Energy Lessons from Germany
The renewable energy push in Germany has lessons for the rest of us:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10321173/Germany-industry-in-revolt-as-green-dream-causes-cost-spiral.html
The group said in a new report that the costs of the so-called "Energiewende" have already gone beyond tolerable limits. “The international competitiveness of German industry is in danger,” it said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to phase out Germany’s nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster has vastly complicated the picture. Utilities have turned to coal and lignite to plug the gap, causing Germany’s CO2 gases to rise while US emissions are falling. The green agenda risks becoming self-defeating if pushed too hard.
From:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/09/20/for-us-germany-offers-a-cautionary-clean-energy-tale
Lesson 1: Nuclear free is not a clean energy option.
Lesson 2: If you want to save money, synchronize national energy incentives.
Lesson 3: It's important to coordinate energy storage and renewables.
From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8546608/Why-Germany-said-no-to-nuclear-power.html
But as anti-Americanism emerged on the German Left as a by-product of the 1968 student rebellions, so too did resistance to nuclear power as a symbol of capitalism, which was now equated with militarism.
Now, however, she has taken an irreversible decision to distance her Christian Democrats from a political association that is far more toxic than any nuclear fallout. In doing so, she has succumbed yet again to the hypocrisy that surrounds this issue in Germany.
Logic, however, had little to do with yesterday's announcement: realpolitik dictated the decision. The grandchildren of the Nazis, born long after the war, have made the fatal mistake of identifying evil with a particular technology, rather than with the human beings who make use of it.
But Germans have no reason to fear nuclear power. Mrs Merkel's appeasement of nuclear hysteria is disturbing far beyond Germany's borders because it represents a capitulation to irrationalism by the leader of a nation that once led the world in science and technology. The land of Leibniz and Humboldt, of Goethe and Gauss, is now indulging the fantasies of cynical scaremongers.
PamW