Here it is Christmas, and I ask you - where is the love?
Isn't it bad enough that Olaf Scholz is enjoying his last few weeks as Chancellor of Germany after his fragile coalition blew apart, and he was forced into scheduling a no-confidence vote?
Especially galling that it's one everyone expects him to lose?
Can't the world give a guy a break who's overseen the destruction of his once mighty industrial base. Come on - Schlitz happens!
As Germans prepare for a snap election after the collapse of a fragile government coalition, one issue at the top of voters’ minds will be how the new government would revive the country’s once powerful economy at a time when energy prices are high and companies are cutting jobs.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has not seen significant growth in the past two years. On Friday, the economy recorded 0.1 percent growth from July to September, but it is forecast to contract over the entire year. And economists do not expect to see a return to growth in 2025, unless a new government can make significant changes quickly.
Driving that point home, Germany’s largest auto supplier, Bosch, said on Friday that it planned to cut 5,500 jobs, beginning in 2027. More than two-thirds will be at German factories.
High energy prices, a complex bureaucracy, aging public infrastructure and geopolitical developments have hurt Germany’s export industry. Political paralysis under the previous government exacerbated the situation.
Hey! That's kinda harsh...
Germany is ‘kaput’: Why the economic model no longer works in the proud country of automobiles
The Volkswagen crisis is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger problem. Europe’s old locomotive has stalled and must overhaul its industrial system, based on cheap Russian energy and exports to China
Scholz and his coalition cohorts aren't having much luck with their plan to ban the popular populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party prior to the election. It seemed like a great idea at the time - outlaw the AfD so the entrenched parties like the Greens and Christian Democrats wouldn't get their asterisks handed to them by their worst nightmares.
It's not going according to plan.
When should you ban a far-right party? A motion to consider a ban of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), signed by 113 members of parliament, has been submitted to Bundestag. It’s a sign of how concerned politicians across the political divide are about the resilience of German democracy to the far right party, which has been winning support despite being monitored for several years as a “suspected right-wing extremist organisation”. But banning it would be risky.
Carmen Wegge, member of the Bundestag for the social democratic SPD, is one of the politicians who initiated this step towards a possible ban. “In my view, German democracy is in danger because the AfD is an anti-constitutional party that is reaching for power and has a realistic chance of gaining it,” she explains.
Discussions about a ban have been ongoing for months—in October a cross-party group of MPs first outlined the plan to ask the Federal Constitutional Court to examine a possible ban—but the pressure is now on because the group wants the Bundestag to vote on the motion before the end of this legislative period, and the governing “traffic light” coalition collapsed last week, triggering a snap election. A majority of parliamentarians would need to support a ban for it to be considered by the court, but only 113 out of 734 members of parliament have backed the proposal so far, and few of the supporters are leading figures in their parties.
Can nothing go right for the down-on-his-luck leader?
It's almost as if he has an ill wind at his back, blowing bad juju everywhere he turns.
ALMOST
Because his latest problem is...surprise...Germany has no wind. And we all know Germany needs wind because Germany has bet the farm on wind.
Which means Germans are pulling power from the other European countries they have agreements with for when their unreliable renewables crap out. Only this time - oh, baby.
The prices across Europe for picking up the loads when Germany has no turbines turning have spiked through the roof.
A large dunkelflaute hits Europe! As dark settled in at 5pm yesterday, both wind and solar generation flatlined across the region. Energy prices in Denmark and Germany surged to €936/MWh as utilities scrambled to meet peak demand with limited renewable output. A stark reminder… pic.twitter.com/l48YRaMNDt
— Electricity Maps (@ElectricityMaps) December 13, 2024
...A stark reminder of the need for load shifting, diverse energy sources and robust storage solutions for the winter months. Data here:
A dunkelflaute is a weather event when there is simultaneously very little wind and solar power generation, typically occurring during dark winter periods. The term comes from the German words for "dark" (dunkel) and "lull" (flaute).
The market price hit almost €1000 per megawatt hr.
SCHEISSE
Holy crap - no one can afford that.
If Germany is uncomfortable and needy...
Germans trying to get their wind turbines to spin today.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 12, 2024
“No nuclear power? Wir schaffen das!”
🇩🇪 pic.twitter.com/hwj2MmyLui
...the rest of Europe, particularly the Scandinavians, are smoking hot about it, and they want out of the agreements.
Blows my mind that the Nordic people literally pay higher prices for electricity because Germany voted for idiots for decades.
— VincentPsychSE (@VincentPsychSE) December 13, 2024
Nordic power supplements German energy. But recently their wind power died so energy prices in Sweden jumped up. 😫
Northern Sweden not affected yet… https://t.co/hSNcKgzR6t
The Norwegians, wondering why their prices for their own electricity go up when it's Europe who needs it, want to cut the power connectors to the continent.
CUT THAT CORD
“It’s an absolutely sh*t situation,” said Norway’s energy minister Terje Aasland cited by FT, reacting to electricity prices in the country that are six times that of the EU average these days.
The two ruling parties in Norway are pledging to campaign to cut the two power interconnectors that link the country with Denmark, when they come up for renewal in 2026, reports the FT. The smaller coalition party, the Center Party is eyeing revisiting similar energy links with the UK and Europe.
One of the reasons is that electricity prices are extremely high in the country these days, something that the energy minister Terje Aasland described as outrageous, cited Norwegian newspaper E24.
With current high Norwegian prices, critics argue Norway should only send electricity from its abundant hydropower abroad after it has ensured low prices at home, as was the case for decades previously.
The Swedes are also snorting fire, with Ebba Busch, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy, pointing fingers at Germany explicitly for prematurely shuttering their nuclear plants purely to score virtue-signaling points, not because they had to.
Maybe by coincidence, this is exactly what I told her state secretary two years ago: All European neighbours will pay a high price for the German nuclear phase-out. That's exactly what we can see now! Not a surprise.
— Björn Peters (@Bjoern_Peters) December 12, 2024
...Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Ebba Busch added that Germany's decision to dismantle its nuclear power plants has also other detrimental effects for Europe:
"I'm furious with the Germans. They have made a decision for their country, which they have the right to make; it's their right to decide. But it has had very serious consequences, also for the EU's competitiveness because we see that German competitiveness has dropped significantly."
She said that Germany's actions have also reduced its ability to help Ukraine.
- “After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they still chose to dismantle their nuclear power plants... I respect that people can have different opinions about nuclear power plants, but we could have kept it. They are important because they are baseload power plants.
Having access to such baseload power plants would have increased the transmission capacity from Germany to other electricity price areas in Europe, driving down prices for all of us"
Deputy PM Busch has a good head on her shoulders and is truly looking out for her country's energy security first. She had already taken the measure of the Germans this summer, when she shot down a deal for yet another power cable from Sweden's grid to Germany's, and she minced no words about why she wouldn't allow it.
The Swedish government has turned down an application to build a new subsea power connection between Sweden and Germany, the 700 megawatts Hansa PowerBridge project, because the German market is not efficient enough, it said on Friday."We can't connect southern Sweden, which has a large deficit in electricity production, with Germany, where the electricity market today does not function efficiently," Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in a statement."That would risk leading to higher prices and a more unstable electricity market in Sweden," she said.Grid operators Svenska Kraftnat and 50Hertz had aimed for the project to allow more renewable power to be sent from the Nordics to Germany, while imports from Germany would contribute to a more secure electricity supply in southern Sweden.
As the fellow with the last chart says...
Like night follows day... pic.twitter.com/rUdV3dHhX7
— Sam Berridge (@strikeextent) December 11, 2024
...and everyone is waking up to the fact that nobody wants to follow the Germans over that cliff.
It's dark down there.
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