Nature: Germany to Bet 1 Trillion Euros on "Renewable" Energy; Success Uncertain; Emissions to Rise

[NNadir]

As the risk of hearing here - as one does whenever one varies from the faith based praise of the disastrous German energy policy - that one of the world's premier scientific publications, Nature is a "right wing" publication of the "tea party," I post a link to this article:

http://www.nature.com/news/renewable-power-germany-s-energy-gamble-1.12755

...the economic challenges are daunting, with the total costs of the Energiewende estimated to top €1 trillion. Europe’s deep financial crisis looms large over a project of that scale, warns Roger Pielke Jr, an environmental-policy researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. “The German public has so far shown great willingness to pay for the transformation, but there will be limits to that willingness, especially if the economic climate gets rougher...”

...For German consumers, the costs of that shift are apparent in their monthly electricity bills. The statements include a litany of ‘shared costs’ that are split by all households to fund the Energiewende — and result in some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. (Heavy industries are currently exempt from paying the surcharge.) The shared costs are a mechanism for promoting green forms of energy, which are more expensive to produce than electricity from coal and natural gas. Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the legal force behind the Energiewende, allows owners of solar panels and wind turbines to sell their electricity to the grid at a fixed, elevated price. Renewable-power producers cashed in an estimated €20 billion last year for electricity that was actually worth a mere €3 billion on the wholesale electricity market. The difference came out of the pockets of consumers.
The EEG, first passed...

...At the same time, Germany is subject to the vagaries of outside forces, such as the rapid expansion of natural-gas production in the United States, which has curbed domestic demand for coal. Excess US coal is now heading to Europe, helping to fuel a resurgence of coal use in the United Kingdom and Germany, among other countries. With Germany’s imports of low-cost coal rising, the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions increased by almost 2% in 2012 — bucking a long-term decline. Last August, federal minister of the environment Peter Altmaier made clear that coal-fired plants will be needed “for decades to come” to ensure energy supplies. Germany is currently building some 11 gigawatts of coal-fired plants and its existing capacity of around 55 GW will not shrink as quickly as the country had planned. The coal resurgence makes it unlikely that Germany will meet its emission targets in 2020...

...“Subsidies have helped to get the renewable thing started, but sooner or later renewable energy must become economically self-sustaining,” says Brigitte Knopf, head of German and European energy strategies at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research...

The last statement is obviously a right wing tea party statement from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, since in 1976, the "genius" Amory Lovins informed us thusly:

...Recent research suggests that a largely or wholly solar economy can
be constructed in the United States with straightforward soft technologies
that are now demonstrated and now economic or nearly economic...

Lovins, A (for Asshole?) "Energy Strategy: The Road Less Traveled" Foreign Affairs, October 1976, pp 65-96, excerpt on page 83.

Nearly 40 years and hundreds of billions of metric tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste having been dumped into the atmosphere, we are still hearing the same thing, from the same people, even if they - Lovins himself comes to mind - now get their paychecks from dangerous fossil fuel companies.

World wide, the consumption of coal, oil and gas are all at the highest levels ever observed, even though BMW sold out of $137,500 electric cars for billionaires and millionaires.

2013 will probably come in as the worst year ever observed for increases in dangerous fossil fuel waste concentrations in the atmosphere, with the exception of 1998, when huge forest fires in Indonesia injected billion ton quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By contrast the increases this year are almost wholly derived from the practice of dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste into the world's favorite waste dump, the planetary atmosphere.

The environmental costs in dumped carbon dioxide and other (more toxic) air pollutants caused by shipping American coal to Germany will not be recorded in Germany's rising emissions, but they will be recorded in the degradation of the atmosphere.

Germany's "experiment" is a gamble not just of a trillion Euros - I predict they'll be forced to give up before they actually get there in terms of spending money on stuff that doesn't work - but it is a gamble with the flesh of every human being, indeed every organism on the face of the earth.

[kristopher]

1. Not surprised you'd dig out this polysci, unreviewed opinion piece.

It is typical of the non-analytic approach you are forced to resort to in order to have anything at all you can point to.

Roger Pielke Jr.

Learn more from the Center for Media and Democracy's research on climate change.

Not to be confused with his father, atmospheric scientist Roger Pielke, Sr..

Roger A. Pielke Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research[2] at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[1]. Dr. Pielke is a prolific and controversial writer; his most recent book setting forth his views is called "The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics," which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. His doctorate is in political science.[2]

Some of Dr. Pielke's comments and work have proven to be controversial. Critics note that his work has been frequently cited by "global warming skeptics,"[3] Dr. Pielke and his allies have praised his independence and called his critics "climate McCarthyists."[4] (For more information on who the "skeptics" are and which corporations fund skeptics, SourceWatch has created a global warming skeptic clearinghouse.)

Dr. Pielke's work on climate change effects has been criticized by Dr. Stephen Schneider, who said that with Pielke "one consistent pattern emerges-he is a self-aggrandizer who sets up straw men, knocks them down, and takes credit for being the honest broker to explain the mess-and in fact usually adds little new social science to his analysis [3].

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.

And here is the end of the editorial that as feature along with his letter.

...Germany, with its population of some 80 million, is an ideal test ground. The country can afford the Energiewende — which some commentators estimate will cost more than €1 trillion (US$1.3 trillion) — because its economy is doing well. And the country is large and diverse enough — economically, geographically and socially — to make the outcome of the great experiment relevant to the rest of the world.

“Merkel and the German public are displaying admirable courage in turning the country into a laboratory for energy policies.”
If German’s transition to cleaner energy succeeds, then the country will have learned scientific, technical and economic lessons that it will take to the market place and that will solidify its leadership in green technologies. Countries that might eye the German plans with some scepticism now could eventually build on these technologies when they start to reshape their own energy systems.

If the Energiewendefounders, however, it will send out a very negative message. Sceptics worldwide will argue that if Germany can’t make it work, then nobody can. It is crucial, therefore, that Germany maintains its chosen path through whatever storms may come and even if moans about high electricity prices become more audible.

Ultimately, any truly green economy must include all economic sectors. The Energiewende will not be complete without a new approach to transport. It took generous incentives to convince millions of German homeowners to invest in expensive (and aesthetically debatable) rooftop solar panels. Convincing Germans — or any other nation — to switch to battery-driven or electric cars will be even harder. Without incentives for car makers to produce those cars, and for motorists to buy them, it will not happen. But as seen in the rush for the ‘cash for clunkers’ bonus (as part of the economic stimulus of 2009 the German government paid car owners a €2,500 premium to exchange a car more than nine years old for a new one), such incentives can mobilize massive behavioural change. An effective green-car programme, backed by investment in the necessary infrastructure, would be an unmistakable signpost on the road to the post-fossil-fuel age — and not only in Germany.

Nature 496, 137–138 (11 April 2013) doi:10.1038/496137b

http://www.nature.com/news/energy-crossroads-1.12759

Former Japanese leader firm on nuclear energy

Naoto Kan, who was Japanese PM when the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake hit and crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant, remains in politics but has only one aim now: to see every last atomic energy plant shut down.

In the dark days of late March and April 2011, when the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant threatened to escalate into an even more dramatic catastrophe, the entire nation hung on Naoto Kan's words as he addressed televised press conferences with the latest updates from the wrecked plant.

Today he speaks to groups of maybe a couple of dozen people at small-scale town-hall meetings around the country. But his theme at these talks is consistent: He is asked to appear to encourage local people and town councils to stand firm in their opposition to utility companies restarting nuclear power plants in the neighborhood.

...All 50 of Japan's commercial reactors are currently off-line, a measure that Kan ordered in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and until thorough safety checks could be carried out. Under law, they can only be restarted with the approval of local authorities and while two reactors were briefly operated earlier this year, no community has so far granted a power company to put their facilities back into full operation.

And Kan wants to keep it that way. ...

[NNadir]

2. Yes...yes...yes...I know. Dr. Pielke and Nature are controlled by the tea party...

Anyone who says that Germany's emissions are rising; anyone who says they're building filthy coal plants in 2014 that will be killing people to the end of this century is controlled by the tea party, is a right winger, a fascist, a climate denier, blah, blah, blah...

And anyone who criticizes the kind of bourgeois brats who represent a $137,500 BMW 8i car as a legitimate effort to address climate change is a right wing extremist as well, this on a planet where more than 2 billion people have never seen or operated a flush toilet.

Why don't you write to all the world's scientists to tell them that the News and Comments section of Nature is full of right wingers and therefore they shouldn't read it, just like I don't read your cut and paste garbage? I'm sure all of the world's scientists who read nature will be impressed, especially when you send along some cut and pastes.

By the way, most people on the planet recognize that Japan's carbon emissions are also rising, dramatically in fact, not that the prime attacker of "right wing tea party" rhetoric on this website seems to give a rat's ass about the destruction of the planetary atmosphere.

At the risk of being called a right wing tea party representative, I wonder, given that the medical journal Lancet reports that more than 6 million people die each year from air pollution I raise this question: Which killed more people, radiation from the reactors at Fukushima, collapsing buildings and drownings from the same events that struck the reactors, or the air pollution caused by the Japanese decision to shut its nuclear plants and begin burning dangerous fossil fuels?

Maybe our self declared one man arbiter of tea party environmental policy would care to supply some numbers.

Oh? What's that?

Our self declared one man arbiter of tea party environmental policy doesn't do numbers?

Oh well then...

Have a nice day.