By Robert Zubrin
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
On May 7, Tom Friedman published an op-ed in the New York
Times filled with praise for Germany’s green-power program. “What the Germans
have done in converting almost 30 percent of their electric grid to solar and
wind energy from near zero in about 15 years has been a great contribution to
the stability of our planet and its climate,” gushed Friedman. “ . . . This is
a world-saving achievement.”
Friedman is not alone in his admiration for the German
energy program. President Obama has hailed it too, saying that the world should
“look to Berlin” as the model for its energy future.
However, what Friedman, Obama, and other admirers of the
German green-energy strategy fail to say is that it has come at the expense of
sky-high electricity rates. According to EU data, Germany’s average residential
electricity rate is 29.8 cents per kilowatt hour. This is approximately double
the 14.2 cents and 15.9 cents per kWh paid by residents of Germany’s neighbors
Poland and France, respectively, and almost two and a half times the U.S.
average of 12 cents per kWh. Germany’s industrial electricity rate of 16 cents
per kWh is also much higher than France’s 9.6 cents or Poland’s 8.3 cents. The
average German per capita electricity consumption is 0.8 kilowatts. At a
composite rate of 24 cents per kWh, this works out to a yearly bill of $1,700
per person, experienced either directly in utility bills or indirectly through
increased costs of goods and services. The median household income in Germany
is $33,000, so if we assume an average of two people per household, the
electricity cost would amount to more than 10 percent of available income. And
that is for the median-income household. The amount of electricity that people
need does not scale in proportion to their paychecks. For the rich, $1,700 per
year in electric bills might be a pittance, or at most a nuisance. But for the
poor who are just scraping by, such a burden is simply brutal.
So, what has the German government accomplished for “the
Earth” in exchange for the severe harm it has inflicted on the nation’s poorer
citizens? It is claimed that Germany has replaced 30 percent of its electricity
with renewable energy. If all you look at is capacity, that might appear to be
true. Germany has a total installed capacity of 172 gigawatts (GW), and 65 GW
of that is based on renewables. But neither wind nor solar power obtains an
around-the-clock average of anything close to full capacity. Rather, these
methods of electricity generation typically average at best about 20 percent of
their full rated power. Thus Germany’s nominal 65 GW of solar and wind
generation capacity is worth about as much as 13 GW capacity in conventional
power plants. Of the 614,000 GW hours that Germany generated in 2014, 56,000
GWh came from wind and 35,000 GWh from solar, for an actual combined average
power of 10.4 GW, or 14.8 percent of all electricity generated. About half of
this, or 5.2 GW, has been developed since 2005.
However, in 2011 Germany had 20 GW of capacity in nuclear
power plants, producing more than twice as much electricity as wind and solar
do currently, at less than half the cost, with no carbon emissions whatsoever.
But, using the rather improbable threat of a Fukushima-like tsunami as a
pretext, the nation’s elites decided to shut them down; 8.3 GW have already
been eliminated.
Thus, over the past decade, the total amount of
carbon-free power that Germany has produced under its oppressive green-energy policy
has actually decreased by 3 GW. The deficit, as well as all requirements for
new power, has been met by burning increased amounts of lignite, which emits
not only more carbon dioxide than practically any other power source, but large
amounts of real pollutants as well.
Like an earlier regime in Germany, the Holy Roman Empire,
which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, Germany’s green-energy
program is neither green, nor an energy program. Rather, it is a form of
ultra-regressive taxation — in effect, a state-sponsored cult of human
sacrifice for weather control.
Germany has brought the world many remarkable political
innovations, including government by bureaucracy, the welfare state,
regimentation of education, Red, Brown, and Green parties, theoretical and
applied racial science and engineering, the precautionary principle, and the
systematic philosophical and practical negation of Judeo-Christian ethics. Its
heartless energy policy is entirely consistent with that history.
“Look to Berlin,” indeed.
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