed. If either wind or solar actually delivered consistently and abundantly, make no mistake that their rhetorical necks would be next on the Eco-Marxists’ sacrificial altar.

    I saw this in college on Cold Fusion. We were all excited, and the English Teacher was appalled that we might have a power source that would liberate us. This was at an Engineering School. This was the first time I ever laughed into the face of an authority figure. Still got an A in the class because I was so much smarter than her.

    • #12
  13. Mark Coolidge
    Mark
    @GumbyMark

    Over the years, I closely followed the annual greenhouse gas emission reports from the International Energy Agency.  During the period of the Kyoto Protocol (1997-2012), emissions from the EU and the US declined in about the same amount, even though the EU was a signatory and the US was not.  This tells you there was something fundamentally flawed in the policy approach of the Greens, which ignored technological aspects and basic economics.  Those policy flaws are being further demonstrated by what is happening in Germany.

    • #13
  14. George Savage Member
    George Savage
    @GeorgeSavage

    Bryan G. Stephens:It seems to me any power which becomes clean and easy they don’t like.

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    I first posted “Savage’s Law” in this space over six years ago:

    The political attractiveness of any power generating technology is inversely proportional to its readiness for large-scale commercial deployment.

    This explains why wind and solar are fantastic as zero CO2 options, while hydro and nuclear are terrible.

    • #14
  15. Chris Member
    Chris
    @Chris

    Why should these goals be any more successful than any prior ones – wasn’t it Kyoto which was only met by the non-signatory US?

    Besides, the joy is in setting goals,  not meeting them.  E.g., the Paris agreements which have faded into the background and allowed the people to feel they have done something yet have not generated headlines about “necessary sacrifices” from my typical news sources.

    • #15
  16. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    George Savage:

    Bryan G. Stephens:It seems to me any power which becomes clean and easy they don’t like.

    Tony Stark could invent the Arc Reactor and they would hate it.

    I first posted “Savage’s Law” in this space over six years ago:

    The political attractiveness of any power generating technology is inversely proportional to its readiness for large-scale commercial deployment.

    This explains why wind and solar are fantastic as zero CO2 options, while hydro and nuclear are terrible.

    I fully think this law is true!

    • #16
  17. Scott Abel Inactive
    Scott Abel
    @ScottAbel

    I visited Kansas for the first time in several years this summer, and was shocked to find Garden City (known mostly for its cattle pens and smell) a hotbed of solar wind turbine construction. The railroad runs right through the plant, and they ship them wherever. There were hundreds of individual blades and shafts stored outside in the sun. When I drove past them, it took me a minute to figure out what they were.

    In the northern part of Kansas along I-70, there’s now a stretch of about 40 miles that are filled with wind turbines (there isn’t much of anything between Hays and Salina on I-70 than hills and cows). There were billboards along the road that said that Kansas generates 30 percent of its power from the turbines. I wonder if this is true, and what impact that has had on Kansas consumers. Anybody here know?

    • #17
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