Carbon Crossroads: Can Germany revive its stalled energy transition?

‘The donkey goes on to the ice until it breaks’ – German proverb [image credit: evwind.es]

Germany – where you can drive at twice the UK legal speed limit on the autobahns, burning fuel at a furious rate, but they still claim to be worried about ’emissions’. Why would a major industrial country want to transition to intermittent and largely unpredictable power sources? No-one can make the sun shine or the wind blow on demand, so unless there are going to be massive and extremely costly reserves of power from other sources cutting in every time the wind drops and/or it gets dark, it seems Germany’s energy problems can only get more acute as it retreats from both coal and nuclear power. Fear of imaginary climate hobgoblins is clouding their judgment.

Although Germany has been a global leader in moving to decarbonize its massive economy, the country’s ambitious clean-energy transformation is faltering, says YaleEnvironment360.

Now, a broad spectrum of energy experts are working to revitalize the effort to make Germany nearly carbon-free by mid-century.

Northern Germany, from the Polish borderlands in the east to the Netherlands in the west, is the stronghold of Germany’s muscular onshore wind power industry. This is where the lion’s share of the country’s nearly 30,000 wind turbines are sited, a combined force equal to the power generation of about 10 nuclear reactors.

Where Germany’s northernmost tip abuts Denmark, soaring turbines crowd the horizon as far as the eye can see. And many more are coming as Germany strives to go carbon neutral by 2050.

Yet despite their impressive might, the north’s wind parks are a reminder not only of how much has been accomplished in Germany’s Energiewende, or clean energy transition, but also of what remains to be done.

Although the country has made a Herculean effort to shift to a clean energy economy — in just the past five years government support and costs to consumers have totaled an estimated 160 billion euros ($181 billion) — Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions have not declined as rapidly as expected in response to the vigorous expansion of renewable energy, which now generates 40 percent of the country’s electricity.

Germany’s politicians are even resigned to falling significantly short of the country’s 2020 goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels.

Germany’s failings have come as a vexing shock to its environmentally conscious citizenry. While Germans still overwhelmingly back the energy transition — for years polls showed support in excess of 90 percent — about three-quarters say the government is not doing enough to slow global warming.

Today, the Energiewende finds itself stalled and floundering. Germany’s carbon emissions have stagnated at roughly their 2009 level.

The country remains Europe’s largest producer and burner of coal, which generates more than one-third of Germany’s power supply. Moreover, emissions in the transportation sector have shot up by 20 percent since 1995 and are rising with no end in sight, experts say.

German consumers have seen their electricity bills soar since 2000, in part because of the renewable energy surcharge.

Continued here.