Germany’s Neighbors Rankled by Its Energiewende

The American Interest ^ | Aug 04, 2015 | The American Interest

[Team Cuda]

So, where have I ever implied that I approve of “only” renewable resources? To quote myself, since you obviously didn’t read it the first time, “I believe that renewables can be a valuable part of a diversified energy policy”

As far as writing the Green Party in Germany, why do I really care about the opinions of a party that has only 10% of the Bundestag? Why shouldn’t I listen instead to the other 90% who clearly don’t want to do away with all fossil fuels? Oh, by the way, how many seats in the House and Senate do the enviro-whackos control?

You still keep on talking about children freezing, but I am seeing little (read – no) proof that this has occurred Is Germany suffering from power failures or brownouts? Has the cost of electricity in Germany skyrocketed? I think I know the answer, but I will wait with bated breath for the copies of the newspaper and magazine articles proving me wrong.

I have taken Econ 101 and you’re probably right, the initial cost of operating a point source is probably lower than the cost of multiple diverse sources – just like the costs of the US maintaining a nuclear triad in the Cold War was much more expensive than only operating one nuclear deterrent. Why did we do that? Because the extra cost of redundancy was worth it to make sure it would work when we needed it. Same with electrical power. The one big plant is the cheapest way to go, but you’re really screwed when the one big plant is Fukushima, or Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. Multiple sources provide redundancy when something (inevitably) goes wrong. The nice thing about having wind/solar (as PART of your energy portfolio) is that they provide some of this redundancy, and are significantly cheaper in recurring costs than their counterparts.