Germany’s intensifying gas and energy crisis…

Into winter chaos without extending power plant operation

By Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated by P. Gosselin, one hyperlink added)

There is another taboo law that the German federal government does not want to touch: the nuclear phase-out law. Most people in Germany have seen through the inane statements of the Green president of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, according to whom nuclear power plants do not generate heat and therefore do not help with the gas shortage.

But 14% of electricity comes from gas-fired power plants. We will only be able to replace two-thirds of the gas-fired power plants by ramping up reserve coal-fired power plants. In the end, eliminating three nuclear power plants means giving up a large part of this saving, because the electricity that is eliminated cannot be replaced in any other way than by gas-fired power plants.

Even the accelerated expansion of wind power and solar energy (which, by the way, only produces electricity) will not help. In order to replace the amount of electricity of the three running nuclear power plants arithmetically, one needs two thirds of the 2.2 million existing solar plants. In other words : to replace this amount of electricity, we need five to ten years to replace the resulting gap of about 35 TWh with new PV plants. And then we would still have no electricity at night.

Power company Evonik CEO Christian Kullmann vividly described the extent of the gas crisis: Imagine a train transporting gas that starts in Seville and ends in Frankfurt [1860 km], one wagon at a time the whole way. And he poses the question of how long the German chemical industry would be able to get by on this gas quantity. Mind you, only the chemical industry. Answer: 6 hours. It’s about 5.6 million jobs affected by the lack of natural gas. It is not about taking shorter showers.

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Germany’s Energiewende is unraveling faster than anyone could have expected 

Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) says he is now taking less showers and advises citizens to do the same – in order to fight Putin (and of course because there’s an extreme shortage of gas and no one knows how the country will be kept warm this coming winter)!

Energy is running out in Germany

With the current energy price explosion and acute supply shortages, German politicians are not lacking when it comes to silly ideas. In an interview with Spiegel, German economics minister urged citizens to save energy, and gave unusual tips from his own everyday life. “I take a quick shower,” the Green politician told Spiegel. He said he had never been under the shower for long. “But I have shortened my shower time once again.”

The real reason: Germany’s energy policy debacle

As Germany’s “Energiewende” falters, and energy shortages loom, in part because the country has failed to fill its natural storage facilities and is decommissioning all its coal and nuclear power plants, Minister Habeck had to activate the alert level 2 from the emergency plan gas. “Gas is a scarce commodity,” he told Spiegel.

“Gas bills to triple”

Gas prices, already painfully high, will certainly rise further. “There will be further increases,” Habeck said.

“According to the Federal Network Agency, consumers can expect their gas bills to triple. The Ministry of Economics already issued tips for saving gas in the summer,” reports the German Kreiszeitung.de.

“Reluctant to be in air-conditioned rooms”

Not only is Habeck reducing his shower time, “he also avoids air conditioning and excessive heating,” the Kreiszeitung adds. “In summer, I am very reluctant to be in air-conditioned rooms, and in winter I heat sparingly,” Habeck explained.

But Habeck forgets tomention: “He is on the road from morning to night in his top job, which is why the low heating of the apartment is not difficult. And even if it did, rising costs would not weigh heavily on him,” writes the Kreiszeitung.  “As a minister, I have a salary that others can only dream of,” he admitted.

The Minister position also comes with unlimited air travel, chauffeured government car and lots of other amenities that isolate top officials from the hassles everyone else needs to contend with.

The German government is now advising citizens to install  “energy-saving shower heads”, which could save a household 446 euros a year, cut shower time by two minutes and the temperature to 36 degrees to save another 250 euros annually.

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Some regions in Central Europe have been suffering from a shortage of rain this spring and summer, so not surprisingly the media are blaming manmade climate change, often implying that droughts in Germany never happened before.

But of course they have, as this old news clip from Bavaria, Germany rolled in September, 1947 documents:

The film, rolled 75 years ago, reports on “The Great Drought” and its “catastrophic” consequences: dried up rivers and reservoirs, crop failures lakes 3 meters below their normal levels.

The situation in Bavaria was so bad in fact that half a million cattle had to be emergency slaughtered. Hydroelectric power plants had to be shut down due to a lack of water in the reservoirs, thus leading to power rationing.

Numerous forest fires broke out along the Bavarian-Austrian border near the Alps, where firefighters struggled for weeks to get the fire under control.

The agricultural soil was so dry after the summer harvest that “farmers plowed powdery dry land” and that following year’s crop yields would also be impacted.

Back then, everybody knew, however, that the cause was just Mother Nature being fickle as she always has been.

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