Germany Screws the Energy Pooch Bigtime

German Consumers Pay Big Price for Government's Energy Mistakes




Germany is attempting the impossible: It is attempting to replace safe and reliable nuclear power with exorbitantly expensive intermittent unreliable energy sources such as big wind and big solar. German consumers of electric power are already paying the price of this ill-advised policy of quasi energy suicide.

Oddly for a so-called green government, the Germans are rapidly building up their coal generation capacity, in an effort to avert total energy disaster from the intermittent unreliables.

Germany’s foray into renewables has not converted most of its neighbors and a number of them are planning to construct nuclear power plants of their own, just as Germany is getting rid of hers. _Germans Pay the Price

Of course most intelligent leaders would not follow Germany's path to energy suicide. It is easy to understand what happens to industrial economies when their power grids can no longer supply high quality, reliable electric power: They lose their industries to other countries that are still capable of supplying industrial quality power.

Despite technological advances, wind, solar, hydro and other green energy sources still remain an unprofitable investment in a fair market. The way to encourage their exploitation is through a set of feed-in tariffs, a policy where energy companies are forced to buy electricity from green generators at a price set by the government (which is usually legislated to remain the same for two decades).

The German government has passed the cost of the payment from the energy companies to the consumer. Every German on the grid pays something called Umlage, a special surcharge for supporting green fuels that covers all the green energy subsidies, however much energy is produced.

_RT

Germany is one of the worst conceivable places to build solar power infrastructure. Constantly cloudy, at relatively high latitude -- with almost no useful sun over large parts of the year.

Wind is even worse, with an erratic unpredictability that is said to be more threatening to power grids than throwing live hand grenades into grid control centres.

Industries are already leaving Germany, and more will soon follow. The loss of energy and jobs will damage the German economy almost as much as the exploding cost of new infrastructure required to deal with the intermittent unreliables. And the cost -- THE COST!!! Hundreds of thousands of lower class workers in Germany already cannot afford to pay their skyrocketing power bills. That number will only grow larger.

In an effort to stay in power just a few years longer, Germany's leadership has made one of the worst decisions that a modern government can make.

Germany was unlikely to be destroyed by outsiders, in the absence of another provocateur such as Hitler. But in this case, it is the Germans who are doing it to themselves.

With Germany as the pivot point for the European power grid and the European economy, what does this tell you about the future of Europe?

h/t The GWPF

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