Germany shift back to coal, reports in 2014
See these reports.
(1) From Bloomberg June 21, 2014.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, boosted consumption of the fuel by 13 percent in the past four years, while use in Britain, No. 3 in the region economically, rose 22 percent, statistics from oil company BP Plc show...
Germany’s emissions rose even as its production of intermittent wind and solar power climbed fivefold in the past decade....
German fossil-fuel emissions climbed 5.5 percent to 843 million tons in the four years through 2013, the BP data show. To meet its commitment, Germany would have to reduce its pollution by about 379 million tons, a further 45 percent. The BP statistics cover only fossil-fuel burning, which makes up about 88 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas output.
(2) From Reuters, Aug. 27, 2014:
Germany will continue to need coal-fired power plants, its energy regulator said, warning that Europe's biggest economy should not rely solely on renewables or risk increasing exposure to Russian gas as it shuts down nuclear plants.
"Those who call for an end of coal power generation don't have much interest in a reliable energy policy," Jochen Homann, president of the Federal Network Agency (BnetzA), told an energy industry conference on Wednesday.
"We will close further nuclear plants; these capacities need to be replaced," he said, adding that coal power was vital to achieve this…
(3) From WSJ, September 6, 2014:
German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany . . .
For society as a whole, the costs have reached levels comparable only to the euro-zone bailouts. This year, German consumers will be forced to pay €20 billion ($26 billion) for electricity from solar, wind and biogas plants—electricity with a market price of just over €3 billion. Even the figure of €20 billion is disputable if you include all the unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project. Solar panels and wind turbines at times generate huge amounts of electricity, and sometimes none at all. Depending on the weather and the time of day, the country can face absurd states of energy surplus or deficit.
(4) From Mining.com, September 22, 2014:
Only last year the share of electricity generated from coal in Europe’s biggest economy hit the highest in 24 years. The country also opened more coal-fired power plants in 2013 than any other time in the past 20 years as it moves towards a target set three years ago, which aims to have all nuclear power stations shut down by 2022.
Germany’s energy revolution —or “Energiewende”— has come at a high price.According to Bloomberg, it has so far added more than $134 billion (100 billion euros) to the power bills of households, shop owners and small factories.
But falling coal prices seem to have wet the government’s appetite for the fossil fuel, to the point that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governmenthas recently announced it considers coal-based power plants as “indispensable” for the foreseeable future.
(5) From Bloomberg, September 22, 2014.
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Germany used coal, the dirtiest fuel, to generate 45 percent of its power last year, its highest level since 2007...
The transition, dubbed the Energiewende, has so far added more than 100 billion euros ($134 billion) to the power bills of households, shop owners and small factories as renewable energy met a record 25 percent of demand last year. RWE AG, the nation’s biggest power producer, last year reported its first loss since 1949 as utility margins are getting squeezed because laws give green power priority to the grids.
(6) From Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2014:
Berlin’s “energy revolution” is going great—if you own a coal mine. The German shift to renewable power sources that started in 2000 has brought the green share of German electricity up to around 25%. But the rest of the energy mix has become more heavily concentrated on coal, which now accounts for some 45% of power generation and growing....
Greens profess horror at this result, but no one who knows anything about economics will be surprised. It's the result of Chancellor Angela Merkel 's Energiewende, or energy revolution, a drive to thwart market forces and especially price signals, that might otherwise allocate energy resources. Now the market is striking back.
Take the so-called feed-in tariff, which requires distributors to buy electricity from green generators at fixed prices before buying power from other sources. Greens tout the measure because it has encouraged renewable generation to the point that Germany now sometimes experiences electricity gluts if the weather is particularly sunny or windy.
Ordinary Germans foot the bill for these market distortions, having ponied up an estimated €100 billion ($129 billion) extra on their electricity bills since 2000 to fund the renewable drive. The government estimates this revolution could cost a total of €1 trillion by 2040.
(10) From Spiegel International, September 4, 2013.
Actual electricity production in Germany from November 1-30, 2014 (above) then December 1-30, 2014 (below). Dark blue is fossil/coal and nuke; medium blue is wind, yellow is solar, green is biomass. When the wind does not blow, when the Sun does not shine, electricity output is zero. It is really the "non-renewables" that give stable and reliable electricity to Germany and all other countries in the planet.
(8) From Bloomberg, Nov. 22, 2014.
(10) From Bloomberg, November 24, 2014:
Altmaier and others are on a mission to help people save money on their electricity bills, because they're about to receive some bad news. The government predicts that the renewable energy surcharge added to every consumer's electricity bill will increase from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour -- a 20-percent price hike.
German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energypolicy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany, and one of the country's most important future-oriented projects is acutely at risk.
Even well-informed citizens can no longer keep track of all the additional costs being imposed on them. According to government sources, the surcharge to finance the power grids will increase by 0.2 to 0.4 cents per kilowatt hour next year. On top of that, consumers pay a host of taxes, surcharges and fees that would make any consumer's head spin.
"On Thursday, a government-sanctioned commission plans to submit a special report called "Competition in Times of the Energy Transition." The report is sharply critical, arguing that Germany's current system actually rewards the most inefficient plants, doesn't contribute to protecting the climate, jeopardizes the energy supply and puts the poor at a disadvantage.
The experts propose changing the system to resemble a model long successful in Sweden. If implemented, it would eliminate the more than 4,000 different subsidies currently in place. Instead of bureaucrats setting green energy prices, they would be allowed to develop indepedently on a separate market...
Becker wants to prevent his clients from having their electricity shut off for not paying their bill. After sending out a few warning notices, the power company typically sends someone to the apartment to shut off the power -- leaving the customers with no functioning refrigerator, stove or bathroom fan. Unless they happen to have a camping stove, they can't even boil water for a cup of tea. It's like living in the Stone Age.
(2) From Reuters, August 18, 2014
Energy intensive industries in particular have lost confidence in the future of Germany as a business location," said Thomas Mayer, a former chief economist at Deutsche Bank who now runs the Cologne-based Flossbach von Storch Research Institute. "I think this is a major issue that will burden German industry for years to come.
Good chart, Renewables' rated capacity vs. actual energy output, cases of the US, UK and Germany, 2008 to 2013. Huge gap between the promise (rated cap) and reality.
November 26, 2014.
(5) From NTZ,
Price of power for all EU countries. cents/kWh, 2013. Denmark has the most expensive, Germany (Deutschland) is second.
And the cost of feed in tariff (FIT) and subsidies, Euro cents per kWh imposed on German consumers. Consumers are happy with ever more expensive electricity? Maybe if WWF and Greenpeace will conduct a survey, "Do you support FIT and more expensive electricity in the PH to subsidize renewables?", most likely they can produce result like "90 percent said Yes",
(6) From WUWT, December 10, 2014
the silverback of the “big four” German energy producers who group the bulk of the country’s conventional and nuclear power production is about to close shop at short notice. The others will probably follow suit.
...both the minister for economic affairs and the chancellor’s office hastily preparing new legislation aiming at enhancing the situation of coal-fired plants by implementing an all-new market design. It will most certainly provide for compensation payments for coal-fired plants forced to turn idle or at minimum load when the grid is clogged by an oversupply of wind and solar energy.
German electric energy prices, already the second-highest in Europe, are increasingly choking off economic growth. More and more key sectors such as the aluminum, steel making and chemical industry are increasingly opting out of investing in the country, turning to regions offering more reasonable energy prices, notably the US....
(7) From NTZ, December 3, 2014
Holger Steltzner at Germany’s flagship Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes that the Eon move presents the German government with 2 major problems: “It has to make sure that the decommissioning of the nuclear power plants succeeds, and it must explain where the power will come from when the wind doesn’t blow.”
With 23 billion euros annually, the government subsidizes renewable energy that is worth only 2 billion on the market.
(8) From Business Recorder December 5, 2014.
Coal generation is still the backbone of German power supply in a country set on moving away from nuclear power and favouring renewable energy over fossil fuels. The country in January to September used hard coal for 43 percent of coal generation, of which 17 percent was hard coal and 26 percent domestic brown coal, industry statistics showed.
Actual electricity production in Germany from November 1-30, 2014 (above) then December 1-30, 2014 (below). Dark blue is fossil/coal and nuke; medium blue is wind, yellow is solar, green is biomass. When the wind does not blow, when the Sun does not shine, electricity output is zero. It is really the "non-renewables" that give stable and reliable electricity to Germany and all other countries in the planet.
source: agora-energiewende.de
(9) From Bloomberg November 20, 2014
“Coal is three to five times cheaper than natural gas in gas-importing countries,” Cedigaz said. “Left solely to market forces, gas cannot compete with coal for base-load power and its role is limited to meeting peak-load demand.
(8) From Bloomberg, Nov. 22, 2014.
Europe faces power shortages in the next decade unless it balances its drive for low-carbon energy with investment in clean-coal and nuclear generation, according to the International Energy Agency.
Policy makers must boost incentives for coal-fired power that includes carbon-capture technology and spur investment in new atomic plants to replace aging reactors, Maria van der Hoeven, the executive director of the IEA, said in an interview. The investment in round-the-clock, or baseload, power is needed to cover intermittent wind and solar supply, she said.
“Not everything can come just from having more renewables,” van der Hoeven said in London on Nov. 12. “The system has to be stable so that the lights aren’t going to turn off the moment the renewables aren’t there.
(10) From Bloomberg, November 24, 2014:
When it's too cold, Europeans run to coal, not wind or solar, to get warm. Again, not from WSJ, peks man From Bloomberg again,
"Year-ahead coal rose for a second day, increasing 0.6 percent to the highest since Oct. 9, according to broker data on Bloomberg.
Stocks of coal at three import terminals in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp region dropped to their lowest in six weeks. Inventories fell 3.7 percent to 6.05 million tons from 6.3 million tons a week earlier.
(11) From No Tricks Zone, Novenber 29, 2014
When high subsidies are reduced or removed, many if not all renewable companies will be bankrupt. They survive only through expensive electricity being forced by governments to the consumers.
(12) From NTZ, December 6, 2014.
(12) From NTZ, December 6, 2014.
there are times when sun and wind combined were less than 2% of the needed supply. Unfortunately, power utilities simply cannot call Mother Nature up and place orders for power days in advance. They have to just take what Mother Nature sends, whether they want it or not, and German law says they have to pay for it even when they do not feed it in.
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