Energy poverty is sweeping over modern Germany like never before.
Flagship German newspaper Die Welt has an online report titled: Fast 800.000 Deutsche können Strom nicht bezahlen. In English: Almost 800,000 Germans cannot pay for electricity.
Green energy leaves Germans in the dark.
As Germany subsidies wealthy homeowners and businesses owners to install solar panels on their homes and commercial buildings, low income families living in rented apartments are getting stuck footing skyrocketing electric bills. Many can no longer afford to pay for electricity, and so the utilities are cutting off their power.
Indeed high energy prices are causing everything else to get more expensive as well – all this while the euro is threatened to collapse under the weight of massive debt due to financial ineptitude.
So it’s little wonder that German politicians are beginning to panic and coming up with really nutty solutions. Instead of scaling back the cause of the energy mess (government meddling in the energy sector) they are threatening to do the opposite: i.e. meddle even more – much more.
Aribert Peters, Chairman of the Bund der Energieverbraucher (Association of Energy Consumers) says that already 600,000 to 800,000 people in Germany have had their electricity cut off, all thanks to skyrocketing electricity prices due to friendly green energy. Spooked, a number of leading politicians and consumer advocates are now calling for financial assistance for low income households, i.e. energy welfare. Die Welt writes:
Energy companies should be obligated to offer the first 500 kilowatt-hours per household at a low rate, SPD (social democrat party) faction vice chairman Ulrich Kelber demanded in a strategy paper, which he wants to present to the SPD leaders.”
Peters of the Association of Energy Consumers, however, goes even further, saying there’s a need for a general cost exemption for the first 500 kilowatt hours consumed per year and household. The exemption should apply to all citizens.
Also the VdK Social Association of Hesse-Thuringia is demanding social tariffs. VdK chairman Udo Schlitt says that without a price rebate, more and more people with low incomes are going to have their power shut off. He proposes:
Therefore all power producers must be mandated to offer binding social rates by law.”
So in summary, here’s Germany’s latest energy plan: 1) Force power companies to buy exorbitantly-priced, inefficient and intermittent-supply green energy on one side, and then force them to give it away, or sell it at a low price, on the sales side!
How long can that go on before it all collapses?
Not only is electricity to be given away, DIE WELT also brings up another SPD scheme, one of course that the other parties will join in on:
Moreover, there should also be a billion-euro subsidy program so that, for example, energy saving refrigerators can be bought.”
There you have it. First the government took over the energy sector, and now we see it is moving in to take over private households. If this allowed to happen, then in 10 years Germany will no longer be recognizable.
You can think out the rest.
It’s just normal socialist thinking. What I call ‘magic money’
What kind of energy do apartment dwellers in Germany use for heat? 500 kWatts per,year is NOTHING! I know Americans are profligate with energy use, but 500 kW would run our house for about three weeks.
Typical numbers are
Me, alone, in a rented flat: 2,300 kWh/year
My brother, with a wife and 2 teenage kids in his house: 3,000 kWh/yr
As you see, I’m quite the energy hog. My brother is more typical. Some Germans really overdo it with the thrift…
Oh, the heating: I’m connected to a cogeneration steam network from our municipital power plant. These underground steam pipeline networks are constantly expanded in a lot of cities, they’re highly insulated, and the cogen plants are running on coal and gas, and have totally utopic efficiencies.
In larger housing blocks that are too far away from these power plants, say, in villages, there are mini cogen plants in the basement, basically large gas powered combustion engines that produce heat and electricity.
The very latest single home heatings start switching from ordinary gas burners to micro cogen plants; again, NatGas combustion engines from Honda, sold under the brand Vaillant in Germany. The Japanese have the leading edge here, but VW tries to gain entry into that market.
So in general the appartment dwellers who have no ‘leccy still have their heating…
Units, Ed, units. Otherwise you sound technologically illiterate.
It’s kWh, kiloWatt hours. kW is an instantaneous power load. Prolonged for 1 hour it’s a kWh. Think hard, I know you can understand it if you try.
“. . . already 600,000 to 800,000 people in Germany have had their electricity cut off . . .”
Is it okay to question the numbers? Who and what comprise the Assoc. of Energy Consumers and how do they know? Even if the number is 100,000 (people?, homes?, connections of unknown type?) it is unacceptable and the responses are nonsensical – free electricity and free refrigerators! Who doesn’t want this deal? Still, documentation of the numbers is necessary, else we have adopted the tactics of the AGW team.
I agree with you. The message does not tell, for example, how many of those who do not pay their energy bills do not pay house rent or mortgage either. Often these families are in a situation of problematic debts, with their relative number still increasing, at least in The Netherlands. Not only poor people are among them but also people with middle incomes. It seems that many people have difficulties in handling their finances. Some risk factors for getting problematic debts are (1) losing a job, (2) divorce, (3) not reading mail or bills, (4) giving credit cards to demanding children. Of course, sky-rocketing energy prices are part of the problem. I could give you several links to help organisations in The Netherlands but that would be too specific here.
Long term unemployed (beyond a year) get Hartz IV – 350 EUR cash/month, + rent + heating but excluding electricity. Some people who never worked don’t get that but they get “social basic security” which pays the same amounts.
There are obviously some people who don’t put aside enough of their monthly 350 EUR allowance to make the electricity payment. These will be the ones who have the power switched off. But rent and heating would still be paid by the state agency.
Before you say: What about children – there’s a monthly payment per child as well.
So, as Mindert says, it’s “managing money” that is the problem.
I should have added as risk factor (5) loss of mental faculties by elderly people, like that man with beginning Alzheimer, who gave on a regular basis one thousand euro to his nice neighbour boys to do some shopping for him in the nearby supermarket. Just keep the change.
Germany is bailing out Portugal, Greece, Spain. Then it also helps bail out other multilateral institutions like the UN, and bails out energy companies within Germany. The productivity of the working sector in Germany should be very high to allow such large scale income redistribution at the global, regional and national levels.
I find a disconnect curious…Germany as well as other countries in Europe are paying a dear price to sustain green ideology. Oh, wait, I mean consumers are paying the price. But, seriously, Germany, the UK, and Spain would not be “poster children” for any supposed advantages for “green energy.”
Yet, here in the US, the news media do not report ANY of the problems Europe has been having. None. Rather, it’s green green, green or renewable, sustainable wind power or solar power that is promoted. No downsides are ever mentioned or hinted at. None.
It is incredible and dispicable that this disconnect persists, especially in light of the terrible situation imposed on the ~800,000 German people who have had their power shut off because they couldn’t afford it.
Over here, the very people who promote green energies are silent on such data; yet they would be the very ones clamoring and protesting with full media coverage were such a situation to develop in the US.
Curious.
In Australia, where the world’s biggest carbon tax is officially to come into effect on Sunday, July 1st, the Feral government (which promised not to bring in such a tax) is paying household compensation to families receiving benefits. No mention of the words “carbon tax” in the reason why the compensation is being made. But everybody knows.
And some are putting the compensation to good use:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/uses-for-carbon-tax-compensation-that-are-not-what-ms-gillard-had-in-mind/
Federal minister for traffic, Ramsauer, wants all environmental regulations ignored for the Energiewende projects. It cannot be he says, that only because of the breeding season of some whales the ramming of foundations for offshore wind turbines must be delayed, or that for the construction of transmission lines areas for replacement nature reserves have to be found.
CDU goes Deep Green now. We had to destroy nature to save it.
http://de.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idDEBEE85Q01Y20120627
The best way to conserve nature is to can it and store it in the cellar. 😉
I would call this “doubling down on stupid.” In the early 2000’s, the electric utilities in California went in the red when the poorly designed regulated market made them pay more for power than they could recover in their rates. This caused the bankruptcy of PG&E and near bankruptcy of SoCalEd in early 2001. Pile the responsibility of handing our free electricity on top of the damge from having to abandon nuclear generation and you have a similar situtation arising. Goodby RWE and Vattenfall.
[…] German Pols Now Demanding Energy Welfare For Its Citizens – 800,000 Have Had Their Electricity Cut… […]
[…] https://notrickszone.com/2012/06/26/german-pols-now-demanding-energy-welfare-for-its-citizens-800000-… […]
[…] this dynamic can now be seen in Germany. The No Tricks Zone posts that there are now 800,000 Germans who have had their electricity cut off. (Story in German […]
[…] food supply continues to be diverted into petrol tanks “to help the poor”. German solar power and UK wind power lead to fuel poverty. Even the West’s citizens are not safe […]