Germany produced 50% of electricity for entire country via solar one day last month

[Lectro]

What a fuggin load of Sasquatch...apparently Green is the new Brown.

http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/24/...piegel-writes-of-an-an-energy-cost-explosion/
If anyone thinks Germany’s move to renewable energies has been a success, you may want to take a few minutes and read what center-left news weekly Der Spiegel has just written.

Overall Germany’s energy revolution has made the country’s energy unaffordable, unreliable and has ruined its own idyllic landscape, and ravaged rainforests abroad as well.

Spiegel focusses on the costs in its article titled: Cost explosion with electricity, oil, gas: energy poverty in Germany is increasing drastically. The online flagship news weekly writes:

Rising energy costs are becoming a problem for more and more citizens in Germany. Just from 2008 to 20111 the share of energy-poor households in the Federal Republic jumped from 13.8 to 17 percent.”

Energy poverty is defined by the number of households that must pay more than 10% of their net income on energy. All told 6.9 million German households (every 6th household) finds itself in energy poverty, Spiegel writes.

Much of the rapid increase in energy prices is owing to Germany’s growth in expensive wind and solar energy. Ironically, despite more than 20% of Germany’s energy now being supplied by renewables, CO2 emissions have been rising just the same.

Spiegel calls the energy poverty rate “alarming”. However, when it comes to finding the cause for the runaway increase, the German Greens are blaming all the misery on the rising costs of oil and gas, and even hint that just more expensive, unreliable green energy is all that’s needed to get the costs back in line.

Natural gas in Germany costs three times more than it does in USA. The Greens are also demanding that the government pass legislation that would lead to residential units being renovated and better insulated. But critics say such a measure likely would make the situation even worse because landlords would benefit from the subsidies and pass the renovation costs to low income tenants.

The more the greens try to fix the mess, the more they screw it up.

 

[ONW]

Holy fucking balls dude!

This is the crowd you want to include yourself in? The Notrickszone.com...

http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/24/...piegel-writes-of-an-an-energy-cost-explosion/

"Germany truly is a great country that has accomplished so much in the last five decades

Ok we'll skip the two world wars part and start with a clean slate starting in the 1960s but go on...

But what I cannot understand is why a country, that has been through so much pain in the past,

Ok we'll skip the genocide part but go on...

would today want to impose unnecessary pain on its people

Ok we'll skip over the Holocaust part but go on...

and economy in the belief it can make a difference to the climate at a time China and India are marching along the road to progress, emitting enormous amounts of CO2 in the process. Even if CO2 were a real problem,

Ok we'll skip over the obvious complete illogical fallacy of the who gives a fuck if China and India are emitting enormous amounts of something that has nothing to do with the environment but go on...

What is unacceptable is that all we ever hear about atmospheric CO2 are the presumed negative consequences. Yet the alarmists never evaluate, or even acknowledge, the manifold real and measurable benefits of having more atmospheric CO2. Consequently, numerous important and positive impacts of having more atmospheric CO2 remain under-appreciated and largely ignored.

Ok we'll skip over that part where the positives of increased CO2 levels are mentioned but go on...

The one sided view of CO2, taken by the IPCC and its supporters, has produced a distorted view of CO2 that only leads to irrational thinking and flawed policy decision making

Ok at least they got one fucking thing right, although it isn't what they think they got right but go on...

in the belief there is a bogey man under the bed where there is none.

Ok case closed nothing to see here folks...


You have no fucking clue what you are talking about with regards to just about everything other than identifying and promoting shitty football players. I honestly despise you.

Now, who hid my Xanax?

 

[Lectro]

Oh shut the fuck up. There was absolutely nothing untoward written in that article you moron.

 

[vadimivich]

What a fuggin load of Sasquatch...apparently Green is the new Brown.

http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/24/...piegel-writes-of-an-an-energy-cost-explosion/
If anyone thinks Germany’s move to renewable energies has been a success, you may want to take a few minutes and read what center-left news weekly Der Spiegel has just written.

Overall Germany’s energy revolution has made the country’s energy unaffordable, unreliable and has ruined its own idyllic landscape, and ravaged rainforests abroad as well.

Spiegel focusses on the costs in its article titled: Cost explosion with electricity, oil, gas: energy poverty in Germany is increasing drastically. The online flagship news weekly writes:

Rising energy costs are becoming a problem for more and more citizens in Germany. Just from 2008 to 20111 the share of energy-poor households in the Federal Republic jumped from 13.8 to 17 percent.”

Energy poverty is defined by the number of households that must pay more than 10% of their net income on energy. All told 6.9 million German households (every 6th household) finds itself in energy poverty, Spiegel writes.

Much of the rapid increase in energy prices is owing to Germany’s growth in expensive wind and solar energy. Ironically, despite more than 20% of Germany’s energy now being supplied by renewables, CO2 emissions have been rising just the same.

Spiegel calls the energy poverty rate “alarming”. However, when it comes to finding the cause for the runaway increase, the German Greens are blaming all the misery on the rising costs of oil and gas, and even hint that just more expensive, unreliable green energy is all that’s needed to get the costs back in line.

Natural gas in Germany costs three times more than it does in USA. The Greens are also demanding that the government pass legislation that would lead to residential units being renovated and better insulated. But critics say such a measure likely would make the situation even worse because landlords would benefit from the subsidies and pass the renovation costs to low income tenants.

The more the greens try to fix the mess, the more they screw it up.

Germany closed 25% of their power generating capacity when they shut down 8 reactors after Fukushima. That is hurting them right now, and will continue to do so until the ultra-efficient coal plants (9 in total are under construction) replace that capacity by 2016.

Right now, Germany is quite dependent on Russian gas (as are their neighbors). This is Putin's window, and he's exploiting it.

This is all easily available information, and isn't related to Germany's green power initiatives other than the German Green Party's stupid continued push against nuclear power.

 

[RacerDeac]

Germany closed 25% of their power generating capacity when they shut down 8 reactors after Fukushima. That is hurting them right now, and will continue to do so until the ultra-efficient coal plants (9 in total are under construction) replace that capacity by 2016.

Closing down the nuclear reactors is such an overreaction. It doesn't seem that the energy situation in Germany is nearly as great as the OP implies.

In this article that states that the US Policy against "dirty coal" is just resulting in dirty coal being exported to other countries, some of which have far less restrictions on how it is burned, it's also stated that despite the increased use of solar power, Germany's carbon dioxide emissions are actually rising because of the change from nuclear and Russian natural gas to cheaper coal. Germany is actually moving towards more coal:

http://www.courier-journal.com/stor.../us-sending-polluting-coal-overseas/13256197/

US sending 'dirty' coal overseas

The consequence: This global shell game makes the U.S. appear to be making more progress than it is on global warming. That's because it shifts some pollution — and the burden for cleaning it up — onto other countries' balance sheets.

"Energy exports bit by bit are chipping away at gains we are making on carbon dioxide domestically," said Shakeb Afsah, an economist who runs an energy consulting firm in Bethesda, Md.

As companies look to double U.S. coal exports, with three new terminals along the West Coast, America could be fueling demand for coal when many experts say that most fossil fuels should remain buried to avert the most disastrous effects of climate change.

But the administration has resisted calls from governors in Washington and Oregon to evaluate and disclose such global fallout, saying that if the U.S. didn't supply the coal, another country would.

------------------------------------------------------

It's a planet hungry for American coal. U.S. exports to Germany have more than doubled since 2008, providing a cheaper alternative to cleaner-burning natural gas and a replacement for nuclear power, which is being phased out after Japan's nuclear accident.

Last year, Germany's carbon dioxide emissions grew by 1.2 percent, in large part because the country burned more coal.

German environmental officials say the recent boom in coal-fired power is making it harder for the country to meet its climate-protection goals, even as it has increased renewable energy and participates in a carbon market that has lowered emissions throughout Europe.

Activists partly blame the U.S. "This is a classic case of political greenwashing," said Dirk Jansen, a spokesman for BUND, a German environmental group. "Obama pretties up his own climate balance, but it doesn't help the global climate at all if Obama's carbon dioxide is coming out of chimneys in Germany."

 

[Lectro]

Closing down the nuclear reactors is such an overreaction. It doesn't seem that the energy situation in Germany is nearly as great as the OP implies.

In this article that states that the US Policy against "dirty coal" is just resulting in dirty coal being exported to other countries, some of which have far less restrictions on how it is burned, it's also stated that despite the increased use of solar power, Germany's carbon dioxide emissions are actually rising because of the change from nuclear and Russian natural gas to cheaper coal. Germany is actually moving towards more coal:

http://www.courier-journal.com/stor.../us-sending-polluting-coal-overseas/13256197/

Read and read again.

Activists partly blame the U.S. "This is a classic case of political greenwashing," said Dirk Jansen, a spokesman for BUND, a German environmental group. "Obama pretties up his own climate balance, but it doesn't help the global climate at all if Obama's carbon dioxide is coming out of chimneys in Germany.

 

[bullets]

For those who have a better grasp on the German energy situation, does their move to clean coal include steps on the mining side that avoid mountaintop removal and other poor environmental practices? Where does most German coal come from?

Haha. It comes from America. Look up RAG Stiftung if you want to know more about German coal mining.

CSX is loving Angela Merkel's anti-nuclear stand.

 

[vadimivich]

Haha. It comes from America. Look up RAG Stiftung if you want to know more about German coal mining.

CSX is loving Angela Merkel's anti-nuclear stand.

Merkel isn't anti-nuclear, but she's boxed into a corner domestically. Germany has a long history of anti-nuclear activism (hell, everyone knows 99 Luftballons, right?), and after Fukashima Merkel was facing a splintering coalition if she didn't cave on her promise to extend the life of the plants and just shut them down immediately instead.

The Swiss are going to run their plants to the end of their lives and not replace them, and Austria is nuclear free as well (in fact, the protests over the attempt to build a plant here in the 70s were so vociferous the Parliament voted to officially ban all nuclear power by law). This part of the world is just whacky when it comes to nuclear power.

 

[bullets]

I didn't say she was anti-nuclear (she is personally pro-nuclear). I said she has taken an anti-nuclear stand, which she has by giving in to a minority of the population's irrational fears. The decision to shutter Germany's nuclear power will go down as the worst decision Merkel made as chancellor and is probably the reason she will not be considered Germany's greatest chancellor.