Europe Exhausting Itself Running from Boogeymen

Europe's high energy costs are driving increasing numbers of industries and large employers overseas. Most of Europe's high energy costs are caused by Europe's reflexive flight from inexpensive energy of the hydrocarbon and nuclear varieties.

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.” _NewYorkTimes

Carbon dioxide is boogeyman #1 for the European greens who control much of the continent's energy policy. But Europe's ineffectual attempts to reduce carbon emissions amount to suicidal self-flagellation and self-strangulation. It is all grand theatre, with the end result being self righteous self-immolation.

Boogeyman #2 is nuclear power. Germany is the poster boy of sacrificial self-castration in this regard.

The changes have been rapid. Nuclear power supplies 17 percent of the country’s energy needs, down from 23, while renewables have climbed from 20 to 25 percent in just months.

...Despite technological advances, wind, solar, hydro and other green energy sources still remain an unprofitable investment in a fair market. The way to encourage their exploitation is through a set of feed-in tariffs, a policy where energy companies are forced to buy electricity from green generators at a price set by the government (which is usually legislated to remain the same for two decades).

The German government has passed the cost of the payment from the energy companies to the consumer... This week, energy companies announced that the charge would go up by 47 percent for next year. The average Germany household will now pay €250 a year to sponsor green energy producers, four times more than in 2009. _RT

But green energy is expensive and unreliable. Which means that big industries whose profit margins depend upon the use of inexpensive energy, must move overseas -- and take their good paying jobs with them.

On Dec. 19, Voestalpine, an Austrian maker of high-quality steel for the auto industry, announced that it would build a plant in North America that would employ natural gas to reduce iron ore to a kind of raw iron that would then be used in the company's European blast furnaces.

...Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.” _NYT

Europeans have unwittingly handed their futures over to saboteurs in high places. Green government officials and their advisors are pushing European economies over a cliff, for the sake of faux environmental fear mongering. They are running from the energy boogeymen, and in the process are destroying the economic futures of their people.

Europeans are no longer living in a democracy, but are being controlled by a non-representative quasi-feudal system known as the European Union, based in Brussels. And the EU is essentially in thrall to the faux environmental power interests.

With such suicidal leadership, it is no wonder that demographic projections show most European populations rapidly withering away.

The future of Europe rests in the hands of her people, although Europeans have not been noted historically for understanding that fact. And there is very little time.

Poland and Czech Republic Begin to Defend Against Bitzkrieg of Deutsche EnergieWende

Germany's celebrated Energiewende was meant as a public display of enlightenment on the part of Germany's government. But instead, it is creating headache upon nightmare upon the promise of a future economic devastation, for Europe's largest economic power.

Germany has been using the power grids of neighboring countries as "dumping grounds" for unwanted over-production from big wind and big solar energy developments. But Poland and the Czech republic are tired of having their crucial power grids destabilised by an arrogant and militant German irresponsibility. They are installing switching systems to block the dangerous green energy at the border.

[If] Germany’s neighbours act in self-defense, no one can blame them. The blocking of energy at their borders, however, are fragmenting the single European market for electricity. They also turning Germany into an electrical island within the European energy network, with unknown consequences for the security of supply.

And they cause even more forced shutdowns of wind farms in Germany, which means additional costs of at least one hundred millions Euros.

Germany’s federal government took the nuclear phase-out decision without any consultation with their European partnerns and irrespective of any implications for neighbouring countries. The green decision was rushed through without regard of transport capacity. For their short-sighted, self-centered and actionistic energy policy the German government is now paying the price. _Die Welt_via_GWPF

Greens are like children who never took the trouble to learn the dangerous consequences of their impulsive and impassioned actions. When greens gain control of public policy, the consequences are apt to be particularly dire, if there are no mature adults in the vicinity.

If the actions of Germany, Obama's US, Gillard's Australia, etc. are any basis to judge, things are apt to get a bit out of hand, long before any adults show up on the world scene.

In Germany, Idiot Greens are the Problem

Below are excerpts from a Der Spiegel Online interview with Stephan Kohler, head of the German Energy Agency. Herr Kohler is incredibly kind and courteous to two very poorly prepared journalists, who clearly have no idea of how their electrical power grid works. (Go here for full interview)

In Germany, 75 percent of electricity goes to industry, for which a secure supply -- that is, at every second, and with constant voltage -- is indispensable. Neither solar nor wind power are suitable for that purpose today. Both fluctuate and provide either no secure supply or only a small fraction of a secure supply. _Spiegel

Kohler is patiently explaining to the uninformed journalists how sensitive German industry is to large intermittent fluctuations in their power supply. In fact, Germany is losing industries at an increasing rate due to its inability to guarantee reliable, high quality power at reasonable rates -- thanks to dysfunctional green government mandates and the imbecilic shutting down of nuclear power plants.

Kohler continues discussing some of the problems with intermittency:

... a surplus and fluctuations lead to very unpleasant systemic effects. We have voltage fluctuations within the grid that create problems for industry. Or we overload the grids in neighboring countries. Poland is in the process of installing technical equipment to protect its grids by keeping out surplus German electricity.

...Today anyone can build a solar power system wherever he wants. And anyone who owns one of these systems also has the right to be connected to the grid operator. Just take a drive through Bavaria, and you'll see entire fields full of solar power plants, even though there is zero consumption there and there is no grid. Solar systems should be expanded only in places where the electricity is needed and there are grids that can absorb it...

... Nowadays wind energy is mostly generated where it isn't needed, that is, in the north. But the power lines that are supposed to carry this electricity to the south only exist on paper at the moment. I would propose that we permit the construction of more wind farms only once the power lines have actually been built...

...So far the expansion of power lines has often been blocked by objections from the environmental movement, that is, the people who staunchly promote the development of renewal energy. When things go wrong, they give themselves an environmental halo and blame the grid operators....

... Every new solar or wind energy system that we cannot integrate in a way that makes sense has a negative impact on the system, both economically and technically.

... _Spiegel

Unfortunately, there is no clean way of integrating large scale wind and solar energy into a modern industrial power grid. The longer German greens persist in their idiotic Energiewende, the more ruinously expensive it will be for Germany to dig its way out of the deep green hole.

And since Germany is at the centre of the European power grid (and the European economy), when Germany suffers, all of Europe will suffer.

Looming Electricity Shortages in Europe

Industry observers last month expressed concern over a potential electricity supply crisis this winter because of a tighter nuclear supply scenario in Belgium, Germany and France.

After Germany closed some of its oldest nuclear reactors following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, another big blow to supply were cracks at Belgian nuclear reactors Tihange 2 and Doel 3, which have grounded 2,000 MW when Belgium would typically be a net exporter to France. _Reuters

The risk of freezing to death during a cold winter is many orders of magnitude higher than the risk of being harmed by a nuclear reactor. And yet Europe's leaders march steadfast toward the brink of the energy cliff, undeterred by the dangers and hardships that confront their citizens as a result of their actions.

Green dreams of intermittent unreiable wind and solar: they'll be the death of Europe yet.

Germany's Green Suicide

In the US northeast, long lines for food, water, cash, and fuels -- but no one lined up for wind turbines after Hurricane Sandy. Wind turbines are exorbitant luxuries -- the essence of inessentiality. In a disaster -- and in hard times -- the last thing you need to do is to waste money on intermittent unreliables.

And in the UK, the Energy Minister announced that no new onshore wind farms would be built:

So unreliable are wind turbines — thanks to the wind’s constant vagaries — that they are one of the most inefficient means of producing electricity ever devised. _Telegraph

Aside from the UK, can you explain Europe's headlong rush toward a green energy suicide? Can it all be explained by the pseudoscientific religion of carbon hysteria, or is something more sinister afoot?

We know that wealthy and politically-connected wind farm developers can reap a healthy return on investment, even if the wind farm never generates any electricity -- thanks to government subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, mandates, etc etc. We know that political leaders can win votes and financial support / payoffs, by promising "clean energy."

Face it: there's a sucker born every minute.

Just try not to be one of them.

Can Germany Avoid a Spain-Style Meltdown and Indian-Style Blackouts?

Germany's government is treading a fine line between economic catastrophe and widespread power outages, on the one hand, and barely squeaking by with high unemployment and low growth, on the other hand.

If the quality and reliability of Germany's power supply continues to decline under the controversial Energiewende policy, Germany's industry may have no choice but to re-locate in more energy-friendly territories.

...private consumers and especially small and medium-sized businesses are heavily burdened by rising energy prices. Especially the medium-sized companies suffer doubly: first, from the higher energy costs in production and secondly because customers have less money in their wallets because of the rising electricity prices

It should also be remembered that the absolute level of wholesale prices is not really important for the competitiveness of the industry. The comparison with the electricity prices of other countries is much more important for the decisions regarding relocation or outsourcing.

And this comparison does not look good. Germany has the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe. With increasing costs of the green energy policy, relocating abroad is becoming increasingly attractive for companies, especially for energy-intensive businesses. _DieWelt_via_The GWPF

If Germany loses its energy-intensive industries, it will be the beginning of a long, slow slide into deep economic stagnation for the most powerful economy in Europe. And the underlying cause -- the failure of the nation's power grid to maintain high levels of reliability and quality, even while electricity prices are shooting through the roof -- will only get worse as Germany's economy fails.

The loss of such industries would have potentially disastrous consequences for Germany, however. The strength of Germany’s economy – compared to international standards - is mainly due to unusually intact and tightly knit supply chains. Basic industries are not the dinosaurs of "old economy” - already condemned to extinction. They are rather at the beginning of the value chains; with their quality and price level they set the starting point for all subsequent stages of industrial production.

German machine producers, car manufacturers and electrical industry are world leaders, because their engineers and skilled workers have an exceptional knowledge of the characteristics and abilities of their materials.

This expertise also stems from the geographical proximity and close ties of primary industry and processing companies in the manufacturing sector. This proximity should not be put at risk through negligence, allowing value chains to break because companies are driven abroad by unilateral cost burdens due to the green energy transition. _Translation of DieWelt article via The GWPF

Real Clear Energy

Dumbing Down the Energy Debate

Sometimes you can pack an immense amount of useful information into a single graphical image. Other times a graphical image can appear to contain a large amount of information, but in fact it contains virtually zero useful information. An example of the latter is the graphic below, presented by Real Clear Energy:

Content Free Graphic

It is crucial that the Germans get their energy future right -- they are gambling the future of Germany and all of Europe on getting it right. The result of wishful thinking and self deception in this context is likely to be catastrophic. Openness and honesty are vitally important, at a juncture when Germans are shutting down reliable nuclear plants and are exposing their jugulars to expensive, intermittent unreliable forms of energy.

First of all, the data for the graphic apparently comes from Germany's BDEW, but the Real Clear Energy article refers to their source of information as "Germany!"

Germany reported last week that it has been able to generate 26% of its electricity from renewable resources over the first six months of 2012. This is reflective of its effort to ramp up renewable sources in an effort to close all its nuclear reactors by 2020. Renewable sources provided only 20.45% last year and 18.3% the year before. _RCE

To ascribe a statement to "Germany" is absurd. Energy journalists must be specific about the sources of their information -- in this case a specific agency of the German government.

Secondly, the article refers to "percentage of energy generated" without specifying whether the generated "energy" was used, dumped, or exported. Intermittent unreliable forms of energy cannot be treated the same as energy from dispatchable power plants (gas turbines, hydro turbines, backup storage . . .) or baseload power plants (nuclear, many coal plants ...). In fact, Germany's grid came very close to being destabilised by its vulnerability to intermittent unreliables:

The good wind supply situation in December also showed some drawbacks for grid operation. While wind generation in the North of Germany was at a high level, system stability in the South of Germany was jeopardised. On 8 and 9 December 2011, for instance, Germany had to rely for the first time on capacities of Austrian reserve power stations to ensure security of supply. "As a result of strong wind supply in the North, fully utilised networks in the Centre, and generation congestion in the South of Germany, reserve capacities of Austrian gas and oil-fired power stations had to be used to be able to serve demand. This cannot be in the sustained interest of the energy turnaround. _BDEW

The German government is attempting an impossibility, and is betting its future and the future of its people on a sure loser. Intermittent unreliable forms of energy such as big wind and big solar, are qualitatively different from the stolid workhorses of modern utility grids: baseload and dispatchable power.

Not only is it impossible to substitute intermittent unreliable energy sources for dispatchable and baseload power generation, it is actually very dangerous to attempt anything above 20% penetration of the intermittent unreliable energy sources onto the grid.

Germany's grid is due for greater and greater destabilisation as the government attempts to force utilities to depend more and more upon the intermittent unreliables.

Energy media such as RealClearEnergy.org should be able to recognise disinformation, and have the courage to confront information sources with the fact of their disinformation. This is particularly true in the editorial section, where the above graphic was found.

The information in the graphic above is essentially meaningless, because it omits the crucial data specifying the ultimate use of the "generated energy" and the effect which the "generated energy" had upon the power grid and the rest of the installed power generation infrastructure.

Wishful thinking is okay, in private fantasies. But when the entire future of the European continent is being bet on wishful thinking, the grownups need to stand up and speak out.

The "Green Curse" Hitting Australia and Germany

Australia's carbon tax and renewable energy target are conspiring to wreak a perfect storm of green misery on Australian power utility customers. The article excerpted below only scratches the surface of the problem for Australia.

The operator of the eastern Australian grid, the Australian Energy Market Operator, has already announced that the average output of wind farms is about 30 per cent of installed capacity. But because wind is an intermittent energy source, AEMO will only count between 3 and 8 per cent of installed wind capacity towards the capacity it needs to keep on hand at all times.

This adds up to a lot of wind farms which have to be built almost in addition to the conventional, fossil fuel network. Because their output can vary wildly, wind farms have to be backed up by conventional generators kept on standby.

The backup generators will mainly be open-cycle gas turbines that can be powered up and down quickly, as opposed to the much larger and far more efficient closed-cycle gas turbines.

Enter the carbon tax, which is set at an internationally high price of $23, which will rise to $29 by 2015 before then probably falling to a $15 floor price. Even at $29, the price is still not high enough to force a switch to cleaner gas for baseload plants. But combined with the alternative energy target the overall result has been to discourage investment in baseload plants in favour of the least efficient ways of generating power; wind farms and open-cycle gas plants.

A further complication has been the splitting of the renewable energy target into a small-scale and large-scale target, with the small- scale target resulting in the installation of numerous, highly inefficient micro-scale photovoltaic systems.

This is all set to get worse. In dollar terms, of the $320 or so added annually to power bills by green initiatives, about $200 is due to the carbon tax and the rest due to renewable energy, according to some estimates. Renewable energy is set to increase its share of the costs, although to date voters have been in favour of this form of energy without realising how much it costs them.

All of this adds up to a looming policy disaster, which has to be sorted out quickly, by completely rethinking our approach

... _FR

We hear much more about Germany's energy woes, of course. Germany is the keystone of Europe, the driving force of the EU's economy and the central nexus of the European power grid.

We are learning -- bit by bit -- just how badly Germany's government has miscalculated in its headlong rush into the green quagmire...

Photovoltaics are threatening to become the costliest mistake in the history of German energy policy. Photovoltaic power plant operators and homeowners with solar panels on their rooftops are expected to pocket around €9 billion ($11.3 billion) this year, yet they contribute barely 4 percent of the country's power supply, and only erratically at that.

When night falls, all solar modules go offline in one fell swoop; in the winter, they barely generate power during the daytime. During the summer, meanwhile, they sometimes generate too much power around midday, without enough storage capacity to capture it all. The distribution network is also not laid out in a way that would allow the country's thousands of owners of photovoltaic arrays -- a term used to denote an installation of several panels working together -- to feed into the grid as well as draw power from it.

To keep the lights on, Germany ends up importing nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic. Grid operator Tennet even resorted to tapping an aging fossil fuel-fired power plant in Austria to compensate for shortages in solar power.

...subsidies for renewable energy, including an expansion of the power grid, will saddle energy consumers with costs well over €300 billion ($377 billion).

An environmental surcharge known as the EEG contribution, which is already added to German energy bills, will rise sharply. This renewable energy surcharge currently amounts to 3.59 cents per kilowatt hour. Chancellor Angela Merkel previously promised to cap it at 3.5 cents, but Erdmann's calculations show the EEG contribution jumping to "over 10 cents per kilowatt hour," or nearly three times what the chancellor pledged.

...Unfortunately, solar arrays provide peak performance only with maximum light exposure when the sun is at the perfect vertical angle and the modules at the ideal temperature -- in other words, under laboratory conditions. In reality, all of Germany's photovoltaic arrays together generate less power than two nuclear reactors. And they can't even replace those reactors unless they have enough storage capacity available. The figures on peak performance of photovoltaic arrays lead to misunderstandings, the German Physical Society writes in an expert opinion, stating, "Photovoltaics are fundamentally incapable of replacing any other type of power plant." Essentially, every solar array must be backed up with a conventional power plant as a reserve, creating an expensive double infrastructure. _Spiegel

H/T Earth's Energy blog

Intermittent unreliable forms of energy such as big wind and big solar, bring too many problems to the grid. Wise governments would be more concerned with the reliable and affordable provision of abundant power, and less concerned with the phantasms of doom dreamed up by tenured academics, government bureaucrats, and green ideologues of the lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy persuasion.

Government policies are leading many western nations into a costly quagmire of de facto energy starvation.

Wise persons had best plan ahead for the predictable results of foolish government policies.

Xtra Special Bonus: This graphic-rich article describes the growing importance of electricity to European industry.

If -- as seems inevitable -- the growing use of intermittent unreliable sources of electrical energy in Europe drives overall costs of electricity up at the same time as such use drives the quality of European electricity downward, it can only be anticipated that industrial concerns which are currently situated within EU countries, will more often choose to re-locate elsewhere. (We have already seen the beginning of this unfortunate exodus.)

German Magazine FOCUS Warns Germans of Collapse

The people of Germany are not entirely unaware of the destructive course of energy starvation which its green leaders have plotted for the nation. And certainly economic and industrial leaders of Germany are beginning to understand that German politicians have thrown the nation's economy into the end game.

Betting the entire future of Germany -- and Europe -- on one huge throw of the green die, Germany's faux environmentalist politicians and bureaucrats have committed a crucial error of leadership. Their radical energy policies have endangered the very basis of modern life in Europe.

FOCUS... warns that Germany’s once super stable power grid, once a model of stability and reliability, is now on the brink of collapse.

...FOCUS reminds its readers that the big price driver is not “greedy” power companies, but government taxes and surcharges, which make up a whopping 45% of the price of electricity. In 1998 the 80 million or so Germans paid about €2.3 billion for various surcharges, taxes etc. on electricity. Today that figure is more than 1000% higher: €23.7 billion!

Not only the costs have become major obstacles, but also the technical feasibility of renewable energies is missing, especially wind and solar, which lack the infrastructure elements for taking the power to the markets that need them. These elements include power transmission lines, back-up energy systems for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, and power storage systems.

...If next winter turns out to be a harsh one and the power fails and leaves citizens out in the cold, then there are going to be lots of angry people. Germany’s social powder is tinder dry.

...One year ago Germany, in a fit of hysteria, ordered 8 nuclear power plants closed immediately and the remaining 9 closed by the year 2022. By 2050 it’s energy supply must be at least 80% supplied by renewable sources – costs be damned.

This has come to be knows as the German Energiewende or “energy transition”, roughly translated. And so the mad rush to renewable energy was on in earnest. Today, just a single year later, the high costs and insurmountable technical problems (we warned them) have spooked leaders and sparked a wave of uneasiness to sweep over the country.

...A FOCUS survey found that 41% of Germans flat out reject paying one cent more for renewables. In East Germany, that number jumps to 52%. Only a small minority of less than 10% could imagine paying $25 a month more.

German leaders are spooked by the spiralling out-of-control costs and government seizure now spreading though the energy sector. _FOCUS as excerpted in NoTricksZone

The article then quotes a number of German leaders expressing dismay at the dangerous path of Germany's energy policy.

H/T Global Warming Policy Foundation

Pitiful Germany: Who Can Save You Now?

Germany intends to produce 40% of its electric power from big wind and big solar by 2020 -- and 80% of its power from big green by 2050. German politicians say it will work. They are betting the entire country on it. The cost of Germany's great energy experiment -- Energiewende -- has risen to upwards of $250 billion over the next 8 years. That is about 7% of Germany's 2011 GDP. Electricity costs are already going up, and German electricity consumers must pay a 15% renewable-energy surcharge tax with every monthly bill.

Germany's government is betting its industry and its economy that green energy technologists can somehow pull a herd of rabbits out of a thimble, and save the day. Pathetic Germany: Who can save you now?

In 2010, the German government declared that it would undertake what has popularly come to be called an Energiewende—an energy turn, or energy revolution. This switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy is the most ambitious ever attempted by a heavily industrialized country: it aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by midcentury. The goal was challenging, but it was made somewhat easier by the fact that Germany already generated more than 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, which produces almost no greenhouse gases. Then last year, responding to public concern over the post-tsunami nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the eight oldest German nuclear plants shut down right away. A few months later, the government finalized a plan to shut the remaining nine by 2022. Now the Energiewende includes a turn away from Germany's biggest source of low-­carbon electricity.

To some German economists, the country's energy policy is simply wrong-headed. Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, is especially scathing. "The Energiewende is a turn into nowhere-land, because the green technologies are just not sufficient to provide a replacement for modern society's energy needs," he says. "It is wrong to shut down the atomic power plants, because this is a cheap source of energy, and wind and solar power are by no means able to provide a replacement. They are much more expensive, and the energy that comes out is of inferior quality. Energy-intensive industries will move out, and the competitiveness of the German manufacturing sector will be reduced or wages will be depressed." _TechnologyReview

The problems with Germany's plan are too many, too obvious, and too grave to dismiss. And yet that is exactly what Germany's politicians are doing, to the ultimate demise of the nation's industrial might and its economy. And when Germany goes, it will drag the rest of Europe down with it.

There is much about the current policy that arguably isn't logical. In the short term at least, the decision to close the nuclear plants means that the Energiewende will actually push utilities to rely more heavily on coal. Last year, for example, RWE fired up two long-planned new boilers at an existing facility near the Belgian border that burns the dirtiest fossil fuel of them all: brown lignite coal. Though these boilers are cleaner than the ones they're replacing, the coal plant is the largest of its kind in the world, and it's going full blast these days to keep up with power demand.

...Inevitably, some hot July week will come when a high-pressure system stalls over Europe, stilling turbines just when sunburned Germans reach for their air conditioners. Until large-scale, cheap storage is available, gas power plants, which can start up quickly and efficiently, will be the most practical way to cope with these situations. But there's little incentive to build such plants. Owners of gas plants meant to meet peak power needs can no longer count on running for a certain number of hours, since the need will no longer fall on predictable workday afternoons but come and go with the sun and wind. Says ­Ottmar ­Edenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "The design of the electricity market will change fundamentally. You have fluctuating demand, and at the same time a fluctuating supply. The linkage and the interplay in these two dimensions has become the subject of intense research. There could be new and emerging market failures." _TechnologyReview

Market failures? Certainly. But more importantly, power failures. As power blackouts and cascading failures become more common across Germany -- and thus across Europe -- Germans will find themselves immersed in the true experience of big green: Freezing or roasting in the dark.

Without enough cheap, reliable power to support the high-technology industry and the transportation system, Germany's economy—and that of Europe as a whole—could be in trouble. Already some German firms are building new manufacturing facilities elsewhere; for example, last year the chemical producer Wacker ­Chemie decided to build a polysilicon plant in Tennessee, partly because energy costs in Germany were so high. Weale says, "The quality of the supply would only have to deteriorate a little bit and it would be quite serious for this high-­technology industry. We've already seen, even without the lights going out, that industry is getting nervous." _TechnologyReview

Not long ago, German politicians were talking about having to spend $25 billion on new power infrastructure to facilitate new offshore wind installations and new solar power plants. Now, they are talking about up to $250 billion -- a significant portion of German GDP.

But in reality, German economists admit that no one knows how high the ultimate cost of the Energiewende will grow to be.

And in the end, what will Germany have? A former economic powerhouse of Europe, reduced to dependency upon intermittent unreliable forms of energy. A nation in demographic decline, stripped of its most profitable industrial producers -- because these producers could not depend upon Germany's power supply.

Rarely has a nation gone through the rapid ups and downs that Germany has undergone over the past century. It is not certain that the much depleted German character can survive the next collapse.

Germany's Agenda of Energy Starvation Could not Happen at a Worse Time for European Economies

Germany is proceeding along a path that puts it at greater and greater risk of potentially catastrophic power blackouts.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is unrepentant -- and almost boastful -- over her energy plan which commits Germany to invest at least $25 billion to upgrade its power grid. The German grid is the power hub of Europe -- if it fails, Europe's grid fails.

The high cost of upgrades to the power grid could not come at a worse time for Germany or Europe, already stressed by a banking crisis. But the $25 billion or $30 billion needed to improve the grid systems is only the barest down payment toward the ultimate costs of Merkel's suicidal energy decisions.

Germany is phasing out its nuclear power plants and attempting to replace its infrastructure of baseload power generation with big wind and big solar installations. Germany publicly hopes to provide as much as 50% of its electrical power from wind and solar within the next few decades.

Unfortunately, large power grids grow unstable when big wind and big solar -- intermittent unreliables -- attempt to provide more than 20% of overall power. Going far beyond that level of dependency on intermittent unreliables would place the German gird -- and thus the European grid -- in an untenable position.
More information
A look at Denmark's unfortunate experience with wind energy (PDF)

Spain was once caught up in the green fantasy of the intermittent unreliables, just like Merkel's Germany. But Spain was forced to admit that it could not afford the green fantasy any longer. Eventually, Germany will be forced to come to the same conclusion. The only question is the price that the German people will have to pay for the stubborn stupidity of its leaders.

Greens are reluctant to admit the problems which intermittent unreliables pose for grid stability, particularly the higher the levels of penetration of the intermittent unreliable sources. But the truth will come out in the most painful ways, and many people will remember who has led them to suffer unnecessarily.

Europe is undergoing a demographic implosion, which is putting increasing -- although still subtle -- pressures on the ability of European nations to maintain technological infrastructures and to pay back large debts. If Europe goes through with this suicidal abandonment of reliable power sources in favour of the intermittent unreliables -- and goes even more deeply in debt in the process -- future generations of Europeans will pay the the price.

Green Die-Off Energy Policies Hurt Europeans

The governments of Europe are causing undue pain and hardship to Europeans. Thanks to Euro governments, the people of Europe will pay more for energy, and will be subject to energy shortages and power brownouts and blackouts -- all in the name of a computer modeled quasi-religious orthodoxy trying to pass for science: catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Denmark, an early adopter of the global-warming mania, now requires its households to pay the developed world’s highest power prices — about 40¢ a kilowatt hour, or three to four times what North Americans pay today. Germany, whose powerhouse economy gave green developers a blank cheque, is a close second, followed by other politically correct nations such as Belgium, the headquarters of the EU, and distressed nations such as Spain.

The result is chaos to the economic well-being of the EU nations. Even in rock-solid Germany, up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty” — defined by governments as needing to spend more than 10% of the total household income on electricity and gas. Some 600,000 low-income Germans are now being cut off by their power companies annually, a number expected to increase as a never-ending stream of global-warming projects in the pipeline wallops customers. In the U.K., which has laboured under the most politically correct climate leadership in the world, some 12 million people are already in fuel poverty, 900,000 of them in wind-infested Scotland alone, and the U.K. has now entered a double-dip recession.

The U.S., in contrast, will see power rates decline starting next year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, dropping by more than 22% by the end of the decade and then staying flat to 2035. Why the fall? Mainly because the U.S. will rely overwhelmingly on fossil fuels in the years ahead, not just coal, which dominates the current power system, but increasingly natural gas, which is expected to account for 60% of all new generating capacity in the future. Thanks to fracking, the U.S. effectively has limitless amounts of inexpensive natural gas to add to its limitless coal.

While the rest of the developed world was in thrall to global-warming rhetoric, the U.S. talked the talk but balked at following through. In 1997, then president Bill Clinton and his vice-president, Al Gore, happily signed on to the Kyoto Treaty, which coerced the countries of the developed world into compromising their economies in order to save the planet. While other nations then dutifully complied, the U.S. Senate — as Clinton and Gore knew it would — refused to ratify Kyoto by a 95-0 vote. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, did an equally superb job of talking but balking at taking economy-killing measures. Bush successor Barack Obama, although a global-warming true believer, also put global warming on the back burner, preferring to make Obamacare, rather than climate change, his signature issue.

With the Republicans all but certain to control the purse strings following the November elections by dint of a majority in the House of Representatives, European-style legislation in the U.S. in aid of global warming will be impossible, even if the Republicans don’t also capture the Senate and the White House, as polls now indicate they will. In the event of a Republican sweep, the gap between power prices in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world will increase even more as “Drill, baby, drill” Republicans remove the existing restraints on the U.S. fossil-fuel industry, and slash the remaining subsidies on the U.S. renewable-energy industry. _Financial Post

Europe is already shrinking demographically, and only slowly beginning to confront the ruinous effects the of collapsing dominoes of debt across the EU, in the midst of a demographic contraction.

When the economic effects of the absurdist energy starvation policies of lefty-Luddite green influences on EU governments hit the fan, Europe's people and economies will really have something to cry about.

By the time the Euro leadership discovers how badly they have been hoodwinked by the carbon hysteric orthodoxy of CAGW, too many nations in the EU will be redlined on the misery meter.