German chancellor Olaf Scholz sure fits the stereotypical stubborn Deutschlander. In the face of everything and all the pain Germany’s forced transition to renewables has cost his country, he is bound and determined to bullrush into an even more expensive and unstable future.
These starry-eyed globalists are also willing to talk a Green game out of one side of their mouths while saying something entirely different from the other side at the same time. For instance, I can see the environmental brownie point accrual in shutting down your nuclear reactors – activists hate the things. Yay! You make Greta happy in her heart! Maybe she takes a picture with you and no scowl.
But, when you don’t have enough reliable power on hand already, it’s prohibitively expensive for your citizens to use, but ghastly to live without? Maybe you should take a pause, ja?
That’s not how Scholtz’s brain works, apparently. He’s still on course to shut down the remaining three reactors in the country come mid-April, and replace them with…coal fired plants.
Wait, WHUT.
Germans say they care deeply about climate change and yet Chancellor @OlafScholz is proceeding with plans to replace Germany’s last three nuclear plants with coal next month, over the objections of his finance minister, because witches or something https://t.co/RXasAgd1Gn
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) March 2, 2023
I thought coal was Satan as far as dirty emissions went. What gives with this?
Scholz’s finance minister thinks he’s lost the bubble, making it clear that everything needs to remain on the table with a bald, “get a grip, dude” kind of statement.
Germany needs to use all energy options available to bring down high prices and protect certain sectors of the economy, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Wednesday.
“We need to change our energy policy to be adapted to the new realities,” he said at an event organised by the BVMW association for small- and medium-sized businesses.
“We need all colours of hydrogen,” the minister said, referring to debate in Brussels about the environmental credentials of hydrogen produced from nuclear energy.
Did you know there are “colors” of hydrogen? Good grief, yes. These people are something else. And arguing over which colors are best is holding up another European Union agreement on whether they should say anything nice about nuclear at all. France, as you would imagine, take offense at the suggestion that nuclear isn’t green.
European Union countries failed to adopt conclusions on climate diplomacy that had been planned for Monday, owing to a deepening spat over the role of nuclear energy in the green transition, EU officials said.
The upset is the latest development in a dispute between France and other countries who want more EU policies to promote nuclear energy’s contribution to cutting CO2 emissions, and those like Germany and Spain who warn this risks distracting from efforts to massively expand renewable energy.
It’s a huge squabble and it’s utterly ridiculous. These “leaders” and rabid activists are so divorced from what is actually going on, that this sort of ludicrous semantic exercise gums up the works.
Maybe it’s a good thing it does. Because what it would mean – and what it very well looks like it’s going to mean – for the German people is chaos and unrelenting misery. Both as their countryside is transformed to accommodate all these humongous wind and solar farms, and misery as costs spiral out of sight and the power still goes out.
The numbers are just mind-blowing.
…Bloomberg predicts that by 2030, the cost of future measures to protect the country’s energy system will be more than $1 trillion. These costs include investments in power system upgrades and, above all, new generation to cope with the retirement of nuclear and coal-fired power plants, to meet growing demand from electric vehicles and heating systems, and to meet climate protection obligations.
The transition will require the installation of solar panels covering an area equivalent to 43 soccer fields and 1,600 heat pumps a day. Twenty-seven new onshore and four offshore wind farms per week must also be built, according to a wish list presented by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a recent visit to the headquarters of Volkswagen AG in Wolfsburg.
…The German government announced this week that bids will be prepared this year for gas-fired power plants, which will account for about a tenth of that capacity. As for the expansion of renewable energy sources, installing a single windmast could take up to seven years while Germany goes through all the bureaucratic procedures.
With nuclear power and coal not being considered, Germany has begun rapidly deploying terminals to import more expensive liquefied natural gas in an effort to power its industrialized economy. At the same time, electric cars, heat pumps and hydrogen electrolyzers will increase demand by 33 percent to about 750 terawatt hours by 2030, according to government estimates.
Did no one pay attention to any of this? And they’re going to import natural gas for power plants when they’re shutting down functioning nuclear reactors?
How’s that natgas import business gone so far, dudes?
Not to mention, the chancellor is clearing the deck for his wish list before he even is sure any part of it works as advertised or can be delivered in the quantities needed.
Doubling down when there’s a myriad of in-your-face examples why you shouldn’t. Holy smokes.
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