Diane Kimura

Germany embarked on an ambitious, grandiose plan in 2010 titled: "Energiewende” to transition their economy from coal and nuclear to a low-carbon and environmentally friendly renewable energy.

"Energiewende” has done more harm than good for Germany. You will be astounded to know that after the closures of the last three nuclear power plants a fortnight ago, Germany has dramatically increased its electricity imports.

No money for guessing; these imports are from coal-fired plants or nuclear power plants from the neighboring European countries.

The target was to reduce emissions drastically while providing households and corporations with an adequate "affordable” energy supply.

Nevertheless, it has been termed as preposterous and a catastrophic failure by some of the market participants for the reasons listed below:

Energiewende resulted in a drastic upsurge in the cost of electricity for households. In fact, many people are unaware, but Germany, along with several other European nations, pays one of the world's highest electricity prices.

This harms the poorest people in the country.

Taxes and fees account for more than 30-40% of the total electricity price in Germany. The supposedly high taxes and fees originate from the imposition of Energiewende to support the renewables projects.

Thus, it’s mind-boggling that households in the industrial powerhouse of Europe pay, on average, 41% more than the Euro Area to sustain the green transition, which is going nowhere.

Germany was the biggest coal importer last year as the closed coal-fired plants were reopened to meet the energy needs post the Russian weaponisation of natural gas.

One of the most significant impediments to the "Energiewende” implementation will be the unreliability of renewable energy sources. It has been time and fact proven that the elevated volatility in the production of wind and solar power can cause havoc with the grid stability (transmission grid).

As a result, a 100% transition to renewables, especially without nuclear power, is unviable. In fact, as Germany closed its nuclear plants, the void was filled by the "dirty” coal power (see the black area post the end of red) instead of the "clean energy”.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 349 words, total size 2 kb.