Wherever in the world governments have shackled their energy policies to nature’s ‘wonder fuels’, the sun and wind, it doesn’t take long for their constituents to enter a state of mortified panic as they recognise that their economic futures have been sacrificed to an obsessive cult-like ideology.
Because so much money was in the offing for those who played ball, very few boffins or bureaucrats were ready to call the renewables scam for what it is: the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time.
However, as it becomes evident that the RE Emperor is only adorned in the clothes he was born in, it’s not only battered business owners and householders being crushed by rocketing power prices terrified of where this lunacy ends, those who understand how economies work are equally unnerved. At least in Germany.
Major Blow To ‘Energiewende’ As Top German Economist Shows Plan Can Never Work!
No Tricks Zone
Pierre Gosselin
22 December 2017
Germany’s once highly promoted “Energiewende” (transition to green energies) and the country’s feed-in act have been given a grade of “F” by one of the country’s top economists, Prof Hans-Werner Sinn.
Just days ago the renowned economics professor gave a presentation dubbed “How much volatile power can the power grid take?” before a packed audience in Munich:
Top German economist Prof Hans-Werner Sinn says supplying Germany’s energy needs with wind and sun is “disillusionment”.
The basis of his presentation is a recent paper appearing in the European Economic Review: Buffering volatility, A study on the limits of Germany’s energy revolution.
Green energy “disillusionment”
In summary, Sinn claims it is unrealistic to believe that Germany can power itself with only wind and sun due to their immense supply volatility and that it is already a huge challenge in itself just to replace coal, oil and gas for producing electricity. Coal, oil and gas for electricity make up only a puny 12.8% of German total energy demand (chart 6:25-mark). He says:
As far as the rest, you can dream about it, but you cannot do it. […] It was disillusionment from the very start, and it’s important that this be made very clear.
Sinn shows just how volatile wind and solar energies in Germany are, using 2014 as an exmaple. At the time Germany had installed just over 24,000 turbines with a total rated capacity of almost 36 gigawatts:
However those turbines delivered on average only 5.85 gigawatts, well under 20%.
“Costs a horrendous sum of money”
The numbers are even more gruesome for solar panel installations, which of course do not function at all at night:
Installed in Germany in 2014 were 37.34 gigawatts of rated solar capacity. Delivered however were merely a tenth of that amount, an average of 3.70 gigawatts. What is does, says Sinn:
It costs a horrendous sum of money, reduces standard of living and blights the landscape. This simply cannot be!
Sinn’s results are a major blow to the proponents of the German Energiewende and to the notion it is clean, cheap and reliable. As the numbers and results come in, it becoming increasingly clear that the German mega green project is turning into an embarrassing fiasco.
Sinn rhetorically asks whether it’s maybe possible to smooth the supply, i.e. using a variety of strategies such pump-storage and power-to-gas, in order to make the supply more steady, reliable and efficient. His answer is an emphatic no, saying: “It’s an Energiewende to nowhere.”
Even if Germany installed enough capacity to make its supply 100% green, 61% of the output would have to “scrapped” because there would be no use for it, Sinn shows, using a chart at the 55-min. mark.
Lost credibility for science
The public, media and policymakers, however, refuse to acknowledge that the German man-on-the-moon energy project is is big trouble. At his blogsite, Holger Douglas commented on Sinn’s presentation and the failure of the Energiewende:
In the ensuing discussion one of the gravest consequences of the Energiewende emerged: the credibility of science. At almost every single research institute experts have been making every effort to dodge the fundamental laws of physics and nature in order to justify the Energiewende after the fact.
Sinn also notes he believes the cost of the Energiewende will end up far exceeding the earlier government estimate of 1 trillion euros. Moreover he says that Germany is also transforming its idyllic landscape into a large industrial park.
De-industrializing by over-industrializing
The Energiewende is one green plan that is backfiring spectacularly on a scale few could have imagined earlier. And in typical German fashion, leaders refuse to acknowledge this and appear as if they would prefer to see the country descend (once again) into ruin before admitting they’ve erred.
This is one presentation that needs to be made in English in other countries that are gung ho on going solar and wind.
No Tricks Zone
STOP THESE THINGS 
The Industrial Revolution, (IR) according to Jacob Bronowsky’s excellent series “The Ascent of Man” was the most successful transfer of power from the privileged to the commoner people yet on record.
The only industry that was not defeated by fossil solar, i.e. fossil carbon combustion, was nuclear, which didn’t exist, and it includes “geothermal”.
I agree that the IR is a Good Thing, but the only way for it to continue is to defeat the plethora of lies and the world epidemic of fear, about nuclear power and radiation.
The waste from both fossil carbon combustion and the inevitable expiration of “renewable energy” devices does or will vastly exceed the waste even from our present wildly extravagant water moderated reactors, with no reprocessing.
Laboratories in the USA proved two different, far better civilian nuclear technologies in the 1960s and the 1980s, and Presidents Nixon and Clinton in the same order threw them away.
Fortunately for the world, but not the part that calls itself “free”, China and Russia have better sense.
Germany should follow South Australia’s lead and install efficient diesel guzzling gas turbine generators which everyone knows are totally green and don’t produce any pollution.
I.m sorry, Ertimus, but if you look up the paper written for NOAA by James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha, their survey of all available data shows that even without counting the carbon dioxide, the nitrogen oxides inevitable from a gas turbine are per megawatt.hour far more poisonous than nuclear “waste” from working reactors, and responsible for far more deaths even than Chernobyl. There are only hypothetical deaths from the other two meltdown occurrences.
CO₂ is steadily producing an excess poisonous to the oceanic food chain base that creates calcium carbonate for molluscs and corals,and everything above that. Dr. Alex Cannara fears that at the present rate, vast extinctions in the oceans will begin almost inevitably at about 2050. CO₂ is also quite correctly called “Carbonic Acid Gas”. CO₂ + H₂O H₂CO₃
The trouble is the bi-carbonate of calcium, which only exists in aqueous solution, but anywhere that you find limestone caves, they were produced by rainfall quite acidic enough with CO₂ to contain H₂CO₃.
When we went to the moon, we used the best technology, not the worst. Asking modern economies to power themselves using ancient technologies like wind and solar instead of nuclear is akin to asking astronauts to go to the moon using pedal power instead of liquid hydrogen.
Back in 2014 when the turbines starting going up near me I was appalled, but what could I do!? The politicians seem to forget the difference between a democracy and an oligarchy!!!
The only thing you need to read before making a decision on the wind industry is what they do to the wildlife in every area they come up in!! Take one look at this article and tell me otherwise:
http://sydneymorningherald.ap-southeast-2.elasticbeanstalk.com/AWWI-Wind-Wildlife-Interactions-Factsheet-05-27-14
You’ll see exactly what I’ve seen for years, wildlife suffering at the expense of politicians who live thousand of k’s away in a big town house. They couldn’t tell you what the sound of a wind turbine is!!!! The only reason to keep these things around is as a reminder of the damage they can do, and they should be in the backyard of the pollies!
I’m not a NIMBY, mind you. I’m all for the appropriate ways to solve the problems the world is having at the moment, but not these things! Not wind!