Posted on 05/25/2013 8:41:14 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Germany's push for wind and solar and its retreat from nuclear power is driving electricity costs to untenable levels and destroying support for the green agenda, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.
“The fact that German electricity prices are among the highest in Europe, must serve as a warning signal,” said the IEA. “The transition to low-carbon energy requires public acceptance, and therefore retail electricity prices to remain at an affordable level.”
Germany’s so called “Energiewende” aims to raise the share of electricity from renewables to 50pc by 2030 and 80pc by the midcentury, a huge challenge for a country with an energy-hungry industrial base.
Environment minister Peter Altmaier says costs could reach €1 trillion by 2039, though this could be trimmed to €700bn by slashing feed-in tariffs. The vast sums have begun to alarm German taxpayers while industry fears that heavy reliance on wind power in the North Sea could prove exorbitant and risk an energy crunch.
“The German power system is structurally broken,” said a report by Macquarie. “There are not enough cables to bring the electricity to the main industrial centres in the Ruhr and Rhine regions, and the patchwork grid cannot cope."
Electricity costs rose 11pc last year, in part to fund subsidies for wind and solar. This is doing little to create jobs at home since China’s solar upstarts have swept the market while Germany’s solar pioneers go bust.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Reality bites.
Shhhh, they might hear you in Nevada and stop closing the coal plants in favor of their new magic solar and wind farms.
Whatever your politics, you must obey the laws of physics. Solar and wind are simply not dense enough to be economic and power a modern industrial society. the Germans have also abandoned nuclear power. Their big green initiative is not the first time Germany has made a catastrophic strategic blunder.
Yeah....and just wait till the lack of sunspots kicks in (due to lower magnetic field on the Sun)...and we enter another 400 year long mini ice age.
You mean to tell me that Germany, once the scientific and Engineering powerhouse of the world, is just now discovering what has been known for 100 years?
A.C transmission too distant from where the power is needed 'loses' up to 50% of the generated power, and when wind power efficiency hovers around 5%,well...
D'OH!!
What went wrong?
“Germany’s push for wind and solar and its retreat from nuclear power is driving electricity costs to untenable levels and destroying support for the green agenda, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned. “
MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MINDS!!! If SAVING THE WORLD is the objective, then ANY COST should be borne - the United States did it in World War 2 - we had a HUGE DEBT when the war ended (of course we were able to pay it then as the cost for FDRs time bombs hadn’t kicked in the ‘Great Society’ was still 20 years away).
So, DAMMIT, Germans - pay the price!!! We paid a huge price to kick your butt 70 years ago, now it’s your turn to slay the GLOBAL WARMING MONSTER!!!
Go for it, BIG BOYS, show the world what you can do!!
(idiots)
That's the crux of the issue. Everyone fixates on dropping panel costs; but the panels could be free and the energy from the sun would still be the same. Not to mention the fact that it goes away at night.
I'd have thought the Germans much smarter about this.
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