RE Regrets: Germany Laments its ‘Transition’ to Wind & Solar

When it comes to wind and solar, no country went harder or faster than Germany. As they say though, act in haste, repent at your leisure.

A grid on the brink of collapse and rocketing power prices is all that Germans have to show for their obsession about powering themselves with daily sunshine and occasional breezes.

Now, their economic leadership is taking a different approach to the debacle.

The latest wheeze is that as soon as one country (ie Germany) sets out to destroy its once reliable and affordable power supplies, every other country is bound to join the circus.

Working on the basis that every country should suffer from a costly and inefficient electricity supply, it’s a little like being forced to run in a three-legged race; the sporting spectacle where competitors are hobbled together in order that they all might fail together. No one gets ahead, so everyone fails.

Well, now that Germany’s wind and solar experiment has failed it wants everyone else to fail, too.

German Green Energy Only “Efficient” If Everyone Else’s Is Inefficient, Says German Minister Of Economics
No Tricks Zone
Pierre Gosselin
18 May 2018

Parts of Germany’s political leadership appear to be waking up to the harsh realities of green energies (wind and sun) and their inefficiencies.

“Economic Minister accepts true condition of Energiewende”

The website of German national daily “Welt” here reported last month that Germany’s powerful Minister of Economics, Peter Altmaier “accepts the true condition of the Energiewende [transition to green energies]”.

In the Welt commentary, veteran journalist Daniel Wetzel wrote that Altmaier “avoided every mention of Germany functioning as a leader or role model”” for the world when it comes to green energies today. That’s change of course from what we used to hear.

Some ten years ago Germany boasted non-stop about being the global leader in green energies. Today, after seeing years of skyrocketing electricity prices and an increasingly destabilized power grid, the country has visibly backed off its once lofty green goals, which were aimed at making Germany 90% reliant on green energies by 2050. Lately it’s been dawning that this target was far too utopian.

Energiewende “no solution for single countries”

Wetzel quotes Altmaier, who was speaking before dozens of green business leaders at the international Energiewende Conference, stated that “the Energiewende will survive only if it is global” and that it is “no solution for single countries.”

In a nutshell, Altmaier admitted the Energiewende is a failure because it is already known that many other countries, like USA and China” are not going to adopt it and so will always have access to cheap, reliable energy and Germany will thus have no chance to compete internationally should it opt to stay on the green course.

Altmaier said it only made sense if it’s implemented worldwide. But today everyone knows worldwide implementation is a pipe dream and so Germany needs to start forgetting about its once ambitious Energiewende..

Wetzel then comments:

“Altmaier’s sober message to the international eco-electricity scene: An Energiewende is more difficult than one thinks, and it takes longer than many think it does.”

Only efficient when everyone else accepts being inefficient

So why would Altmaier state that only a global Energiewende would make sense? To answer that one has to read between the lines. His claim in fact confirms that green energies are terribly inefficient, and thus uncompetitive, which means going it alone only makes the country inefficient and uncompetitive.

So according to Altmaier in order for the Energiewende to be “efficient in a country, all other countries must adopt it and become energetically inefficient. Only when all countries become inefficient can Germany’s Energiewende be “efficient”.

No hurry to go green

Under the bottom line: Germany is no longer in a hurry to transform its energy supply system into a green one because it knows big competing coutries aren’t going to do it.
No Tricks Zone