Or oil or natural gas or coal or …
Germany’s failed green energy program leaves country facing energy disaster next winter. But so what? If manufacturing shuts down, if thousands of people freeze to death, the crushing burden on Gaia will be just that much less. Say Hallelujah, amen!
Besides, the Germans can now feel a renewed kinship with their old WWII allies the Japanese, who have shut down 50% of their energy generating capacity this month and are waiting to see what happens.
The culprit for the looming crisis is the single most important instrument of German energy policy: the “Renewable Energy Law” (EEG). It stipulates the priority of green electricity supply. What was once useful as an aid for the market introduction of wind and solar power, has today, 12 years later, disastrous side effects.
It pushes those plants which alone can guarantee a stable power supply, i.e. gas- and coal-fired power plants, out of the market far too early. More and more facilities are being decommissioned. The result is a significantly higher risk of large-scale power outages, so-called blackouts, whose duration and propagation is hard to predict.
The economic cost of a wide-scale blackout are measured in billions of Euros per day. If power outages last longer, one has to expect a high number of deaths. The most important test of energy policy is now the stability of power – so far only the cost of the green energy transition has been focused upon.
