Unsustainable Folly: Cost Of Germany’s “Energiewende” To Soar To €31 Billion In 2016 Alone!

According to the Institute of German Business (IW) the cost of Germany’s once highly touted “Energiewende” (transition to green energy) will soar to a whopping €31 billion ($35 billion) in 2016 alone, thus further burdening the already ailing German consumer.

Hat-tip: Gerti.

That’s a huge sum of money for the country of 80 million citizens. So, for all that money, are they now getting more beautiful weather and great results cutting back “climate-harmful” CO2 emissions? You’d certainly hope so. Sadly, the answer is s big fat “NEIN”.

Nothing in return for the money

In fact Germany’s CO2 emissions have not dropped at all over the past 7 years, and even went up a percentage point last year. Moreover, weather conditions continue today as they always have: typically rainy, cool, gray, windy and raw. For the roughly €1200 or so per year the average household has to fork out each year, it all sounds like an awfully raw deal (unless you happen to be one of the lucky few making money hand over fist in the scam). And that €1200 figure is only going to go up rapidly in the years ahead.

The www.finanznachrichten.de writes that the 2016 figure is about 3 billion (11%) more than a year earlier (2015). That’s unsustainable burden growth.

“Grid stabilization” adding to the costs

One reason for the ever increasing costs, the site writes, is the “costs for power grid stabilization“. As more highly fluctuating, weather-dependent power comes online, the costlier the grid stabilization measures become. What was once a highly stable energy supply system requiring intervention only a dozen times per year, now requires tens of thousands of interventions by the grid operators each year.

Often times wind and solar parks are forced to be taken offline to prevent the grid from getting toasted by power surges from wind gusts and sun bursts. In such cases, the wind and sun park operators are paid whether they produce or not. Last year consumers were saddled with over half a billion euros from such “unproduced energy” costs. The Energiewende is morphing into a central planning folly of the scale matched only by the Venezuelan Chavez communists.

30% higher electric bills by 2030

Another reason cited for the exploding costs is the continued new installation of wind and sun energy generation systems. Thus it is little wonder that that leading German politicians, such as Michael Fuchs, are getting antsy and calling a stop of the construction of new wind parks for which there are no power transmission lines. If this is not done, Fuchs says, German households face 30% higher electric bills already by 2020.

Just a matter of time before the fuses start blowing.

 

25 responses to “Unsustainable Folly: Cost Of Germany’s “Energiewende” To Soar To €31 Billion In 2016 Alone!”

  1. sod

    Just to give some context:

    the Institute of German Business (IW) is a hard core right wind business institution supported by German employers.

    The CDU politician Fuchs named in the article is also coming from a hard core right wing pro industry position, and a big supporter of nuclear power.

    The basis of this article is a interview with extreme right wing tabloid paper Bild.

    1. Billy

      Sod you are right.
      We definitely do not want business or industry in Germany. Anyone connected to either should never be allowed to speak and of course not be listened to. Get rid of them.

    2. DirkH

      “The CDU politician Fuchs named in the article is also coming from a hard core right wing pro industry position, and a big supporter of nuclear power.

      The basis of this article is a interview with extreme right wing tabloid paper Bild.”

      Well Merkel has just last week received criticism for moving the CDU so far leftward that a majority of the population now see them as a left wing party.
      http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/parteien-waehler-sehen-cdu-erstmals-links-der-mitte_id_5133198.html
      She and her allies though say they need to maintain this course to modernize the party and make it more PROGRESSIVE (the word should be known from Woodrow Wilsons progressive socialists).

      And BILD, a paper owned by Friede Springer, BFF of Merkel, is entirely on CDU line.

      So, as what German citizens perceive as left wing, is “extremely right” for you, you must be far left of Die Linke; IOW, you are a member of the Black Bloc.

      BUT in that case I have a question to you: You Black Bloc Guys have the Motto “No Borders No Nation”. That’s EXACTLY what the CDU IMPLEMENTED in 2015.

      So why do you disagree with the CDU in any way shape or form?

  2. Boyfromtottenham

    hi from Oz. As I have said a couple of times before, the CAGW scam will end because of its crap economics, not its crap science.

  3. Rob

    “In fact Germany’s CO2 emissions have not dropped at all over the past 7 years”

    Thats because all the renewables have been used to replace nuclear power, not coal.

    You just cant make this stuff up.

    And the “tipping point” is only one degree away….
    We’re all gonna be killed….

    1. DirkH

      “And the “tipping point” is only one degree away….
      We’re all gonna be killed….”

      So let’s say Germany has an average temperature of 10 centigrade now and we’re toast at 11 centigrade. Then WHY is Singapore a flourishing city.

      Please explain. I never understood this particular detail of Global Warming theory. I honestly expect one. I deserve one. I pay those effin subsidies.

  4. sod

    Well, nuclear power will cost 170 billions to get rid of the plants and nuclear garbage.

    http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/steuerzahler-tragen-die-kosten-der-energiewende-14209053.html

    So with renewables, we get something for our money.

    1. DirkH

      Yes. electricity for a price 10 times of what the free market would be.

      The Greens are complete morons. Yeah I know, you’re far left from the Greens, I wasn’t alking about you. You are an expert economic terrorist.

      1. sod

        “Yes. electricity for a price 10 times of what the free market would be.”

        You are talking about the free market that allowed power companies to reap all the money from nuclear power, just to find out that they can not pay the storage of nuclear waste?

        and mainstream renewables are not 10 times more expensive than any new fossil or nuclear power. you got both prices wrong.

        1. DirkH

          “You are talking about the free market that allowed power companies to reap all the money from nuclear power,”

          ??? Do we have two sods? An insane and a lunatic? Didn’t YOU just tell me that the nuclear power market is politically rigged as well? Now make up your mind.

          A history lesson. As we all know electricity is just a seventh of German primary energy consumption. And in the 70ies, there were enough coal- ,oil, and gas power plants for all of West Germany.

          Now. Who owned the power companies that decided to build nuclear power plants? In the 70ies? Remember? No?

          I’ll tell ya.

          The state. They were 100% state owned local monopolists.

          So who brought us into building approx. 20 GE Mark 1 reactors? The state. And WHY did we build LWRs and not the much safer Thorium molten salt reactor, both invented by Weinberg, him recommending the latter for the lack of a pressure vessel? Because the STATE (in this case the USA) decided that ALL money should go into LWR research because it produces PLUTONIUM for the bombs of the STATE.

          And now you are blaming the free market for it which had NOTHING to do with ANY of this?

          See-. You ultra-leftists want MORE state. I just showed you that it was ENTIRELY the state that brought us into this mess. And you want MORE of it. Only that YOU want to rule it and not those OTHERS that are “Extreme right” as you put it, and everyone else would call them “moderately left”.

          It’s hopeless. I fear your presence will drive your brain into depression. It has to endure you 24 hours a day. Poor lump of meat that organ.

          1. sod

            “The state. And WHY did we build LWRs and not the much safer Thorium molten salt reactor”

            yes. And as all those private companies went for the thorium reactors, we now have much more of those than of any other type.

            you only see, what you want to see.

            The german power companies have been privatised some time ago. They should have set aside enough money, to build storage for nuclear waste. They did not. Fact.

        2. AndyG55

          So, renewables are cheaper.. that can stand on their own two feet.. right ? !

          The simple test is to remove all subsidies and feed-in mandates.

          We all know what would happen to renewable non-energy then, don’t we. Gone within a year, leaving the taxpayer to tidy up the mess of thousands of useless wind turbines and polluting solar cells.

        3. AndyG55

          Renewables only exist because of GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION.

          In a free market, they would never have got even to the drawing board.

          1. DirkH

            Not ABSOLUTELY right. It is a matter of the competition. Before the coal-powered industrial revolution in England, the Netherlands got rich through windpower – optimizing their windmills to be able to drive sawmills, mass producing merchant ships and dominating trade – and becoming the rich customer that would buy the products of Englands developing industry.

  5. sod

    “The simple test is to remove all subsidies and feed-in mandates.”

    look at the facts:

    “Solar prices plunge to new lows as Dubai auction nets under 3c/kWh”

    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/solar-prices-plunge-to-new-lows-as-dubai-auction-nets-under-3ckwh-84894

    unsubsidized solar is cheaper than any other source.

    Even people who were critical of solar PV are changing position, according to the facts.

    http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/i-was-wrong-about-the-economic-limitations-of-solar-power

  6. Robert Folkerts

    Regarding sod,
    I can’t help but notice virtually every post which sod makes comment, his comments are negative. Why is this? sod rails against warming temperatures, as if warming were his enemy. Yet when a post emerges pertaining to a lowering of temperatures, whether local/global, temporary/or longer term, sod gets all agitated. The question I have is why sod does not suggest this shows progress. That all the wind turbines and solar panels are indeed proving their worth and reducing the feared warming and even reversing temps. After all this is their reason to exist, isn’t it? Instead it is always Attack Attack from sod. Perhaps sod doesn’t actually believe it is possible for these “renewables” to achieve such results. Perhaps sod is actually an anarchist, satisfied with nothing but complete destruction of the status quo? His lack of logic, I think, gives the game away somewhat.
    But Pierre, thank you for your tireless efforts with NTZ, and please, never ban sod. Each day I eagerly search to see what is the latest comedy he posts. I would miss him were he to disappear, and he provides a good insight into the kind of thinking we have to contend with.

    1. Colorado Wellington

      Robert,

      You are not alone in noticing sod’s unhappy and negative reactions. Neither is sod alone among his spiritual comrades. I think the first time I read someone describing the phenomena must have been 40-45 years ago.

      Karel Čapek—the Czech writer and playwright of R.U.R. “robot” fame—wrote an essay in 1924 called “Why I am Not a Communist” or “Warum ich kein Kommunist bin” in German **). I don’t have a copy and it’s been a very long time since I first read it. I can’t find a good English version *) online but I still remember well some of Čapek’s observations about the Communists.

      “The strangest and least human element of communism is its weird gloominess. The worse the better; if a biker hits a deaf granny it is a proof of the rottenness of the present order; if a worker sticks his finger in between the wheels of the machine, it is not the wheels that will mash his poor finger but rather the bourgeois, and will do so with bloodthirsty pleasure. Hearts of all people who for some or other personal reasons are no Communists are beastly and repulsive like an ulcer; there is not one smittereen (sic) of good in the entire present order; whatever is is bad.”

      (as they say—read the whole thing)

      I noticed that sod and people like him rejoice every time they think they found a proof of rising temperatures despite their professed belief that it would lead to a worldwide catastrophe. They hate it when they see a sign of cooling even though it should cheer them up. It’s outright bizarre. It’s as if the struggle with the enemy must go on without interruption and “capitalism”, “bourgeoisie”, “extreme right-wing” and “hard right” are to be fought bitterly at every step.

      Well, I am no anarchist but I don’t recognize such gloominess in the anarchists I know (it may be just the local “hippie” crowd but most of them are naively optimistic or cheerfully cynical). The misery you noticed is exactly what Čapek recognized 90 years ago in the Communists of the day and sod’s seeming lack of coherence fits right in. The Marxist-Leninist historical transformation of the world is inevitable to a Communist and good news only delays the final showdown and reckoning. Nothing has changed in a century and there is no “New Left”. They are still the same and actually quite coherent once you understand who they really are and what they want.

      It is good to have sod around to know what his side is up to. I understand why it happened that way in post-WWII Germany but I always thought it was unfortunate to outlaw Nazi displays and speech (besides the juxtaposition to completely legal advocacy of murderous Communist ideas).

      I like having my Commies and Nazis out in the open so we can keep an eye on them. I agree that Pierre should never ban sod.

      ———-
      *) here is a rough English translation of Čapek’s essay:

      Why I am not a Communist
      http://voiceseducation.org/content/karel-%C4%8Dapek-finding-hope

      **) here is a very good, scholarly translation in German (as compared to the linked English version):

      Warum ich kein Kommunist bin
      https://www.herder-institut.de/go/Bo-00e4cb

      P.S. Unsurprisingly, Čapek was hated in his day by the European Commies and Nazis equally. I read somewhere that he was high on the Nazi enemy list and the Gestapo came to arrest him in Prague when the Third Reich invaded the remaining rump of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939. He’d died of pneumonia just a few months earlier so he did not end up in a concentration camp.

      Also, Čapek didn’t arrive at his opposition to Communism from a Catholic point of view. That makes it even more remarkable because so many humanist intellectuals of the 1920s and 30s—distraught by the slaughter of the Great War and unmoored from faith—succumbed to Communism.

    2. sod

      “I can’t help but notice virtually every post which sod makes comment, his comments are negative.”

      i am sorry, if that is, how you see my comments.

      i am actually trying to hold back, i am trying to sound neither frustrated nor aggressive.

      I am really sorry, if i still come over as if i am.

      I think that it is problematic, when a month with a minor negative anomaly gets half a dozen of blog posts and hundreds of comments, while a month with an utterly insane anomaly (+5.3°C !!!) simply does not get mentioned at all.

      sometimes i have the feeling, that plenty of facts simply get ignored by everyone posting here.

  7. edmh

    Some points about weather dependent Renewable Energy in Europe

    • By 2014 the countries of the European Union had made a current and future financial commitment of some €3.1trillion to weather dependent Renewable Energy technologies, Wind Power and Solar Power. That commitment continues to increase with further Renewable installations into the future.

    • 3.1 trillion Euros is about the annual GDP of Germany and about 50% greater than the annual GDP of either France or the United Kingdom

    • More than 1/3 of the financial commitment to Renewables in Europe so far has been made in Germany.

    • The €1.1 trillion capital costs already spent on Renewables in Europe would have been sufficient to re-equip the entire ~1,000 Gigawatt European electricity generating fleet with Gas-fired power stations producing power effectively at ~90% capacity.

    • Electricity generation by using gas-fired installations is significantly cheaper than weather-dependent Renewables in terms of both installation capital cost and Operation and Maintenance costs, even when accounting for the cost of fuel.

    • The European Renewables fleet with a nominal nameplate output of ~ 216 Gigawatts only contributes ~ 38 Gigawatts to the European Grid, a capacity percentage at about 18%.

    • 60 year life-time costs of Onshore wind power range from 10 – 13 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.

    • 60 year life-time costs of Offshore wind power and Solar power range from 40 – 50 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.

    • during the 60 year life-time Gas-fired generations a productive capacity of about 90% is achieved whereas the combined capacity figures for Renewable Energy of only about 17% is achieved across all European Renewable installations.

    • Gas-fired electricity generation significantly reduces CO2 emissions, when compared other fossil fuels such as all forms of Coal and Lignite: this is in spite of the fact it burns a “fossil fuel”.

    • This effect is already seen in the USA where significant CO2 emissions reductions are being achieved by the transition from Coal to Natural gas for electricity generation. This effect arises from the fact that coal contains a 6-10 times higher proportion of carbon atoms as natural gas and thus produces proportionally much more CO2 when oxidised for equivalent thermal outputs.

    CO2 emissions from Germany are now increasing, so the vast investment in Renewable technologies to control man-made CO2 emissions is manifestly failing, most obviously in Germany.

    https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/lifetime-costs-for-renewable-energy-in-europe/

    1. sod

      well, most of these points are at least outdated, misleading or clearly wrong.

      ” That commitment continues to increase with further Renewable installations into the future.”

      it does not, if future solar and wind is cheaper than other sources-.

      “3.1 trillion Euros is about the annual GDP of Germany and about 50% greater than the annual GDP of either France or the United Kingdom”

      The number is an abirtary number, picked by pure chance to make renewable look bad. What would the price of coal or gas be in 2030without renewables?

      “The €1.1 trillion capital costs already spent on Renewables in Europe would have been sufficient to re-equip the entire ~1,000 Gigawatt European electricity generating fleet with Gas-fired power stations”

      cheap trick. the expensive thing about fossil fuels is fuel use.

      “lectricity generation by using gas-fired installations is significantly cheaper than weather-dependent Renewables in terms of both installation capital cost and Operation and Maintenance costs, even when accounting for the cost of fuel.”

      no, it is not. At best it is, because prices are low. but prices would be much higher, without renewables driving prices down.

      “The European Renewables fleet with a nominal nameplate output of ~ 216 Gigawatts only contributes ~ 38 Gigawatts to the European Grid, a capacity percentage at about 18%.”

      This is a division of two independent numbers, that gives a garbage result. you have to look at individual plants, to get a capacity factor.

    2. sod

      ” 60 year life-time costs of Onshore wind power range from 10 – 13 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.”

      no, it is not. How do you end up with such garbage numbers?

      new wind and new gas are very similar. the price of new gas depends on gas prices in the far future and you need to factor in, how less alternative power would affect the price. It total, you are totally wrong.

      “60 year life-time costs of Offshore wind power and Solar power range from 40 – 50 times more expensive than Gas-fired generation.”

      Those numbers are garbage.

      “This effect is already seen in the USA where significant CO2 emissions reductions are being achieved by the transition from Coal to Natural gas for electricity generation.”

      yeah, gas has a little less CO2 but much more methan with a much bigger effect.your calculation is totally garbage and i would actually call this a cheap trick!

      “CO2 emissions from Germany are now increasing, so the vast investment in Renewable technologies to control man-made CO2 emissions is manifestly failing, most obviously in Germany.”

      no, it is not. the CO2 output is basically flat. you need to factor in exports of electricity and the closing of nuclear power stations. You also have to factor in the price effect of renewables in Germany on the global market.

  8. edmh

    Sod

    take out subsidies and run the numbers for yourself

    Take a leaf out of the late Prof MacKay’s book. He likes Renewables but he likes mathematics better. Listen to the man just before he died: from the Guardian of all places

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/03/idea-of-renewables-powering-uk-is-an-appalling-delusion-david-mackay

  9. sod

    “take out subsidies and run the numbers for yourself”

    Wind now is the cheapest source of electricity in parts of the USA, say the republican politicians running those southern states:

    “An annual analysis by the investment firm Lazard determined that wind energy is now the lowest-cost energy source, even before federal green-energy tax incentives are factored in.”!

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/article/GOP-states-benefiting-from-shift-to-wind-and-7395036.php

  10. EUs koldioxidutsläpp ökar trots galen energipolitik - Stockholmsinitiativet - Klimatupplysningen

    […] budget. Enligt Institute of German Business (IW) så kommer kostnaden för Energiewende att kosta €31 miljarder (närmare 300 miljarder kronor) bara under ett år, 2016. Tyskland har redan, tillsammans med […]

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