Emden, Germany by Gritte, @gritte
Germany is at the leading edge of the climate wars and the Greens are starting to lose both in polling and policy. Despite the claims that the energy crisis will push everyone into renewables, one year later, the dominant energy source for German electricity is coal, up by eight percentage points to 33% of generation.
While the world is supposedly caught in a renewable rush to 2030, the German government just announced it will build 25 gigawatts of gas powered plants by 2030 so they are there when “when [the] wind and sun do not provide enough”. And this week Germany is doing a backflip on their recent EU deal to ban sales of petrol and gas powered cars by 2035. It appears now they will ban the ban, rather than the car, and Germany has the power in the EU to do that. Though it’s not freedom to buy any car you want, but quixotic car loophole.
It’s still a mess of awful, subsidized craziness in a futile quest to control the clouds — but there are signs it is getting less crazy.
Thanks to NetZeroWatch for the links:
Coalition blues make German Greens see red
By Hans von der Burchard, Gabriel Rinaldi and Peter Wilke, Politico
A growing backlash over climate-friendly policies is now hitting the German Greens, putting wobbles into the country’s three-party ruling coalition.
Not only has Germany been causing a ruckus at the EU level in recent weeks by mounting a last-minute blockade to a proposed ban on combustion engines, but the country is also facing a domestic political fight over phasing out gas and oil heating systems, as well as pushing forward the coal exit.
The political coalition is tearing itself apart:
All those disputes are linked to fundamental disagreements between the Greens and their two coalition partners, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), over how the EU’s climate-protection targets should be implemented and what consequences and costs this will have for industry and citizens.
The conflict is not only affecting the Greens’ popularity — is also seems to be threatening a wider crisis for the coalition. And that crisis seems to be escalating.
The Greens have every reason to be nervous, as their climate policies are becoming a hard sell in Germany.
What were they thinking?
Habeck’s heat pump requirement alone could mean additional costs of up to €13,000 per installation for households,…
Not surprisingly, the Greens have lost a quarter of their support in the last ten months:
Of great concern for the Green Party is how they have been falling in polls for months, from 23 percent last summer to currently 17 percent. Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been steadily rising and is now close on the Greens’ tail, at 15 percent. One poll on Sunday even put the AfD ahead of the Greens.
The rush to build 25GW of government subsidized gas plants as back ups
Private investors stopped building gas plants because it didn’t make economic sense to build them just as a rescue project to make up for the bad days of wind and solar power — especially when they would sit around unused while the wind blew. So these new rushed plants will be partly subsidized in the same crazy style that renewables are.
“We will build the power plants we need for the times when wind and sun do not provide enough electricity out to tender,” said the minister at the presentation of a report on the progress of the country’s transition to climate neutrality. In recent years, Germany has used auctions to incentivise and control the expansion of wind and solar energy. Companies compete in these tenders to receive financial support for renewable electricity.
The big backdown to save ICE cars has played out in just three months. One poll suggested 67% of Germans didn’t want to ban traditional cars, and hundreds of thousands of German jobs were at stake in making car parts.
Did Germany just kill the electric car?
Dave Keating, Energy Monitor
After nearly two years of painstaking talks, negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states finally struck a deal last November on a new vehicle emissions law that would ban the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars in the EU from 2035. Even though Germany, with its powerful automotive industry, has historically opposed ambitious car CO2 standards, in the end it supported the deal. The agreement was ready to be signed into law – but then German Finance Minister Christian Lindner stepped in.
Thanks to Georgia Meloni winning in Italy, apparently she realized that Italy didn’t want the ban either in January. Italy alone didn’t have enough voting power to stop it, but the German Finance Minister did.
Germany wants the law changed to allow for the sale of ICE cars after 2035 if they run on hydrogen-derived e-fuels, which are produced by electrolysis with added carbon.
Climate campaigners are aghast. The NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) is warning that this is a ruse to extend sales of fossil-fuel-powered cars,…’
The big problem is that this loophole would allow people to buy new ICE cars and then fill them up with old fossils, because no one can check what consumers do, and we all know the e-fuels will be hideously expensive, so only the uber wealthy will be filling up the car with saintly fuel.
It’s back to the drawing board for the EU which has to come up with some compromise.
The last minute retraction is a great embarrassment to the Greens, and worse they fear Germany won’t meet the 50% target cuts in emissions by 2030. But then, it failed to meet the last target in 2020 and who cared?
Even assuming e-fuel engines will run on old diesel/petrol, it doesn’t take much effort to imagine various high and low tech ways to enforce the fuel used.
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The easiest of course being a central bank digital currency, but they will have to ban cash too, or issue “special fuel cards”. Given that the e-fuels are projected to cost nearly 50% more than fossil fuels and if two thirds of the population want an ICE car, there will be an arms race of rules and workarounds, or better yet, mass protests.
My hope is only that the headlong rush to Renewable-fantasia-land has slowed, and the Green grip on German politics is losing power.
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In the U.S., diesel trucks run on the same fuel commonly used for heating. But the truckers pay substantially more for theirs, because of road taxes.
So, truckers must use plain fuel, while fuel for heat is dyed a bright red color. Truckers caught using dyed fuel are . . . well, it’s an expensive fine.
So there are ways to enforce the e-fuel idea.
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Its not about price. Its ALL about power. If he became aware of a less expensive method of making efuels versus fossil fuels, (he has such information), the German Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, would ignore it.
Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs
After the Greens agreed to form a traffic light coalition government with the centre-left Social Democrats and liberal Free Democrats, new Chancellor Olaf Scholz named Habeck as Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and Vice Chancellor in December 2021, making him one of the most powerful politicians in Europe.[11]
Habeck has a big say in creating the ZEuro.
ZEuro coal.
ZEuro methane.
1 ZEuro = 1 Billion Euros.
1 Billion ZEuros = nothing.
1 Trillion ZEuros = WW3.
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Another 8 years and what will these Green revolutionaries do; when the world is still there and not any warmer?
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They’ll just invent a new anti-science, anti-freedom scam. That’s the nature of the Left, from one invented or imagined “crisis” to another.
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Greens, gay with wild abandon, want to change everything – EVERY THING – except ‘the climate’, which has to stay stagnant, flat, horizontal, like an imaginary hockey stick… but when they don’t know if they’re Arthur or Martha, I guess they just want to smash things until they get their way. Kids these days eh…
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New Zealanders should know about destroying things. A beautiful country stuffed up by socialist politicians and then divided along racial lines. Unfortunately your disease has crossed the ditch as Albo does Jacinda here.
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Yes, New Zealanders have been destroying their country ever since rendering the Moa extinct 700 or so years ago.
Of course, Australians have been doing it for much longer with endless burning of the land for the last 50,000+ years. Fortunately, modern settlers more or less put a stop to that but the damage was done.
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endless but expert burning of land…allegedly
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No David even today there are 300-plus countries or First Nations in Australia and all of them have sovereignty never extinguished, not by British Empire Colonial Governments from 1788 or when they joined together and formed a Federation of States, Commonwealth (republic) of Australian in 1901.
sarc
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“Another 8 years and what will these Green revolutionaries do; when the world is still there and not any warmer?”
Claim success, of course. See, we must continue to heed them and empower them so they can have even more successes for us.
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In earlier times, farmers had the permition to drive their trucks and machines with heating oil instead of diesel, question of taxes in favour of the farmers.
The custom services often controled diesel cars if using heating oil in that time, it was easy to control, should be so too today.
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I have to add, I wrote about Germany.
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After nearly eighty years are the Germans finely casting off the last vestiges of their National Socialist past?
The Left have been trying to introduce wind power ever since the failed attempts of the National Socialists as documented by Rupert Darwall in “Green Tyranny – Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex”.
SEE LINK FOR REST
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The Greens are communists pure and simple. The environment became the weapon of choice after the collapse of the USSR. Watermelon Greens; green on the outside, red on the inside.
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The solution to the Greens problem may be Darwinist. Like all the boxers who don’t skip getting knocked out. Greenie societies might fail and be taken over.
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I wonder if the delusional Albo and Bowen loonies etc will start to wake up before Aussies have to WASTE many more years and many more billions of $ for NOTHING?
The first thing they should do is to stop all taxpayer funding for the TOXIC W & S disasters ASAP and see how long they last.
If they do this they’ll start to make a big difference for the SLAVE and child labourers in China and Africa and hopefully other OECD countries could also follow us?
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No, they won’t wake up.
And I prophesise that things will get FAR WORSE once they introduce the apartheid parliament they are sneekily intending to implement.
(Note to overseas readers, the Australian Government is intending to introduce race-based parliamentary “representation” but that is a discussion for an open thread session.)
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Unfortunately our government and education systems have embraced the wind and solar lunacy 100% pushed mostly by groups who are misguided (naive) and by others unwilling to take a stand against stupidity since they can make money from it.
The Greens are just incapable of understanding science/engineering as are 60-80% of the general population. With so many technical institutions beholden to non-scientific influence (funding) what else can we expect. Change the funding models to produce less polarising outcomes and we will get rational thinking again. How that can be achieved I don’t know.
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Have to wake the people up first, let’s see the result of the NSW State Election today.
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Its funny how lefties can easily wring their hands about “Australia is falling behind…..” on their favourite topic; yet they can actively ignore total disasters like Energiewende and push on to certain failure as long as virtue can be harvested.
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To late for Australia, we’re going full bore ruinables with dumb and dumber Aussies voting out the only political party that talked coal-fired and nuclear power stations. Now get ready for rolling back outs.
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As we are about Green dictatorship:
Green Dictatorship? Netherlands Politicians Answering to the EU instead of Voters
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And who controls the EU?
In Australia we got a Net Zero target even though the people didn’t vote for it, allegedly because of “banker threats” to increase our interest rates. That’s what Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg said.
Rather than a Green Dictatorship we are probably trapped in some form of banker tyranny. The Green cloak disguises it.
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Then why didn’t they publish the so-called “banker threats” that it could come out in the open? More people would have sided with them if there was an “external force” to unite against I would think, but they chose to go with it…WEF anyone?
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And add to this the brilliant success of the BoerBurgerBeweging in the Netherlands. Common sense seems to be finally rearing its battered head.
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You may have a look at this comment.
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This is the probable cause for the UN Secretary Generals frantic call for the developed industrial economies to bring net zero forward by 15 / 20 years. Pure panic as their Global Warming / Climate Change BS starts to crumble.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Australia media to make this news public. The most likely news programme to bring this to the attention of Australians is “ The Outsiders “.
Now you know why the Turnbull ghost is always trying to kill off Sky News & preferably the whole Foxtel organisation!!
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Here’s the co2 emissions for countries, regions etc since 1970, using OWI Data graph.
In 1970 USA + EU + the rest of Europe was 10.43 billion tonnes per annum.
In 2021 the USA + EU 27 + the rest of Europe was 10.31 billion tonnes.
Even adding in the rest of Europe the co2 emissions per annum were lower in 2021 than 1970.
Will these donkeys ever WAKE UP?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region
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Goes to show it’s not really about co2. It’s about comparitive lifestyle.
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The Uber-wealthy will not fill up with saintly fuel – since when has anyone wealthy done anything in the interests of vacuous virtue signalling with their own money?
The only users of saintly fuel will be the public service. After all, your money is inexhaustible .
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The Green revolution may stall rather quickly, not just because of the inevitable blackouts but by governments running out of money.
The banks are in trouble – SVB bought government bonds so the government could continue deficet spending with its rush into renewable. When interest rates had to rise (to combat inflation from overspending) those bonds dropped in value. Similarly Credit Suisse (among other problems) went bankrupt and sold off by the government. Now Deutsche Bank is in problems and frantic efforts are being made to save it (including possible merger with BNP Parisbank – remember them?).
And German wind turbine manufacturers are all in trouble; low orders, higher costs and laying off staff. German industrial companies are either going broke because of high power prices or wanting to move overseas e.g. BASF.
The German Government has been the financial backup for much of the EU, but won’t be able to do so in future. The UK and USA won’t have any money to waste on green policies. The French government is in trouble and is close to collapse. They can’t afford spending more on “green” policies (hence the Left rioting) and the rising cost of living is pushing the public more towards the Right.
As they say Go Woke, Go Broke.
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We will soon see if you are right. The polls close at six but do not expect any real results for some time but trends should become apparent. Many candidates opted for telling their voters to just vote one and to not issue preferences at all. Virtually first past the post which is OK if someone gets 50% plus one but what if the two main candidates get 45% each and the rest go to minor parties with no preferences.
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Maybe I’m thick, but your comment seems to bear zero relationship to #12.
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The ABC has this story about Deutsche.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-25/another-major-international-bank-shows-signs-financial-distress/102144912
Cheers
Dave B
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Wonder where Germany will get cheap plentiful gas to run this new power generation, now that they are now permanently cut off from Russia’s gas fields????
You might be thinking a pipeline from Israel to the Europe, but then Biden withdrew all US support over a year ago, just before Nord Stream was mysteriously cauterized…
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And Spain gets gas from Africa, even as far as Nigeria, but a proposed pipeline from Catalonia into France was opposed by the French Government.
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“Germany wants the law changed to allow for the sale of ICE cars after 2035 if they run on hydrogen-derived e-fuels, which are produced by electrolysis with added carbon.”
This is a roundabout way of saying Fischer-Tropsch process Synfuels. It is a water-gas shift reaction. At best, it is 58% efficient. So, it takes 42% more energy to make the synfuels than the synfuels contain.
see: Life Cycle Analysis of Electrofuels: Fischer–Tropsch Fuel Production from Hydrogen and Corn Ethanol Byproduct CO2 , https://www.osti.gov/pages/biblio/1807679
Germany is creating a “green fiction” to justify cancelling their phaseout of ICE cars because someone realizes how utterly stupid the Net Zero goals are. This is the politics of saying “oops, this ain’t gonna work”.
Why is it that every green fantasy involves using more energy than their schemes deliver by 50% or more?
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Oh, by the way, making H2 using electrolysis is only 52% efficient wrt input energy.
So the overall e-Fuels process is 0.52 x 0.58 = 0.3016 or 30% energy efficient. At best.
That means 70% of the input energy is wasted with respect to the synfuel end product.
Stupid is as stupid does.
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Its a pity very few people know this Lance. The MSM and politicians certainly doesn’t want this information made public.
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New coal fired power plants in Germany.
I’m an old man now, and I’m a little embarrassed these days when I refer back to ‘stuff’ I wrote about years ago, because it ‘sounds like’ all I’m doing is repeating myself, and really, that’s all it is. Same old same old.
In Germany, they found a way to use their Lignite (brown coal) in UltraSupercritical (USC) plants, and they’ve been doing that since 2011/12. They even found a way to dry out the pulverised (powdered to talcum powder consistency) coal before it goes into the furnace, and they have achieved the same efficiency from brown coal fired plants that they are achieving with black coal fired USC plants.
Way back in 2013 (here I am again repeating myself) Joanne gave me a Guest Article where I wrote about USC, and mentioned the CO2 savings of 15% over lesser tech plants. That article is at this link, and open the link for a cursory look, and you don’t even need to read it all or any of the 290 Comments.
Okay, now Germany is opening up new Advanced USC (AUSC) plants, the next level of technology even higher than USC. (China is already constructing these plants, capable of running a single Unit of 1350MW, and hey, that’s just showing off!)
The new AUSC plant is at the Rheinhafen-Dampfkraftwerk plant, Unit 8, and running a single Unit of 919MW. It is the most efficient coal fired plant on Planet Earth and operates at 47.5% thermal efficiency. Now, really, that might not mean much, and hark back to my old article where I mentioned CO2 emission reductions of 15%.
This new AUSC plant, operates at 47.5%, and the World average for thermal efficiency is 34%, and most of Australia’s plants operate at that percentage or lower.
Okay now, here’s the kicker. When it comes to thermal efficiency, each increase in that thermal efficiency of one percent leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions of two percentage points for a plant with the same power output. It burns the coal more efficiently, and at a way higher temperature.
So, this new German plant emits …. 26% less CO2 than an equivalent world average coal fired plant, with an equivalent MW power Nameplate.
But hey, please don’t believe me. Here’s the link to GE Steam Power USC and AUSC. Now scroll down to the heading Pioneering ultra-supercritical steam technology and read that small blurb there where part of it says this:
A little further down, they have a small text block on that German plant.
And people scoff that coal fired power is a stranded asset. Yeah! I call bull$h1t on that!
This is one of the biggest Corporations on the Planet. Do you even think they would be sinking money into this if there was no future in it. These are plants with 50 year lifespans, and many many more are in planning, so that’s 2075 and further on. Makes nett zero look like a ….. failed meme.
And here in Australia, a coal fired power plant is just a place where politicians can play with dynamite,
I repeat myself often, but then ….. so do they, eh!
Tony.
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“I repeat myself often, but then ….. so do they, eh!”
Thank goodness you do.
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I picked up this factoid a few years ago.”Key pollutants that adversely affect human health include carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), ground level ozone and particulate matter (PM). A new pulverized coal plant, with flue gas scrubbers, fabric filters, catalytic reduction and other control equipment and processes, reduces NOX by 83%, SO2 by 98% and PM by 99.8% compared to a similar plant without such pollution control features. (US Dept of Energy)”. Hence, not only can you build a new coal power generation plant that is more efficient, it can also be “clean”.
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Find out just how absolutely f’ing clueless the ANTI coal fired power people really are.
Ask them to explain just how much coal is burned by a power plant ….. in a day ….. in an hour …. or for an even more spectacular meltdown, in just one solitary minute.
They have absolutely no idea whatsoever.
Let’s then look at that new German power plant, running just that single 919MW unit.
That’s 5600 Tonnes of coal a day, (rounded) or 232 Tonnes an hour, or 3.9 Tonnes a minute , or one tonne every 15.4 seconds. Watch their jaws drop.
Okay, now stand up and place your arms full length out from your body parallel to the ground and at an angle of 90 degrees. Now, imagine someone facing you doing exactly the same, so just your fingertips are touching. Now fill that space between you up to the top of your head with crushed coal.
THAT is one tonne of coal.
That gets burned every 15 seconds in these new coal fired plants.
The maths is totally and utterly beyond their comprehension.
Now mention that the output from this ONE SINGLE UNIT is three times the total output of the largest wind plant on the Planet over a whole day, and their brains just expl0de.
Okay, wind and solar plants are now responsible for so much pollution at every level for the mining for the elements that are used in the manufacture of these supposedly ‘clean’ energy solutions, and yet, coal fired power have actively sought to reduce their so called pollution at every level, and in fact ….. have done exactly that.
The hypocrisy of renewable power ….. how it burns!
Tony.
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Decades ago an astute Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister said that voters in the majority react only to their “hip pocket nerve”.
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I think that that MP was an optimist who ignored those voters who either struggled with the question “Which mob will create fewer problems?”, or wished for a NOTA box – None of the Above…
At least in NSW there is optional preferential voting for both houses. That should also be true at the Federal level in my view. But will it be a benefit in the current state election? I suspect not, as the number of groups in the Legislative Assembly, and total candidates means most will just vote for one group and let their preferences be decided for them.
Cheers
Dave B
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If we were given a NOTA box – None of the Above as indeed we should be, they would put it at the top of the list…
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I agree that preferential voting is flawed and must be optional, as it is in NSW, or better still abolished in favour of First Choice, first past the post wins, that the UK also Westminster System of Government uses.
Far too often trickle down “lottery” enables a candidate with fewer primary votes to win with preferences distributed over a primary vote winner.
An example was the 2007 Federal Election when Rudd Labor formed government but with many marginal seats likely to be lost at the 2010 election, as they were forcing Gillard Labor into alliances to form a minority Labor Government. In fact the real GFC was not likely to have caused a recession here because Australia was in a very strong financial debt-free position and a strongly performing economy, and other firewalls. Rudd Labor used the GFC recession scare as an excuse to spend the $22 billion Howard Budget surplus and borrow to spend more on attracting voters for 2010, it didn’t work.
I would like to see voting not compulsory, why demand votes from disinterested voters who most probably will find a way to mess up their vote, and primary only vote for Legislative Assembly candidate of choice and Legislative Council/Senate Group of choice.
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No preferences if we mark one box [1] are allocated in NSW David, that exhausts our vote.
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The picture above this article actually shows wind turbines in the Netherlands as seen across the Ems river estuary from Emden, Germany
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Thank you. Useful to know. Dang Unsplash entry said “Germany”.
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It’s not called a COALition for nothing.
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“Not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning.”
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I’ve always expected that people would start seeing through the fiction of Chicken Little global warming.
But I never expected it to start in Germany.
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With us you will not adventure.
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Wall to wall left, green Labor govts in Oz. I think we will be feeling the pain big time before the sheep who voted for them wake up. Once coal fired power plants close and we are at the mercy of renewables, then and only then will the masses start to awaken.
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