I'd seen this a bit ago, but life here in the States has been so kick-ass, I didn't have a chance to get to it. Part of the reason for all the excitement here in the States reminded me of it...but I'm going to save that for lagniappe at the end of the post.
BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I ROLL
So, Germany's having a time of it energy-wise, which is not helping the parties who want to cling to power's chances of doing do as the February 23 elections draw ever nearer.
Yes, people are bent out of shape about the immigrant situation probably more than anything...
France has 120 stabbings per day, Germany two gang rapes, and Sweden will soon be a Nordic country with daily gang shootings.
— Ralph Schoellhammer (@Raphfel) February 11, 2025
Yet the media continues to tell you to vote for the very parties responsible.
Stop listening to them and trust your own eyes, or you lose your country. pic.twitter.com/N2VtmYtT8O
...and the deaf ears their complaints have fallen on have helped the impressive rise of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party more than they'll ever know.
Had Scholz's coalition of Social Democrats (SDP), Free Democrats (FDP) [fixed], and Greens acceded to the tiniest of German citizens' express dissatisfaction and made a meaningful immigration-related change or two, they would be in nowhere near the political peril they are at the moment. The Greens are fading away fast, often not even gathering enough votes to take a seat in regional legislatures. The two biggest 'centrist' parties, with once thumping huge majorities, have now been eaten away into sharing thirds with AfD, whom they insist they will not work with, whilst having an upstart far left-wing Socialist party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), play spoiler.
It's a mess.
What's also a mess after immigration is the state of the German electrical grid, which is so dire, so unreliable, so dependent on outside backup electricity, and so expensive that it has caused the deindustrialization of the once-upon-a-time manufacturing juggernaut of Europe.
The things that made Germany and what Germany made are now shallow husks of better times.
An unexpectedly cold winter with extended periods of the dreaded dunkelflaute - or dreary days with little to no wind - has brought that home to the wind and solar-dependent country.
For a nation so proud of their self-sacrifice at the altar of decarbonization, it would appear they're killing themselves for nothing.
If only hypocrisy were a warm bankie.
Renewable = Intermittent Energy
— Dan Tsubouchi (@Energy_Tidbits) February 11, 2025
Coal saving the day with Germany unseasonal low wind generation.
Persistent windless weather led German coal plants to fill the gap, ramp up output to ~8.1 GW this Thurs, highest since Feb 2024" 👇@EamonFarhat.#NatGas also a big winner.#OOTT https://t.co/RXDiZ8Npqj pic.twitter.com/EIlxLhrPVL
The neighbors with abundant power - from whom Germany leeches electricity when their coal plants can't keep up with the country's peak energy demands - have had enough of the European Union's scheme for subsidizing and prioritizing Green energy development by penalizing those countries who kept their nuclear and hydro-electrical plants operational. They are tired of paying a premium for the electricity they generate when Germany has to draw from their power, while stubbornly refusing to change their own suicidal national energy security trajectory.
"German electricity grid is today more weather dependent than ever"
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) February 8, 2025
When no wind and sun, Germany sucks the power from everyone else, driving up costs
Norway, Sweden, France, Austria, Poland sick of "paying the cost of a failed German energy policy"https://t.co/AvrgEfEjyd pic.twitter.com/TY8vLNRiVJ
The German plans counted on not reopening their shuttered nuclear plants but on building MORE OFFSHORE WIND farms.
That was the plan.
Sounds solid, right? It's worked out well so far for them. More idle turbines in the water during yet another a dunkelflaute lasting months makes perfect sense, I guess.
Particularly when the neighbors are talking about cutting your backup power sources off.
Brilliant - German engineering at its finest.
Sadly, depending on how you look at it, those plans, too, are now in jeopardy.
It turns out you can have too many cooks in the kitchen and too many turbines in the water.
🚨The so-called Wake Effect is forcing🇩🇪Germany to limit offshore wind energy ambitions.
— Francesco Sassi (@Frank_Stones) February 4, 2025
🚫Authorities published a development plan that reduces the offshore wind energy targets.
💨The reason?🇩🇪German waters are at risk of becoming too crowded of offshore wind turbines
🧵 https://t.co/VhbSzgrj0w pic.twitter.com/trrWJw12eb
ACH DU HEILIGE SCHEIßE
What are we gonna do now, Olaf?
Offshore-wind developers in Germany may have to pursue smaller projects in future after the government cut the generation capacity available for leasing.
In a development plan published by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, the country is now targeting 40 gigawatts by 2034, compared with an earlier goal of as much as 50 gigawatts by 2035.
The move is a response to increasingly crowded seas, which can cause a so-called wake effect — a loss in output from wind farms built too close together. But with less capacity set to be tendered, Germany’s offshore-wind ambitions — already hampered by delays in grid link-ups — may be even further from reach.
Sure sounds like Germans breaking wind could affect the neighbor's turbines, too.
...The agency’s decision includes capacity cuts of as much as 50% at a couple of wind sites. It also assessed expansion plans in the Netherlands — where future projects may have a “negative impact on the expected energy yields” in adjacent German areas — and in Denmark.
Germany’s heavy industry consumes a huge amount of power, but the country’s two smaller neighbors hold much larger stretches of ocean under their jurisdiction. Authorities in the Netherlands are currently studying the wake-effect phenomenon, too, and expect to publish results in mid-March.
None of it gets Germany back to energy security.
Slowly but surely everyone finds out that Germany's stupid energy policies are not just a German problem.
— Ralph Schoellhammer (@Raphfel) February 6, 2025
When madness reigns in Berlin, it always leads to suffering in the rest of Europe. This time will be no different.
Link: https://t.co/dntxykZHAE pic.twitter.com/SwMpM3K6r8
This is where the lagniappe I promised at the beginning comes in, and it just tickled me to death.
I've done numerous posts on the next big thing coming down the technological pipe - AI - and the tremendous amounts of energy it consumes.
For a country to even begin to compete with the rest of the world at this next level, that country is going to have to make a serious commitment to infrastructure and building/maintaining tremendous, reliable energy resources - with emphasis on reliability.
German is going to be left in the Dunkel.
There's an international conference on AI in progress right now in France, hosted by Emmanuel Macron and attended by our very own Vice-President, J.D. Vance.
J.D. spoke today about where the Trump administration stood on censorship of AI, the development of the technology, and what it's going to need to do so if a country wants to pursue it. If any country wants to be a player in the field.
He pulled no punches, and it was a glorious, damn near lethal one-two combination.
Vance: "Many of our friends are de-industrializing on the one hand, & chasing reliable power out of their nations with the other."
— Christopher Barnard (@ChrisBarnardDL) February 11, 2025
If America wants to win the AI race, we should look at what Germany & California have done to their energy & industrial base, and do the opposite. pic.twitter.com/GTA8EsHd49
Judging by the faces, they felt that.
Ladies and gentlemen, I love this guy.
And there wasn't a word that wasn't true.
Truth stings when it hits.
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