It’s great to see what all those tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energies and the skyrocketing costs of electricity have accomplished. Nothing!
According to the German Press Agency, dpa, European greenhouse gas emissions jumped 2.4% in 2010. The figures were released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen yesterday. Read about it here.
Officials blame economic recovery in many countries and the harsh winter for the jump. Actually, the tens of billions of euros did have an impact. According to EEA Director Jacqueline McGlade:
…the increase could have been even higher without the fast expansion of renewable energy generation in the EU.”
Boy, I feel a lot better already. Actually I don’t. Even if emissions had gone down, it still would have been a complete waste of money, and is not going to change the climate. And whatever Europe manages to save in emissions over the next decade will simply be offset by China’s explosive growth in just matter of weeks.
According to the EEA: Germany, Poland and Great Britain are responsible for 56% of the increase. Finland, Sweden and Austria also posted large emission increases. Shame on you.
But there were some big successes in Europe. Large emission savings were accomplished in Greece, Spain and Portugal. Congratulations! Of course, these happen to be the countries in Europe that have crashed economically. The media just forgot to mention that.
The Express (link above) writes:
Despite the increase in 2010, the 27-nation bloc is on track to meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol, a 1997 climate accord limiting the emissions of most industrialised countries, the EEA said.”
What they don’t mention is that a large part of those cutbacks was achieved by the collapse of the former East Block and the really dilapidated factories of communist central planning.
The Local reported earlier this week (http://www.thelocal.de/money/20120529-42825.html)
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Expanding electric grid to cost €20 billion
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The network needs to be significantly beefed up to carry electricity generated by solar and wind power to replace, in part, nuclear power which Germany has decided to abandon by 2022.
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The Greens and Bürger won’t let them build those thousands of km of power lines.
“Officials blame economic recovery in many countries and the harsh winter for the jump.”
1) So, make the recession permanent! Which seems to be the goal of the EU/Green energy policy.
2) Harsh winter? Declare success and go back to the economics of CO2/H2O releases.
It’s buying votes. CO2 is not important, neither the energy nor the transmission lines are important. Give the middle class more opportunities to invest in wind + solar with safe, guaranteed 20 years of subsidies and you’ll get millions of voters. And as you have outgreened the greens and the socialists and everybody else they can’t compete on that platform. Transmission lines blocked by NIMBY protests? Let the energy go to waste and pay them anyway. Whether you’re a warmist or a skeptic is not important. It’s important whether you’re invested in this scheme. The FDP gets one beating after the other because they’re for cutting the subsidies. Too many people in the middle class already invested. Like an infectious disease; totems that, if you own one, give you a cut of the redistributed money. The project can’t fail because it doesn’t matter whether the technology works.
I have some reservations re the statement “the increase could have been even higher without the fast expansion of renewable energy generation”. I have yet to see reliable figures showing actual fuel substitution from all those quadzillions of MWhrs claimed. The few numbers from the Falklands show that actual fuel savings may be an order of magnitude less than the corresponding MWhrs claimed. Maybe, Germany’s smart(er) grid has metaphysical capabilities. I am waiting for figure from Hawai which might be indicative of reality.
It was never really about the co2, it was about the billions to the favored few and from the masses. It is all about control and money, environment, wild life and the children will be on the peripheral the favored few to the front.
The rise in CO2 emission is *because* of the huge rise in wind and solar.
This has been exacerbated by Merkel switching off nuclear power. So coal and gas have to do all the load levelling required to balance the intermittent wind and solar, thereby running at poor efficiency.
The swing from CO2 saving to CO2 increased net emission seems to be at around 10 or 15% of economy power generation if coal and open-cycle gas are the backup.
The hidden fuel costs of wind generated electricity
You can fix this by building water pumping installations, but only at vast capital cost and further efficiency losses. As wind and solar are already breaking the German budget, this cannot be economically feasible.
Germany doesn’t have the space for pumped storage. Nor the required reserves of pumpable water.
And I don’t see e.g. Switzerland offering Lake Lucerne and the high mountain hollows of Obermatt, etc. for storage dams; which could channel flows into the Reuss River near Wassnerwald. It’s not like Lake Lucerne would drain *completely* during windy seasons. It sure would fill up nicely in mid-winter from the draining of the pumped storage to fill the demand for electricity. They could coordinate “polar bear surfing” down the valley of the Ruess with peak demand. 😉
You don’t ask the Swiss – you make them an Offer They Cannot Refuse.
http://www.metalocus.es/content/en/blog/bruno-taut-alpine-architecture
(It’s unworkable, of course, but then that’s true of every single utopian boondoggle, red, brown, or green.)
Bernd – Germany has the Baltic. Neat idea. So it can be done…its just expensive.
“It’s great to see what all those tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energies and the skyrocketing costs of electricity have accomplished.”
Germany is like a cow. You can milk it!
“According to the German Press Agency, dpa, European greenhouse gas emissions jumped 2.4% in 2010. The figures were released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen yesterday.”
Who cares about it?
“Officials blame economic recovery in many countries and the harsh winter for the jump. Actually, the tens of billions of euros did have an impact. According to EEA Director Jacqueline McGlade:”
I think the EU crisis is a final solution of European question…
“Boy, I feel a lot better already. Actually I don’t. Even if emissions had gone down, it still would have been a complete waste of money, and is not going to change the climate. And whatever Europe manages to save in emissions over the next decade will simply be offset by China’s explosive growth in just matter of weeks.”
You still may return to the USA – a comfortable way out. My returning is out of question, because Poland depends strongly on German economy. I’d rather have to go to Norway or even leave the continent.
“According to the EEA: Germany, Poland and Great Britain are responsible for 56% of the increase. Finland, Sweden and Austria also posted large emission increases. Shame on you.”
We aren’t suckers like the Germans, and we won’t play that play as they do (I hope so).
“Despite the increase in 2010, the 27-nation bloc is on track to meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol, a 1997 climate accord limiting the emissions of most industrialised countries, the EEA said.”
The best joke of that story is that Japan had refused to take any future targets in Kyoto Protocol.
“What they don’t mention is that a large part of those cutbacks was achieved by the collapse of the former East Block and the really dilapidated factories of communist central planning.”
According to the plan we shall return to the stone age…
News from Eon; 2MW prototype hydrogen synthesis plant in MeckPomm, construction begins in summer 2012; refusal to build more coal plants as long as Datteln is blocked – going through the permission process again takes until 2014; announcement to close old gas peaker plants in Bavaria as their operation becomes too uneconomic (bargaining for extra payments by grid regulator)
http://www.ftd.de/unternehmen/industrie/:erneuerbare-energie-eon-will-erstmals-windstrom-speichern/70044796.html
Yet another brilliant project from the dimly lit state of Brandenburg (see my newest post).
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“We aren’t suckers like the Germans, and we won’t play that play as they do (I hope so)”
Indeed. No-one should. Helga Zepp laRouche summed it up in saying that the true cost of the energy ‘tranformation’ lies in loss of productivity, rather than monetary costs (which are in themselves eye-watering). In the final analysis, one might conclude that so-called renewable energies are in fact a colossal waste of resources and unsustainable.