solar

At the beginning of March, Frans Timmermans, the European Union’s Executive Vice President for the European Green New Deal and European Commissioner for Climate Action, announced that EU nations planning to burn coal as an alternative to Russian natural gas are not out of line with the EU’s climate goals.

As Bill Winters, CEO of the British multinational banking and financial services firm Standard Chartered, said just last week, “The idea that we can turn off the taps and end fossil fuels tomorrow, it’s obviously ridiculous and naïve. First of all, it’s not going to happen and secondly, it would be very disruptive.”

Matt Ridley - No man is an island. No energy source is an island. No cause is an island. Each energy source competes based on price, reliability, environmental issues, expandability, magnitude of supply, operations, maintenance, land area required, location relative to centers of population. This article provides a good overview and identifies the problems facing each source, including nuclear.

Michel Gay: Les dommages collatéraux de l’intermittence des énergies renouvelables (éoliennes et panneaux photovoltaïques) dans le système électrique européen sont dénoncés par l’Académie des Sciences dans un rapport de janvier 2015. Cette institution souligne le manque de réalisme des objectifs de la loi de transition énergétique. Elle craint également que cette politique soit contre-productive.

Michael Shellenberger, Environmental Progress: • En Allemagne, selon les Amis de la Terre (BUND), de nouvelles éoliennes offshore pourraient « conduire à l’extinction d’espèces individuelles », y compris le marsouin, rare et menacé. • En Amérique du Nord, les populations de chauves-souris migratrices pourraient disparaître, selon les scientifiques, si l’expansion de l’énergie éolienne se poursuit. Une seule ferme solaire californienne, Ivanpah, a nécessité le massacre de centaines de tortues du désert, et tue chaque année 6 000 oiseaux en les brûlant en vol. Vous pensez peut-être que ces impacts sont minimes par rapport à d’autres menaces ? Après tout, les chats domestiques tuent entre un et quatre milliards d’oiseaux par an aux États-Unis.

Michel Gay: Le projet de loi sur la transition énergétique contient, dans son article premier, une réduction à 50% de la part du nucléaire dans la production d’électricité par rapport à 2012, et une montée de la part des énergies renouvelables intermittentes, notamment l'éolien et le solaire.

Viv Forbes, Executive Director of the Saltbush Club which opposes the war on carbon energy, opposes real pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food. Poem dedicated to extreme green wind and solar energy programs.

In March 2017, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy published a brochure announcing that the Energiewende, its renewable energy revolution, was ‘a success story’. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Energiewende has the goal of making Germany independent of fossil fuels in the long term. Coal, oil and gas were to be phased out, allowing drastic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. However, these goals have not even begun to be achieved.

And so carbon dioxide emissions in Germany have been rising since 2009, even though well over a hundred billion euros have been spent on the expansion of solar and wind energy over the same period.

Despite this enormous effort, security of supply is increasingly under threat. At the same time, people and the biosphere are suffering; wildlife protection has become subordinated to climate mitigation, even though the possibility of achieving the goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is becoming increasingly distant and the measures for the energy transition seem to become more and more questionable from a constitutional point of view.

In this review we would like to inform a public debate and set out a reasonable course for energy policy in Germany.

A German citizen talks about what has happened with the government, economy, schools and work force over the course of her life. Most of it is not good.

Da in Deutschland der Ausstieg aus der Kernenergie beschlossen ist und auch von der Möglichkeit der CO2 – Abscheidung aus den Rauchgasen mit anschließender Verwendung als Rohstoff in der Chemie oder Speicherung im Untergrund, beispielsweise in erschöpften Erdgaslagern oder Ölfeldern kein Gebrauch gemacht werden soll, bleiben nur die Nutzung von Sonne und Wind zur Stromerzeugung um die durch zukünftigen Verzicht auf Kohle, Öl, Gas und Atom auftretenden Versorgungslücken beim Strom zu schließen. Denn Wasserkraft, Biogas etc. können keine nennenswerten zusätzlichen Strommengen liefern.

Da es sinnlos ist Strom zu produzieren, der wegen fehlender Leitungen nicht zum Verbraucher gelangt, müssen in einem 2. Schritt die Stromnetze im erforderlichen Maß ausgebaut werden. Erst wenn diese beiden Voraussetzungen erfüllt sind kann mit dem Ausbau der Solardächer und Windenergieanlagen sinnvoll fortgefahren werden. Diese grundlegenden Erkenntnisse sucht man in der gegenwärtigen öffentlichen Diskussion zur Zukunft der Stromversorgung leider vergeblich.

A German citizen talks about what has happened with the government, economy, schools and work force over the course of her life. Most of it is not good.

Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD Chemistry: Is the program in Germany to stop using nuclear power and switch to wind and solar energy more important than nature itself? BaZ: Sie haben die deutsche Energiewende als «Desaster» bezeichnet. Wieso? Fritz Vahrenholt: Zunächst einmal hat die deutsche Regierung nach dem Tsunami in Japan innerhalb eines Wochenendes entschieden, auf die Kernenergie zu verzichten, die bis dahin die Grundlast für die deutsche Industrie erzeugt hat. Die Regierung will seither diese gesicherte Energie durch schwankenden Strom aus Sonne und Wind ersetzen. Dass das nicht vernünftig ist, weiss eigentlich jeder.

The American Interest: Germany’s much-ballyhooed green energy transition—its energiewende—has run up quite a tab, and policymakers are having trouble figuring out who is actually going to pay for the policies. In an attempt to kick-start fledgling renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, Berlin guaranteed producers locked-in, long-term, above-market rates called feed-in tariffs. To their credit, this plan of pushing technologies of dubious merit at any cost worked, perhaps too well

Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD Chemistry, Chairman, German Wildlife Foundation: But the beautiful new world of Gretl, Annalena and Robert has its price. The authors anticipated a 60% CO2 reduction, which is expected to be achieved by 2030. By then, that will cost 4300 billion in 11 years. So that the parents of Fridays for the Future understand the 4600 billion correctly: that is 153 billion per year; at 40 million households in Germany each household pays 320 € per month monthly - net. And if it goes to Gretl and her followers, namely in 15 years to achieve 100% renewable energy, then that would be 640 € a month - if it does not sooner come to a collapse of the German energy supply, which is very likely.

Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD Chemistry, Chairman, German Wildlife Foundation: You have called the German energy transition a "disaster". How so? Fritz Vahrenholt : First of all, after the tsunami in Japan, the German government decided within a weekend to renounce nuclear energy, which until then had created the base load for German industry. Since then, the government wants to replace this secure energy with fluctuating electricity from sun and wind. Everyone knows that this is not sensible.

Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD Chemistry, Chairman, German Wildlife Foundation: What was demanded in the Green Party program in 1986, the abolition of the nuclear industry, the automotive industry and parts of the chemical industry, has long since become consensus in the middle of society. How could that succeed? With apocalyptic horror scenarios, the cleavage of the atom, as well as the slight increase of the vital molecule CO2 in the atmosphere, become ciphers of disaster. What country, what state will lead the world to the bottom of the reliable, environmentally sound energy policy: Germany, California? What countries will be outstanding sound energy program leaders: Canada, China, France, Jordan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea?

Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD Chemistry, Chairman, German Wildlife Foundation: What was demanded in the Green Party program in 1986, the abolition of the nuclear industry, the automotive industry and parts of the chemical industry, has long since become consensus in the middle of society. How could that succeed? With apocalyptic horror scenarios, the cleavage of the atom, as well as the slight increase of the vital molecule CO2 in the atmosphere, become ciphers of disaster. What country, what state will lead the world to the bottom of the reliable, environmentally sound energy policy: Germany, California? What countries will be outstanding sound energy program leaders: Canada, China, France, Jordan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea?

Bloomberg, Weixin Zha, Brian Parkin: By 2030, the eastern German town of Poedelwitz will likely be razed to get at the rich veins of coal beneath its half-timbered houses. The reason: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s effort to steer Germany toward greener energy, which has unexpectedly meant booming demand for dirty coal. “This is unparalleled destruction of the environment,” says Jens Hausner, a farmer who has seen 17 of his 20 hectares consumed by digging equipment that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. In a bit more than a decade, the hulking machines are expected to claw through the town’s 13th-century church and 40 or so remaining homes. None of this will lead to a significant reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. From a scientific point of view, none of this matters. Its all politics, pure politics.