Germany’s energy poverty is about to get worse, as poor people are threatened with being put out in the cold by the country’s green energies.
Electricity prices “higher than they have ever been”
German news weekly Stern here reports that “electricity prices will rise further at the start of the year” and that “there is no relief in sight with electricity prices”.
According to the Verivox-consumer price index, the price of electricity for a “representative household” with three persons and an annual consumption of 4000 kilowatt-hours was 28.20 euro-cents per kilowatt-hour in 2017, some 0.77 cents more than a year earlier, Stern reports. “At the end of the current year power was never so expensive.”
On January 1, 2018, the mean price will rise to 28.44 cents a kilowatt-hour.
German electricity prices are among the world’s highest, and are in large part directly due to the country’s shoddily executed Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) and EEG feed-in act, which mandates that highly unstable, inefficient and expensive wind and solar energy be forced-fed into the power grid in place of fossil-fuel generated electricity.
The rising prices of German electricity are another blow to lower income families and the poor. Meanwhile rich land and property owners who have the luxury of leasing the space for installing wind and solar systems are making money by the fistful. Social critics have called the scheme “the biggest transfer of wealth from bottom to top ever.
328,000 saw their power cut off in 2016
Citing the German Grid Agency, German aid organization Caritas here reports of 328,000 “carried out power disconnections” and over 6 million threatened power service cut-offs in 2016.
In cooperation with the ZEW (Centre for European Economics), Caritas determined in a survey that it is poor households who are the hardest hit.
According to SebastianH, though, “heating is paid for when you live on wellfare”
So when it comes to shutting off people’s power because they can’t afford to heat their homes, apparently the response from people who vociferously defend Energiewende/wind/solar is the equivalent of Who cares?
—-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fuel-poverty-killed-15000-people-last-winter-10217215.html
“An estimated 15,000 people died unnecessarily between December and March because they were living in homes they couldn’t afford to heat, new figures show.”
If given the choice between allowing people to die due to fuel poverty and building another wind farm, people like SebastianH would rather build another wind farm.
Deaths are a feature of green policy, not a mistake.
What the hell is wrong with you Kenneth? You sure like your straw man arguments, do you?
Why do you try to paint a picture of an anti-social green bad guy? Because you disagree? And everything not you is bad? Easily offended, but no problem making up stuff and offend others. Classy …
Regarding the article: the Caritas link clearly shows (last paragraphs) that it seems to be an information problem. Nobody in this country has to live on the streets or in a cold apartment. Yes, there are poor people, but what do you think is the better way to help them? Trying to get power prices lower by shifting the costs to taxes or to lift them out of poverty instead by finding them jobs, education, etc?
Apparently you don’t understand what a straw man argument is. The link behind your quote above (exact words) comes from the last time (9 months ago) Pierre reported on the 300,000+ people in Germany who had their power cut off. Germany’s “Silent Catastrophe” …330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year!
This is what you wrote then:
https://notrickszone.com/2017/03/03/germanys-silent-catastrophe-330000-households-see-power-turned-off-in-one-year/#comment-1178506
In other words, all I’ve done here is remind readers what people like you think about poor people having their power cut off…by using your exact word choices from the very same type of article.
Do you deny having written that there is no such thing as people on wellfare [sic] having to worry about heating?
What you wrote then was egregious. It still is. I am happy to remind you and others of your sentiments.
Wikipedia says:
“A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.”
The whole article is about electricity as power and you switch topic to heating and make something up that I would not care. You then go on and cite something from a UK website about … well, the UK.
And you finish that off (claiming victory in your straw man attack) by your sick fantasy choice you’d think I would make.
I call that a big, big straw man, Kenneth.
Nope, what you have done is quote me on people on welfare getting their heating paid for by the state (§22 SGB II). But you have successfully constructed a straw man trying to show that, so congratulations.
Is that what I have written? For someone so pedantic on what he himself writes and doesn’t write this is really weird to watch.
I think you and me have a different perception of language then. What’s “egregious” is your behavior and the way you seek to interpret things. Whether it is something an opponent writes or something written in a paper. I hope those “others” can see through that even if it doesn’t contribute to the bubbly feeling of being in this weirdo skeptic bubble …
Uh, no. The article is about 328,000 poor households having their power cut off in Germany because of the ridiculously high costs to heat a home in Germany. That’s even in the title of the article. The last time an article like this appeared on NoTricksZone was last March…
https://notrickszone.com/2017/03/03/germanys-silent-catastrophe-330000-households-see-power-turned-off-in-one-year/
Silent Catastrophe …330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year!
…and your very first comment on that report of 330,000 poor households having their power cut off, and the 8th comment overall for that article, was to deny that people on “wellfare” have to pay for their heating, as well as to attempt to minimize the 330,000 by saying it’s “less then” [sic] that:
A straw man argument is when someone makes up positions or comments and ascribes it to another person by using words or phrases that the person actually did not use. In this case, however, you are being directly quoted with regard to your position on the matter from a nearly identical report on 330,000 poor households losing their power. In this case, it’s 328,000. So all I did was copy and paste your exact words from an earlier comment you made minimizing the impact of having one’s power cut off.
In the past, you’ve also denied the seriousness of energy poverty in Germany. You’ve even said that nobody has to live in energy poverty in Germany because heating and cooling are paid for by “state money”. In other words, the above is not the only time you’ve denied that a problem exists. Once again, these are your exact words:
https://notrickszone.com/2017/06/22/2-new-papers-expose-the-environmental-nightmare-of-wind-turbine-blade-disposal/#comment-1217415
SebastianH: “Nobody has to live in ‘energy poverty’ in Germany. Heating and electricity are paid for when you live on state money.”
Of course, 6.9 million people live in energy poverty in Germany. To you, these people don’t exist, as “nobody has to live in ‘energy poverty’ in Germany”.
Just continuing driving around in your Mercedes, SebastianH, casting a blind eye to the poor as you proclaim the merits of Energiewende policies.
Please identify the made-up words and phrases in the following direct quotes from your recorded comments:
https://notrickszone.com/2017/03/03/germanys-silent-catastrophe-330000-households-see-power-turned-off-in-one-year/#comment-1178544
“Currently away from my PC, but you can simply Google “Bundesnetzagentur Monitoring Report” and get accurate numbers of actual power shutdown due to unpaid bills. It’s less then 300000 as claimed here … Also heating is paid for when you live on wellfare“
https://notrickszone.com/2017/06/22/2-new-papers-expose-the-environmental-nightmare-of-wind-turbine-blade-disposal/#comment-1217415
SebastianH: “Nobody has to live in ‘energy poverty’ in Germany. Heating and electricity are paid for when you live on state money.”
Poor seb, YOU live in a LIE, it is always going to keep coming back to bite you.
You desperately need to get away from the computer and get a real life.
You are an empty soulless non-entity with it, and would be even less without it.
Sorry, Kenneth, but now you are making even less sense than usual. Please just give up and admit that you had some weird fantasy and we can call it a day. I will not support you strange witch hunt after straw mans.
This article here is about electricity and it is linking to articles about electricity. Those linked articles explain very clearly that having electricity turned off can lead to heating also turned of, because pumps need electricity. They also explain that someone who can’t pay their electricity bill can get help, but people with low or no education often don’t know how.
I linked to the paragraph stating exactly what you quoted me about and fantasize about would be anti-social behavior or denial thing. Here is the paragraph again. Translate it, do whatever you want, but don’t bother me with your imagination about what is and what is not again: http://www.sozialgesetzbuch-sgb.de/sgbii/22.html
Seriously, I am about to write something directed at you that will get me banned from this blog for life. Just stop with your insulting remarks that your imagination is making up.
Yada yada … repetition doesn’t make it better, you know? I hope those “others” can look through that BS too …
This article is about the price of electricity and how it affects poor people. That’s why the title says that 328,000 poor households had their power shut off in 2016…because the poor can’t afford to pay their heating bills. As I have shown, you have previously denied that this happens, as you have stated that poor people have their heating bills paid for by the government. You have also minimized the impact of energy poverty…even though there are 6.9 million Germans who live in energy poverty in Germany (due significantly to the cost of electricity 300% higher than the U.S. and 400% higher than in China/India.
Considering your track record of dishonorable behavior here on these comment boards, I am not the least bit contrite to have exposed what you really think about poor people…by directly quoting your exact words.
Seb.. please stop your mindless yapping !!
Get out of your ghetto basement and meet the REAL WORLD….. For once in your life. !!
You have been sprung, in front of everybody, making truly anti-human statements, so stop your childish BS.
Denial is a PATHETIC response, expected from a 5 year old.
No, they can’t afford to pay their electricity bills (or – as the linked Caritas article suggests – they don’t know how to pay it, despite their situation).
Are you suggesting that the heating bills are not paid for by the government? Should I point you to the law a third time?
You need to clarify what you mean here. You keep mixing up electricity with heating and vice versa. What is the definition of Energy poverty you are using? The one in the UK? If you have to spend more than 10% of your income to warm your living room up to 21°C and all other rooms to 18°C you are in Energy poverty? Is that what you are refering to? What does that have to do with electricity prices? How many people do you think heat with electricity? It’s mostly home owners with heat exchangers and I wouldn’t call them poor exactly.
By the UK definition nobody in Germany should be in energy poverty at all, so surely it must be something else.
The straw man is still strong in you. You’ve won a hollow “victory” …
P.S.: Glad you picked the U.S. as a shining example of low electricity prices. Maybe you should compare an average U.S. electricity bill with an average German electricity bill then. Who pays more? https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power (figure 4)
So are you now suggesting that poor people lack the competence to pay for their own electricity? If so, your position is becoming more and more bigoted.
According to the NTZ article:
“The rising prices of German electricity are another blow to lower income families and the poor. Meanwhile rich land and property owners who have the luxury of leasing the space for installing wind and solar systems are making money by the fistful. Social critics have called the scheme “the biggest transfer of wealth from bottom to top ever.”
Do you have a problem with the Energiewende-sponsored transfer of wealth from poor households to wealthy households?
http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/poverty-renewables/
“In Germany, where green subsidies will cost €23.6 billion this year, household electricity prices have increased by 80 per cent since 2000, causing 6.9 million households to live in energy poverty.”
“Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr, who cannot afford their own solar panels but still have to pay higher electricity costs.”
Comment vanished again …
Sebastian complaining again:
“SebastianH 29. December 2017 at 5:05 PM | Permalink
Comment vanished again …”
Your other comments in this thread section are profoundly dishonest since you keep ignoring the headlines of the two threads, you have commented in.
Here they are …. again!
“Germany’s “Silent Catastrophe” …330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year!”
and,
“328,000 German Poor Households Saw Electricity Switched Off in 2016 …Millions More Threatened!”
Both postings was about the rising cost of electricity, which many poor people couldn’t pay.
It is so easy even a Neanderthal can understand it, why can’t you?
“Why do you try to paint a picture of an anti-social green bad guy”
Because that is EXACTLY what you portray yourself as.
You are just too self-aggrandised to realise what an uncaring anti-progress, anti-CO2, anti-science, brain-washed piece of non-human you show yourself to be.
“but no problem making up stuff and offend others”
And yes, we all know you constantly make things up, your little fantasy world in your basement, and that your whole intent here, is to offend.
That, and your mindless attention seeking.
Its who you are.. Its all you live for.
“What the hell is wrong with you, seb?”
Don’t you like being reminded of some of the obnoxious anti-human comment you have made in the recent past ?
Nasty piece of work aren’t you. SebH?
And thoroughly disingenuous and mendacious with it.
Typical Green in other words.
[…] Read More: 328,000 German Poor Households Saw Electricity Switched Off in 2016 …Millions More Threatened! […]
Like I said it is all about not letting people in the 3rd world getting less costly energy.
What exactly is the least costly energy that people in the 3rd world could get and what does this have to do with the article?
Hint: https://www.pv-tech.org/news/solar-will-drop-below-two-cents-in-2017-gtm
Why do you think people in Germany pay 3 times as much for their power (35 cents/kWh) as people in the U.S. do (12 cents/kWh), and 4 times as much as the citizens of China and India (8 cents/kWh)? I’ll answer: the U.S., China, and India all heavily rely on fossil fuel energies, with natural gas supplanting coal in the U.S. in the last few years.
https://www.ovoenergy.com/binaries/content/gallery/ovowebsitessuite/images/guides/how_much_does_electricity_cost__large-copy-8.png
They should have done it with taxes instead of adding something on top of the kWh price, just to shut you up with your ridiculous argument. If we had to pay for all the costs of traditional power generation via the electricity bill, it would be even higher. But I guess you wouldn’t argue against fossil fuels even if you had to directly and transparently pay the full costs, right?
So Germany and Denmark paying the highest prices for energy is “a ridiculous argument” that we need to shut up about?
Fossil fuels are reliable, don’t need backup, and don’t depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing. Furthermore, the explosion in coal use since the 1980s lifted 600 million poor people out of poverty in China. Soon, the same will happen in India (100s of millions of people lifted out of poverty via fossil fuel infrastructure and consumption, or cheap and reliable energy).
Are you happy or unhappy that 600 million Chinese citizens were lifted out of poverty, SebastianH? Something tells me you would have preferred that they hadn’t, or that they had remained poor, cooking and heating their homes with dung and sticks and dying premature deaths from indoor air pollution. That’s still happening in sub-Saharan Africa…except in places where fossil fuel infrastructure is being built.
“If we had to pay for all the costs of traditional power generation via the electricity bill, it would be even higher.”
Total and complete RUBBISH, as always, seb.
Coal and gas have built the civilised world.
Wind and solar threaten to destroy those once great economies.
Before the advent of wind and solar, electricity was cheap, RELIABLE, and available to basically everyone in the developed countries.
Now, BECAUSE of the advent of UNRELIABLE supply systems, necessitating uneconomic back-up, there are lots of poor people being thrust in to energy poverty.
Where-ever wind and solar take a large proportion, prices sky-rocket.
The whole ANTI-CO2 AGENDA is disgusting.. and you, of course, support it.
And you really believe that renewables are cheaper?
Let’s strip out the subsidies, the carbon taxes and the ROCS and see what power generation remains viable.
Hint for Sebastian-it sure ain’t wind or solar.
Again, what is wrong with you Kenneth? Why do you let your imagination run wild like this? Sick and baseless assumptions, same as with your interpretation of papers “supporting” whatever you think they do.
@Bitter&twisted:
Have you ever summed up the costs of fossil fuels that aren’t listed on your electricity bill? Renewables might be the only sources where the price really covers the costs. And what was the price at the last bidding again?
For solar: 6.58 ct/kWh in February 2017, 5.66 ct in June and 4.91 ct in October.
For wind we are even at 3,82 ct/kWh in Germany.
What other source of energy is as cheap as wind and solar? Coal, gas? Nope. Nuclear? Definitely not!
This doesn’t answer the question. Considering 600 million people in China were lifted out of poverty significantly due to the improved life conditions that cheap, reliable fossil fuels provide, would you rather have had these impoverished people remain in poverty than now contribute 30% of the world’s CO2 emissions, twice as much as their next nearest competitor (the U.S., 15%)? Do you think they could have gotten to where they are with wind and solar? Are you unhappy that they’re building 100s more coal plants?
Poor seb, he STILL doesn’t understand the reliability factor, and that the cost of wind and solar MUST include the cost of the back-up to supply as well as all the subsidies and feed-in mandates that push costs of RELIABLE, dispatchable supplies through the roof.
Kenneth:
Why would I? What kind of question is that? They are still causing less per capita emissions than the U.S. and China recently noticed that they can be leaders in the renewables industry. So, good for them …
Probably not (wind and solar was super expensive 15 years ago, compared to today), but it sure will get them to where they want to be in the future.
Are they? So they are adding to that massive over-capacity they have? We’ll see how this plays out, won’t we … maybe their coal plants will some day also just produce electricty at 20% of capacity, AndyG55 would be furious when that happens.
AndyG55:
Through the roof? How would that look like exactly? Like this graph?
https://energy-charts.de/price_avg.htm?year=all&price=nominal&period=annual
Surely not …
Yes, China is both the leader in renewables and fossil fuel emissions (especially coal production and consumption).
Per capita emissions for the U.S. declined by 28% between 1970 and 2013. Per capita emissions rose by 770% between 1970 and 2013 in China. Which trajectory do you find more palatable?
China matched the U.S. in CO2 emissions (total) by 2006. In only took 8 years, 2014, for China to emit twice as much CO2 as the U.S. does. At this rate, China will overtake the U.S. in emissions per capita by about 2030.
Why has the U.S. been able to reduce overall emissions despite having its population grow by about 30 million in the last 5 years alone? Natural gas.
————————————————-
https://www.westernenergyalliance.org/knowledge-center/air/methane
“In fact, combined-cycle natural gas turbines cut 2.6 times more CO2 emissions than wind and four times more than solar. That’s because even though renewables avoid emissions when they produce electricity, they only do so when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. By comparison, natural gas reduces CO2 emissions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Electric utilities have taken advantage of clean and affordable natural gas, allowing U.S. GHG emissions to fall more than any other country since 2006. The positive impacts of the natural gas revolution haven’t gone unnoticed. According to The Breakthrough Institute: ‘… since 1950, natural gas and nuclear prevented 36 times more carbon emissions than wind, solar, and geothermal’.”
————————————————–
Are you unhappy that they’re building 100s more coal plants?
————————————————-
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html
China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries. Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
“maybe their coal plants will some day also just produce electricity at 20% of capacity”
Coal plants can produce near full nameplate pretty much continuously ON DEMAND, WHEN NEEDED
As you are well aware, wind and solar can never go anywhere near that.
German wind is below 16% nameplate for over half the time. They are most a NON-SUPPLY.
Truly PATHETIC, and coal and other supplies have to be available to make up that LACK OF SUPPLY.
Would be far more economical to just use the coal and other RELIABLE supplies. They do most of the heavy lifting anyway.
We see just by comparing US and EU prices, how much electricity from an UNRELIABLE supply affects the cost
http://i1328.photobucket.com/albums/w522/Bjinse/Diaries/European%20Electricity/2013_06TheEconomist_zps1b2f0b38.png
Such a pity that these anti-science political agendas make life so hard for the normal people.
Try coal fired plants.
The power hungry Greens and the greedy crony-corporate socialists act as if these hardship are just minor collateral damage required to ‘improve’ society. The only people that advocate very expensive unreliable electricity generation to be feed into the grid at great cost and with a huge increase in complexity of grid infrastructure, when cheap, reliable, and simpler alternatives are available, are sociopaths.
The Greens and the socialist are fighting against real progress by killing the weak, poor, and sick through an iron-fist doctrine of willful negligence, ignorance, and greed, wrapped in the soft glove of plausible deniability.
Excellent comment !!
There must be one or more countries on this planet that you are thinking of and do as you wish, right? Can you tell us their energy poverty statistics?
TAR AND FEATHER THE GREENIE MUGGERS OF THE POOR.
The elephant in the room: a representative household has three people.
So much for economic survival. Demographic survival. The reason immigration is a German imperative.
The Germans still haven’t learned a lesson from their last escapade where they exterminated undesirables. Back then Germans enthusiastically followed their leader that promised a brighter future, and they’re doing the exact same thing today.
People never learn.
I am sick of the misinformed Seb H.
I will not comment on anything he says because he is suffering from Idee Fixe.
“I am sick of the misinformed Seb H.”
Everybody is.
But its his life’s work. !!
Sad, but not even worth pity.
I’m not sick of him because he reveals where the believers are coming from and what their arguments are and enjoy and become more informed as Kenneth and others dismantle his arguments. Every site needs one or more Sebs.
It’s kind of sad, that you guys are stuck in this bubble of intentional misunderstanding of everything the opposes your opinion. To the extent of calling everybody not you “believers” …
Go on with believing this is all natural and the ice age is coming in the next years.
No, we call those who believe that humans predominantly control on the temperatures of the oceans, glacier and sea ice melt or advance, sea level rise or fall, the intensification of hurricanes, the imminent (by 2050) extinction of polar bears and over a million other species by emitting more CO2 or less CO2…believers.
“It’s kind of sad, that you guys are stuck in this bubble of intentional misunderstanding of everything the opposes your opinion”
What is sad is that you are totally incapable of proving even the most basic facet of your mindless religion. You have been totally and complete brain-washed into adject ignorance.
And you keep proving it with every post you make.
Interesting data from UK wind non-supply of energy
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/12/28/wind-farms-in-england-only-supply-2-of-power/
The devastation of their countryside, for basically nothing. 🙁
To say nothing of their birds.