Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Country Hailed as 'First Major Renewable Energy Economy' Is Now Collapsing Into Power Poverty
It’s beginning to look like Germany put too many eggs in the renewable energy basket.
For years now, progressives have praised the European country for paving the way forward on renewable energy. With the fourth largest economy in the world, Germany has had 100 percent of its energy output covered by renewables for years now, according to Clean Energy Wire.
Renewable Energy World praised the country over a decade ago for being “the world’s first major renewable energy economy.”
Because of this overreliance on renewables, energy prices have skyrocketed. Thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the price of natural gas is spiking, leaving European nations with no cheap alternatives. Power prices in Germany have reached record levels, forcing the German government to increase the annual cost of household gas bills by nearly 500 euros, Reuters reported.
“The alternative would have been the collapse of the German energy market and, with it, large parts of the European energy market,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said, according to Foreign Policy Magazine.
The country has since taken up a number of energy-saving measures. For instance, the government has shut off spotlights by monuments in the capital city of Berlin, and people have taken to stocking up on wood for the upcoming winter.
If the country had instead invested in nuclear power, a clean yet reliable alternative to renewables like wind and solar, perhaps this crisis wouldn’t be as severe.
Sadly, the country opted to phase out all of its nuclear power plants. In July, Reuters reported the many reasons for this decision — none of which really made any sense if you realize how great of an energy alternative nuclear power is.
“A first assessment by the environment and economy ministries in March did not recommend extending the plants’ lifetime, citing legal, licensing and insurance challenges, the need for extensive and possibly costly safety checks and a lack of fuel rods to keep the plants running,” Reuters reported.
Author and journalist Michael Shellenberger used to be a big fan of renewables until he learned more about their actual cost. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 8, Shellenberger revealed why Germany and the rest of green energy Europe, for that matter, were headed for disaster.
According to Shellenberger, the world is currently in a crisis of too many renewables.
“Germany had too much renewables. Its electricity is now the most expensive in Europe, and it became dependent on Russia for reliable fuels, mostly natural gas, because it depended so much on these weather-dependent renewables,” Shellenberger told the Journal.
In his view, Europe isn’t the only country in danger of facing this crisis.
As politicians in the Democratic Party continue to demand a transformation of the American energy economy, this threat becomes more likely to hit the states.
“In the Western parts of the United States first, but now increasingly in the Midwest of the United States, we’re running into potential electricity shortages,” Shellenberger said. “That’s been a consequence of becoming overly reliant on weather-dependent renewables, namely solar panels and wind turbines.”
It’s quite telling how the climate change extremists across the world have gotten us into this predicament.
If the goal really was to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear power would be at the forefront of energy alternatives. Even natural gas would be pushed much harder. But, many of the most ardent climate change alarmists oppose both options.
Then again, what else would one expect from the left? They’ve never cared about facts before.
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Want to Understand the Basics of Global Warming? Just Follow Al Gore's Money
P.T. Barnum might not have said there is a sucker born every minute. But, if he didn’t, he should have, because it is true.
In the Southwestern U.S. in the late 1800s, snake oil salesmen traveled from town to town in buckboard wagons, peddling snake oil. Now they travel around in private jets to world financial centers, trading carbon.
If one Googles the term “snake oil salesman,” the following appears in the Wikipedia definition: “‘Snake oil salesman’ is a common expression used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a general proponent of some valueless or fraudulent cure, remedy, or solution. … In popular culture, a particular kind of confidence trick is associated with the snake-oil salesman – the traveling salesman purports to be a doctor (with false credentials), selling fake medicines with boisterous marketing hype, often supported by pseudo-scientific evidence [emphasis added].”
The Kyoto Protocol was a “climate treaty” ratified by UN climate delegates in December 1997. It became effective in February 2005 for the 36 countries that signed the protocol.
Vice President Albert Gore was a leading proponent of the Kyoto Protocol and signed it on behalf of the U.S. However, President Bill Clinton elected not to submit the climate treaty to the Senate for ratification because the Senate had voted unanimously to oppose the treaty’s ratification. The Senate opposed the treaty because it did not require developing countries to abide by the same standards as developed nations.
The treaty was designed to reduce emissions of seven greenhouse gases; however, the main focus was reducing CO2. The treaty was effective from 2005 to 2012. During that time, worldwide emissions of CO2 increased by 32 percent.
While the Kyoto Protocol did not introduce any new scientific concepts to reduce emissions of CO2, it did introduce a novel economic concept: trading carbon credits and, later, trading carbon offsets.
The idea of trading carbon credits or offsets is based on the fact that living plant matter and the world’s oceans absorb CO2 and are known as “carbon sinks.”
Plant matter absorbs CO2 and emits oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. It is necessary for all human, animal and plant life (including agriculture) on Earth. The world’s oceans absorb and emit CO2 as part of the natural process referred to as the carbon cycle, which includes photosynthesis. Very little is known about the world’s carbon cycle; too many variables are involved, and there is a lack of methodology to measure them.
This is how the “trading scheme” (as the UN calls it) for carbon credits and offsets works.
A UN climate treaty such as the Kyoto Protocol establishes an allocation of carbon credits for a country based on an emission target for a period of time. The carbon emitters in the country are given a target by the government. If the emitters exceed their target, they can buy unused credits from the government, other emitters who don’t use their full allocation or from carbon traders.
There are three main groups of carbon offsets: a removal unit (RMU), an emission reduction unit (ERU) and a certified emission reduction (CER) unit.
An RMU results from land use that primarily affects forestation, such as planting trees or agreeing not to cut down trees, but can also include planting crops or other plant matter. An ERU is acquired by a “joint implementation project” involving two developed countries. If a developed country expects to exceed its emission target, it can invest in a project in another developed nation to reduce carbon emissions. Finally, a CER unit results from an investment by a developed country in a developing country that either reduces or eliminates the emission of CO2.
It should be apparent that the opportunity for fraud in the certification of each of these activities is significant.
So why are trading carbon credits and offsets like selling snake oil?
In my book, I demonstrate that the first principles of science in the relevant fields of thermodynamics, spectroscopy, atmospheric physics and quantum mechanics, as employed in published, peer-reviewed scientific research, prove that CO2 has a de minimis effect on the Earth’s climate.
Further, the world’s temperature databases reveal virtually no warming of the lower troposphere (first 8 km of the atmosphere), the world’s oceans or land mass. Therefore, there is no need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Just like the snake oil salesman of the old West, the new snake oil salesmen use the fraudulent pseudoscience of the global warming hypothesis to sell carbon credits and offsets — in this case, to cure an ailment that does not exist.
Finally, the new snake oil salesmen employ the same sales tactics as their predecessors: Convince people that if they buy their snake oil, they will be doing good — in this case, reducing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
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Lights out for Britain's industrial heartlands: The UK's army of small manufacturers face being pushed to the precipice this autumn as energy bills soar
When the Governor of the Bank of England paid a visit to firms in East Anglia this summer, the boss of a local scrap metal firm didn’t mince his words.
David Dodds, managing director of Ipswich-based Sackers, told Andrew Bailey that his company is facing a cliff-edge this autumn due to soaring energy costs.
‘We had him in our boardroom for two hours,’ Dodds says. ‘We hope we gave him a useful insight into the challenges we face as a company operating in the UK and internationally.’
That is a polite way of saying he made no bones with Bailey – who has been widely criticised for his failure to tackle rising prices – about the grim reality facing Sackers and many other firms.
Sackers has been in business for nearly 100 years and has survived the Second World War, the economic travails of the 1970s, and numerous economic downturns.
But, even for the most seasoned and resilient businessmen and women, this energy crisis is daunting.
Bills have already spiralled upwards alarmingly and, unlike households, there is no cap.
Large numbers of firms, including Sackers, are on fixed contracts that are due to end in October, at which point they will face huge hikes.
‘We’re now paying £120,000 a month for electricity. That bill has gone up 171 per cent in less than a year,’ says Dodds. ‘We’re planning on it going up by another 60 per cent per annum when we renew in October.’
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EV chargers to be deployed on power poles
Not exactly a great leap forward. Note that it takes a whole hour to get enough charge to drive 50km
A local tech company has won a grant to deploy 50 electric vehicle chargers on streetside power poles, overcoming one of the key obstacles to widespread EV adoption.
The scheme is similar to others that have been rolled out across Europe, the United States and Canada in the past three years. London has more than 1000 public lamp post chargers, ranging in capacity from 3kW to 50kW.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) – set up to fund investment in EV infrastructure – has awarded Intellihub $871,000 to install the 7.4kW chargers, which can add roughly 50km of charge every hour.
The company will install EV chargers on power poles across nine local government areas in New South Wales, connected directly to the overhead electricity supply.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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