Germany already had nuclear power in 2002, if they just kept it and didn’t build all the wind and solar plants, they wouldn’t have had to spend 697 Billion Euro on subsidies, and would have cut their emissions by 73% more.
If ever there is a statistic that says there is something rotten in the State of Climate Panic, this is surely it. I mean, does CO2 matter or doesn’t it? Do the Greens care at all, or even a bit? If there was a climate emergency and The Greens were worried about CO2, they might have protested that the EnergieWende was a reckless experiment. But if the Greens were tools for communists, foreign states or banker-investors, then they might keep choosing options that benefit other countries, help Bankers or just make Big Government bigger.
Either the German Greens have utterly failed at the very task they set out to do, or they were really aiming at something else.
Ross Pomery writes at RealClearScience and WattsUpWithThat
Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power
At the dawn of the millennium, Germany launched an ambitious plan to transition to renewable energy. “Die Energiewende” initiated a massive expansion of solar and wind power, resulting in a commendable 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2022…
In 2002, nuclear power supplied about a fifth of Germany’s electricity. Twenty-one years later, it supplied none. A layperson might think that cheap wind and solar could simply fill the gap, but it isn’t so simple.
Jan Emblemsvåg, a Professor of Civil Engineering at Norway’s NTNU just published a study comparing the ambitious German Energiewende renewable program with nuclear power:
“what if Germany had spent their money on nuclear power and not followed their policy from 2002 through 2022 (20 years); would Germany have achieved more emission reductions and lower expenses?”
Even German bureaucrats admit Energiewende “poses a threat to the German economy”:
German Federal Accounting Office (Bundesrechnungshof) writes about the German policy dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ in German, and it concludes: ‘The Bundesrechnungshof warns that the energy transition in its current form poses a threat to the German economy and overburdens the financial capacity of electricity-consuming companies and households’ (Bundesrechnungshof Citation2021a).
A whole lot of wind (green) and solar (orange) power were added to the German grid and it was worse than useless:
Click to view
Given these results, there can be no doubt whatsoever that if Germany had invested in NPPs [Nuclear Power Plants] instead of VREs [Variable Renewable Energy], Germany would have decarbonised more with far less nominal expenditures. The short conclusion is that Germany would have reached its climate goals with a substantial margin at half the expenditures of Energiewende.
Either the German Greens have utterly failed at the very task they set out to do, or they were really aiming at something else.
Ross Pomery writes at RealClearScience and WattsUpWithThat
Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power
At the dawn of the millennium, Germany launched an ambitious plan to transition to renewable energy. “Die Energiewende” initiated a massive expansion of solar and wind power, resulting in a commendable 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2022…
In 2002, nuclear power supplied about a fifth of Germany’s electricity. Twenty-one years later, it supplied none. A layperson might think that cheap wind and solar could simply fill the gap, but it isn’t so simple.
Jan Emblemsvåg, a Professor of Civil Engineering at Norway’s NTNU just published a study comparing the ambitious German Energiewende renewable program with nuclear power:
“what if Germany had spent their money on nuclear power and not followed their policy from 2002 through 2022 (20 years); would Germany have achieved more emission reductions and lower expenses?”
Even German bureaucrats admit Energiewende “poses a threat to the German economy”:
German Federal Accounting Office (Bundesrechnungshof) writes about the German policy dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ in German, and it concludes: ‘The Bundesrechnungshof warns that the energy transition in its current form poses a threat to the German economy and overburdens the financial capacity of electricity-consuming companies and households’ (Bundesrechnungshof Citation2021a).
A whole lot of wind (green) and solar (orange) power were added to the German grid and it was worse than useless:
Click to view
Given these results, there can be no doubt whatsoever that if Germany had invested in NPPs [Nuclear Power Plants] instead of VREs [Variable Renewable Energy], Germany would have decarbonised more with far less nominal expenditures. The short conclusion is that Germany would have reached its climate goals with a substantial margin at half the expenditures of Energiewende.
The Germans have done this experiment so we don’t have to
Just burn that money in a pyre to the Weather Gods:
Click image to view - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642#d1e128
These costs do not include the added burden of expensive electricity on businesses and homes, the opportunity costs of money that could have been spent elsewhere, or the loss of talent, brains and industry to other countries.
Building new nuclear plants was still cheaper than wind and solar
The paper goes through another scenario where more nuclear plants were built with careful estimations of the costs and long times to construct plants and still concludes that the Germans would have saved $330 billion euro.
Click image to view - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642#d1e128
Not coincidentally, in 2024 Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe, business confidence is low, and VW have just announced that after 87 years in production, they might have to close their German factories.
Volkswagen, which was founded in 1937, said on Monday that it could no longer rule out unprecedented plant closures in Germany as it seeks ways to save several billion euros.
Chief executive Oliver Blume said: “The economic environment has become even tougher and new players are pushing into Europe. Germany as a business location is falling further behind in terms of competitiveness.”
Volkswagen employs around 650,000 workers globally, almost 300,000 of whom are in Germany, and the threat of factory closures sparked an immediate fierce backlash …
Reference
Emblemsvåg, J. (2024). What if Germany had invested in nuclear power? A comparison between the German energy policy the last 20 years and an alternative policy of investing in nuclear power. International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 43(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642
Joanne Nova is a prize-winning science graduate in molecular biology. This article was sourced HERE
7 comments:
And all those wind turbines and solar farms are at what cost to the environment - tangibly and visually. New Zealand would be stupid to continue down that path. If we are really concerned with the climate, environment, and future energy needs (productivity), we need to get over our fear of nuclear generation.
If we ever started producing nuclear power in NZ I foresee two claims before the Waitangi Tribunal. After all, if the signatories in 1840 could think of radio spectrums they certainly would have considered nuclear power. The first claim will argue it is against the Treaty, because Maori are apparently lived in complete harmony with the environment and David Lange was anti-nuclear once it became politically expediient. The second claim will say Maori own it because it comes from their sun god. Even though the claims contradict each other, I'm sure the Tribunal will uphold both, with vast sums of compensation required.
Lesson for Australia and the current Labor push against Nuclear - they are breaking the energy and economy there. Same lesson for NZ.
Nuclear powered countries will quickly adopt AI technology and will out produce, out grow and innovate faster than countries with renewable sources of energy. AI consumes vast quantities of power and it must be reliable.
Our climate alarmists are not visionary enough to see the problems their myopic view will create.
Here’s an example.
In the near future the NZ reserve banks want to implement a digital currency. How do we transact if the power is out due to low wind or a dry rain year?
In the modern growing world Electricity reliability is everything.
Absolutely.
Looking at the scene here in New Zealand:-
Using the IPCC data:-
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 400ppm.
Human emissions (fossil fuels etc) only produce 3% of this.
New Zealand only produces 0.17% of Human emissions.
SO! New Zealand’s total contribution of CO2 in the atmosphere is
400ppm x 3% x 0.17% = 0.02 ppm which = 2 parts per HUNDRED million.
This is ONE part per 50 MILLION.
The other 49,999,999 parts are other sources – NOT New Zealand.
So New Zealand's contribution to the global atmosphere is ZERO !!
Well said, Anon.
You have summed it up exactly.
The futility of building windmills and solar farms in NZ is obvious to most thinking people, however politicians don’t fall into this thinking category.
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