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FEATURE

Germany's Green-Energy Gap

Germany stumbles in its move to replace coal and nuclear power with offshore wind energy


PAGE 1234 // VIEW ALL

Photo: Joerg Glaescher/laif/Redux

Power Shift:

Renewable sources should eventually replace conventional electric power plants. But the new and the old will probably coexist for many decades yet, as they do outside the German city of Cottbus.

BY Peter Fairley // July 2009

The six offshore wind turbines that REpower Systems began erecting near Germany’s coast in 2004 make their older cousins look like pinwheels. Each one has three 61.5-meter blades, which in a good breeze make one revolution every 5 seconds, producing 5 megawatts of electric power. Inspired by Germany’s bold vision for capturing offshore wind energy, these majestic machines are designed to withstand anything the famously unforgiving North Sea can dish out.

And yet, these turbines have never felt the spray of salt water. They tower over communal pasture—above sheep munching, bleating, and adding to the world’s supply of greenhouse gases. These turbines are tucked between a nuclear power station, an incinerator, and a cluster of chemical plants in Brunsbüttel, a hardscrabble harbor town where the Elbe River and the Nord-Ostsee Canal spill into the Wadden Sea.

Just a few years ago, many Germans thought that by this time, hundreds of offshore turbines like these giants from Hamburg, Germany–based REpower would be scattered off their northern coasts. After all, this prospect was a centerpiece of energy plans not only in Germany but also in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK. But the envisioned embrace of offshore wind power was particularly fervent in Germany, where the country’s center-left political parties hatched plans to double renewable energy’s share of power generation to 30 percent by 2020. But rather than the hundreds of turbines that were to be spinning in Germany’s coastal waters by now to meet that schedule, only three turbines had gone up by the start of this year.

And Germany will not have many more offshore wind turbines anytime soon. German energy giant E.ON plans to install a small test farm on the North Sea this summer. But it will be another one or two years, at least, before big offshore wind farms are feeding the German grid. ”Germany lost a lot of momentum,” says Eduard Sala de Vedruna, a senior analyst tracking wind energy for the consultancy Emerging Energy Research, of Cambridge, Mass., and Barcelona. ”The offshore projects are at a quite immature stage.”

The idea that Germany is playing catch-up with Europe’s most promising strategy for renewable energy is jarring. This is Germany, after all, the country that 11 years ago put the Green Party in government, decided to phase out nuclear power, and pushed wind energy and photovoltaics to grid scale. Today Germany’s installed wind-turbine capacity of 24 gigawatts ranks second only to that of the United States (which has 25 GW). But despite the promises, greenhouse-gas emissions there haven’t plummeted. Rather, they have gone down only slightly since 2000. Germany, it seems, has lost its groove.

The result is a turnabout that would have seemed preposterous even six months ago: ”Everyone in the environmental community is looking to the U.S. now,” says Elias Perabo, who codirects a campaign against the use of coal for Germany’s Berlin-based Climate Alliance.

The dearth of offshore wind turbines is just one of several signs of a slowdown in the country’s two-decade-old transition to renewable energy. Germany’s balkanized power grid, split between east and west when the country was divided and not yet fully knit back together, remains ill adapted to the variable flows from renewable energy. And Germany is readying a new generation of coal-fired power plants—including three proposed for Brunsbüttel.

The story of how Germany lost the lead in the transition to greener sources of energy contains a complex blend of backlash, environmental conflict, and competing commercial interests. It is a cautionary tale, showing in particular that public consensus about the urgency of combating climate change is just a first step in delivering a renewable-energy system.

No country has pushed renewable energy harder than Germany has. And much of that impetus came from one development: disenchantment with nuclear energy, which supplies about a quarter of the country’s electrical needs.

Sources: Yields–German Wind Energy Association; Capacity–Deutsches Windenergie-Institut; Map–European Wind Energy Association; Generation–International Energy Agency

Click the image to enlarge it

 

Public opinion turned abruptly against nuclear power in 1986, after the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine sent radioactive fallout over northern Europe and made West Germans uneasy about their own reactors. Popular concern after Chernobyl froze construction of additional reactors and fueled calls from the political left to scrap the nation’s existing nuclear plants. The chancellor at the time, Helmut Kohl, refused to abandon this source of carbon-free electricity, declaring climate change to be Germany’s top environmental challenge.

In this way, Kohl forged a political consensus for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. But so far it is renewable energy, not nuclear, that has reaped the benefits. In 1990, the German government passed its path-breaking Electricity Feed-in Law, compelling utilities to buy all the power that renewable sources on their grid could generate—and at premium prices. The Feed-in Law thus set off a wind-power boom.

In 2001 that boom boomeranged on nuclear energy under Kohl’s successor, Gerhard Schröder. His Green Party–Social Democrat coalition cited wind energy as proof that Germany had an alternative to dirty coal and Russian natural gas in replacing nuclear power. Schröder’s government passed legislation to shut down all of the country’s reactors by 2022.

For that to happen, though, offshore wind power would be key. Germans, like most people, love the idea of wind power, but not all of them like the idea of having their landscapes marred by 130-meter-tall wind turbines. What is more, thanks largely to the 1990 law, most of the sites on land best suited to wind generation were already occupied. So installing turbines in their offshore territorial waters seemed like the best way around these obstacles. And because winds are in general stronger offshore than onshore, planting turbines far out in the sea promised twice as many hours of peak generation for each megawatt of installed capacity (assuming that offshore equipment functions reliably over time).

With these virtues in mind, the government passed its Renewable Energy Act in 2000, extending the favorable tariffs to wind farms in Germany’s North Sea and Baltic waters. By 2002—the year in which annual installations on land peaked at 3240 MW—developers had filed 29 proposals for offshore farms that together would have had a generating capacity of 63 GW, which was equal to half of Germany’s entire installed capacity at the time. Germany’s ministry for the environment (its Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit, or BMU) forecast that 500 MW of offshore wind would be operating by 2006 and that an additional 2500 MW would come on line by 2010.

Then the plans crashed headlong into political reality. Almost immediately, conservationists and marine ecologists questioned proposed incursions into near-shore areas where millions of migratory birds breed and feed. The BMU handled that challenge by studying it carefully and then, in 2005, designating permissible zones for wind development that were far from shore and in deep water.

As the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden pressed forward with pioneering wind farms installed in water less than 20 meters deep and within 15 kilometers of the shore, Germany’s maritime authority offered developers 20- to 40¿¿¿meter waters, located for the most part 40 km or more from the coast. That raised the cost and technical risk of German projects. Earlier, the German government had mandated a tariff of at most 9.1 euro cents (13 U.S. cents) per kilowatt-hour for offshore wind-generated electricity, no more than its neighbors were offering, despite the higher costs and risks.

Boosting the tariff to match the challenge faced opposition from the Big Four utilities that dominate Germany’s power sector: E.ON, RWE (formerly called Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk), Swedish power giant Vattenfall, and Électricité de France–owned EnBW (Energie Baden-Württemberg). Saddled with purchasing rising levels of wind power at top rates, these companies were pressing Berlin to scrap the special tariffs being offered.

It was the revival of Kohl’s center-right Christian Democratic Union party under Chancellor Angela Merkel that delivered the concessions needed to kick-start the offshore-wind industry. In 2006 Merkel’s government—a coalition that also included the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Union—made power-grid operators responsible for running cables to offshore farms. That shaved about one-fifth off the average cost of a project. And last year Merkel improved the revenue side of the ledger, boosting the offshore tariff to 0.15/kWh (US $0.21/kWh).

Slow but sure change is, well, in the wind. In a world that’s putting a price on carbon, Germany’s Big Four power giants are warming to the commercial potential of renewable energy. Over the past few years they have bought into offshore wind by acquiring projects from wind developers. Norbert Giese, director of REpower’s offshore business unit, says this shift is critical because most wind developers cannot raise the 1.2 billion (US $1.7 billion) to 1.4 billion (US $2 billion) needed to install a commercial-scale offshore farm.

Turbines have been ordered for more than 900 megawatts’ worth of installations off Germany’s northern coast. Of that, 60 MW will come from E.ON’s 180-million (US $254 million) Alpha Ventus project, a turbine cluster being installed over the next few months 45 km off the North Sea island of Borkum. E.ON will plant six of REpower’s behemoth 5-MW turbines and six more turbines of the same capacity from REpower’s competitor Multibrid in water 28 to 32 meters deep. Sven Utermöhlen, regional director and CEO for E.ON Climate and Renewables Central Europe, calls Alpha Ventus a trial to gain logistical experience with these water depths and offshore distances.

Photo: Christian Charisius /Reuters/Landov

Modeling the Future:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel¿s government has given wind developers a much-needed boost.

They are getting their money’s worth: Unusually rough seas last August scuttled an attempt to put down 700-metric-ton steel tripods on which to erect the first six turbines. No surprise then that E.ON—which operates globally—will focus its offshore investments elsewhere in Europe until at least 2011 or 2012. ”We’d rather proceed sequentially from shore,” Utermöhlen says.

RWE has firm plans to install 30 5-MW turbines in 2011 at the Nordsee I wind farm, its first German offshore project. Many more may follow—RWE took an option with REpower for an additional 220 turbines. But there’s no guarantee. Martin Skiba, offshore-wind director for RWE’s renewable-energy subsidiary, says he’s not sure that 0.15/kWh will cover the cost of expanding Nordsee and other projects in Germany.

Even if these projects get built, offshore wind will generate a lot less energy in 2020 than Germany had hoped for. Just a few years ago, the German Energy Agency (Deutsche Energie-Agentur, or DENA) was projecting 20.4 GW of wind power by 2020, but lately the BMU has cut that forecast to just 10 GW. And even that estimate appears optimistic. ”These 10 gigawatts are not going to be installed by 2020. That’s a fact,” says Emerging Energy Research’s de Vedruna. He puts the figure at 8.4 GW. If every turbine ran full out, they would together deliver less than a quarter of the 149 billion kWh generated by Germany’s nuclear reactors last year.

Germany hopes to make up the offshore shortfall by rejuvenating the onshore market for wind power. Tariff revisions last year added a bonus of half a euro cent per kilowatt-hour for repowering wind farms—swapping in multimegawatt machines in place of older, smaller turbines. That can double or triple output from a wind farm, but only if neighbors consent. That’s a big ”if,” considering that growing resistance to the sight of giant turbines helped to drive Germany’s wind developers offshore in the first place.

What happens when the wind doesn’t blow? Even over the North Sea, the breeze sometimes abates, just as it does frequently enough on land. There was a day in January, for example, when a stalled high-pressure system becalmed many of Germany’s wind turbines, and just 113 MW flowed from the country’s 24 GW of installed capacity. Pushing renewable energy to an ever larger share of power generation means contending with the problem of backing up this fickle source of energy. Here, too, Germany’s ideas are far bolder than its actions.

The challenge is steep. DENA estimates that in 2020 Germany will be able to count on enough renewable generation at any moment to cover just one-eighth of projected peak power demand, even though its wind turbines, photovoltaics, and biomass-fired power plants may constitute more than one-third of installed power capacity.

In the long run, a more robust grid might be able to import enough renewable energy to cover such shortfalls. German analysts have been in the vanguard of modeling the backup benefits of a trans-European supergrid, in which high-voltage DC (HVDC) transmission lines would provide access to the renewable resources available at any given moment across a broad area of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Energy-systems consultant Gregor Czisch, for example, has shown that Europe could meet all its power needs with an HVDC supergrid sharing northern Europe’s offshore wind energy, Scandinavia’s hydropower, and North African solar energy.

The European Union embraced that concept last year. However, the idea of exchanging tens of gigawatts of electric power over thousands of kilometers looks positively hallucinatory given the state of transmission systems in Germany today, where wind-turbine installation has far outpaced expansion of the grid.

At present, weak connections between the regional grids controlled by the Big Four’s transmission subsidiaries hinder the distribution of wind power, heavily concentrated in northern Germany, to the rest of the country. Already, transmission bottlenecks require grid operators to idle some wind farms in especially blustery conditions. A 2005 study by DENA led to a consensus plan for upgrading the grid, designating 850 km of high-tension AC lines to be built to integrate wind power. But a combination of tight credit and community opposition has stalled some of these high-priority projects, frustrating renewable-energy advocates. ”The grid extensions should have started 10 years ago,” says Hermann Albers, president of the German Wind Energy Association.

Czisch, meanwhile, complains that Germany isn’t facing the future and building the HVDC cables required to provide a backup supply of renewable power from elsewhere. The root problem, says Czisch, is the Big Four, whose power plants face greater competition with every megawatt of added transmission. ”There must be an independent state-owned organization that can calculate what the grids should look like in the future,” he says.

The good news here is that pressure from European Union competition authorities forced the Big Four to put their transmission subsidiaries up for sale. The bad news is that until these assets are sold, those companies have even less incentive to invest in better transmission lines.

At the moment, however, DENA has more pressing priorities. One of them is dealing with the spreading opposition in Germany to coal-fired power, which has caused a handful of projects to be stalled, blocked, or dropped. Last year DENA determined that cancellation of coal projects could leave Germany without sufficient conventional energy capacity to back up its wind and solar power. This ”power gap,” says DENA’s CEO, Stephan Kohler, could reach 12 GW by 2020.

The gap could even be wider, says Kohler, if energy-efficiency gains slide. For example, the DENA’s analysis assumes that Germany will reduce power demand by 8 percent by 2020. ”This is a realistic scenario,” says Kohler. But then again, ”last year power demand increased 0.9 percent,” he concedes. ”That’s not good.”

Climate activists call Kohler’s position disingenuous. For one thing, the construction of new coal plants directly contradicts the government’s energy-efficiency plans, because only a few facilities will capture their waste heat for district heating. A climate scorecard of G8 countries prepared last year by environmental consultancy Ecofys concluded that the build-out of coal-fired plants would ”lock Germany into a high level of carbon intensiveness for the next 40 years.”

Two years ago Germany vowed that by 2020 it would cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 percent from its 1990 level, inspiring its European Union partners to agree to a combined reduction of 20 to 30 percent if other countries, such as the United States, contribute their share. But Ecofys, confirming most other analyses, concluded that an increased reliance on coal and an emissions-heavy automotive sector meant that Germany was ”lagging behind its aspirations.”

In 2006 Merkel’s government made power-grid operators responsible for running cables to off shore farms

The only hope for neutralizing the greenhouse impact of the coal surge—carbon sequestration—is at least a decade away from implementation. Companies such as Vattenfall are engineering new technologies to reduce the punishing costs of capturing and storing CO2 , but they know they will have to convince the same communities that reject wind turbines and power lines in their backyards to accept the presence of CO2 underneath them.

Postponing the nuclear phaseout would take the steam out of Germany’s coal surge and erase DENA’s projected power gap. Many expect Chancellor Merkel to do just that if her Christian Democratic Union party wins a majority in federal elections this fall. It would be a bitter pill for German antinuclear activists. But most of their fellow citizens seem ready to compromise.

The German Physical Society, a scientific body that has been preoccupied with the dangers of climate change since the early 1980s, has pleaded for continued use of nuclear energy. In 2005, the society assessed Germany’s energy options and calculated that only a nuclear extension would enable it to meet its 2020 goals for CO2 reduction. The society predicted then, correctly, that the supply of offshore wind energy would fall well short of the government’s projections. It concludes in its report (and has repeatedly confirmed) that no other measure even comes close to making up for the increased carbon emissions from coal that the nuclear phaseout would stimulate: ”Whilst originally we had hoped to have sufficient leeway to compensate for the loss of CO2 -free electricity derived from nuclear power, today we are forced to realize that such an equation will not balance out.”

”I think I could live with that,” agrees Brunsbüttel-area resident Stephan Klose when asked about keeping nuclear alive. Klose lives 12 km south of Brunsbüttel’s cutting-edge wind turbines, its proposed coal-fired power plants, and its 33-year-old nuclear reactor, which has two more years of operation left before its scheduled shutdown. He likes renewable energy and fiercely opposes more reliance on coal.

Shutting down reactors, reasons Klose, will not resolve challenges posed by nuclear power, such as the long-term management of spent fuel rods. ”We have the nuclear waste anyhow,” says Klose. But last year he joined a local group working against coal, because he believes that coal-fired generators in Brunsbüttel will pollute the area with mercury and contribute to global climate change. The climate concern has a particular resonance in this marshy region where sinking dikes stand between communities and the swiftly rising sea levels that these people fear.

As for carbon capture and storage neutralizing the climate risk, Klose says no way, raising the specter of sequestered CO2 escaping to the surface and causing mass asphyxiation. ”If there’s a leak and you have a 1- to 2-meter-high level of CO2 , every animal, every human being within this zone will die,” says Klose. ”I think you can’t take that risk.”

About the Author

Peter Fairley, a contributing editor, writes about energy for Spectrum. When he started research for ”Germany’s Green-Energy Gap”, he anticipated that the nation’s efforts to replace coal- and nuclear-fueled electricity with power from offshore wind turbines might provide a road map for other countries. He discovered, though, that Germany’s green-energy push has stalled. His article reveals why. Fairley also writes about a strategy to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants by mixing biomass with coal, in ”King Coal Eats Its Vegetables” .






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Rod Adams 08.18.2009
Wonderful article. I hope that readers take in all of the facts and then ask the question that is just begging to be asked - WHY is this seemingly illogical behavior happening in a country that prides itself on logic and engineering expertise? It is no secret of thermodynamics that the more diffuse an energy source is, the large the collector must be in order to gather and concentrate that energy into something that can do useful work. The wind and the sun contain diffuse and unreliable energy sources. Building collectors to gather them up to produce electricity, a fine, concentrated form of energy that can do all kinds of useful work, is just plain EXPENSIVE. In contrast, Germany used to be one of the leaders in building machines designed to turn highly concentrated heat from fission into a reliable stream of low cost electricity. The machines may LOOK big, but they also produce vast quantities of power and tiny amounts of used material. Shutting down well-built, well-operated nuclear plants that still have decades worth of life in them is just plain dumb. That is, unless the goal is to build more stuff, and/or to buy and burn more fossil fuels. Siemens, REpower, Vestas and dozens of other suppliers are making money directly from the renewable investments, while GAZPROM and others stand to make a far greater amount of money by selling the fossil fuel that will inevitably be needed to fill in the gaps that wind and solar power will never be able to fill. No wonder Schroeder, one of the most selfish and greedy national leaders since Henry VIII, immediately received a large bonus and a great job from GAZPROM after he left office. Does anyone really believe that the job offer was not already in play when he negotiated the deal to shut down Germany's 17 large nuclear power stations and vastly increase the demand for Russian natural gas? Would there be any real need for the Nord Stream pipeline that he is in charge of selling if Siemens was building EPR's with its former partner Areva instead of building wind turbines? Rod Adams Publisher, Atomic Insights Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast.
Sepp 08.11.2009
Pourly investigated article. Problems of Germanys offshore-wind-parks are mainly, because Germanys coast is protected (the Wattenmeer), so you have to build much more far away. The most important act for energy was the Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz of 1999 or 2000. The one of cancellor Kohl was nothing with premium prices, but the RIGHT to feed in your energy into the grid. The premium prices were in the law of 1999 or 2000. The aim of 25 percent in 2020 renewable energy exists since two or three years, before that, the aim was 12,5 percent. In 2006 the share was 11,3 percent in 2008 it was 15,1 percent. (source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen.de/componenten/download.php?filedata=1235122659.pdf&filename=AGEB_Jahresbericht2008_20090220.pdf&mimetype=application/pdf page 22) Its correct, that offshore wind is not important and will maybe never be in Germany, but offshore wind is not needed to reach the 25 percent goal. @Klaus Huber: the share of nuclear power is around 20 to 25 percent of electricy, but only 6 percent in primary energy..
Klaus Huber 07.31.2009
When I have a flight across Germany - e.g. to Berlin in the very East - I am amazed about the high number of wind turbines I can see from above. And locally I can see some on the hights of the Black Forest here. The article quotes Germany's installed wind energy power being 24 GW, second only to the US with 25 GW. Not bad for a country 26 times smaller in size. Wind energy trials in "industrial scale" had been started early in Germany, with the GROWIAN facility, built 1983, (3 MW, 100 m rotor) for a few years the largest such wind turbine worldwide, but with more maintenance than operation time not a large success and given up after four years. The German Electricity Feed-in Law is "compelling utilities to buy all the power that renewable sources on their grid could generate - and at premium prices". Yes, this "set off a wind-power boom". But if I hear the word Feed-in Law today, it's rather photovoltaics that comes to my mind. I quote from an article in IEEE spectrum 08/2008, top of page 25: "Right now, First Solar depends mainly on a government-subsidized program in Germany, where it has contracts worth more than $6 billion through 2012". The price you get for feeding in is 43 euro cents per kWh (60 US cents), guaranteed for the next 20 years. And I can see such recently installed solar cells everywhere around here (I live in a community of 3000 inhabitants). On familiy houses but also larger ones of a few hundred square meters on barns, industrial halls etc. Photovoltaics is maintenance free. 6 billion in order books looks good, doesn't it? I was surprised that as eye catcher on page 1 there is a "green energy gap" in Germany claimed. (The article then states "No country has pushed renewable energy harder than Germany has" - so what?). The answer may be that the sources quoted are from wind energy industry lobbying societies and thus this focusing on "offshore" (sure, Denmark has more offshore capacity installed than Germany. So what?). This was an opportunity for them to publish their peculiar concerns (pushing offshore facilities further outside the coast into deeper water, power grid operators have to run the cables to offshore wind farms). While I think generalizing judgement about Germany's green energy progress should not be based on such peculiar industry interests. Photovoltaics took off much stronger than expected, the programs in that respect have been extended and I think a concentration to "offshore" wind energy as quoted from early (historic) papers doesn't serve the issue well. That the article reports "a quarter" of Germany's electricity being produced in nuclear power plants is a figure so high I do not believe. The figure I have is 6 %. I was smiling when I read about the 9 US cents a reader from Chicago has to pay. As another reader correctly notes, in Germany the consumer price is about 21 euro cents per kWh (about 29 US cents), also for me. But I do not see this as a consequence of "satisfying someone's political agenda" (quoted from another reader's comment). But rather of the four dominating electricity giants which have been correclty listed in the article. If someone's interested how "price finding" in California once took place, watch the "ENRON" film by Alex Gibney. .
Alena Horsky-Gust 07.22.2009
Let's hope that the information you presented in this article is closer to reality than the map.... Austria has not shared border with Poland for some 90 years.... .
John Husher 07.22.2009
My book "Crises of the 21st Century" written in 2008 and now in print; brings this all forth about the German strategy and how it won't work. This book covers all the renewable energy and what each country can bring to the party. John Husher.
Geography Teacher from Austria 07.20.2009
Hi, this is a really good article which points out the important stuff of the subject. But, could you please review your map ?! You know, the Austria - Czech Republic thingy ;-).
Robert 07.16.2009
Really very nice article, I have enjoyed it... but next time please check something like google maps before naming the countries on a self-made-map ;).
Robert 07.16.2009
Really very nice article, I have enjoyed it... but next time please check something like google maps before naming the countries on a self-made-map ;).
HENRI B 07.12.2009
To Stig Nilsson : Yes. The answer is amazingly good, on the order of the year, not of 10 years. This source url is in french, the blog's author (Hirlimann) is a french scientist now heavily involved into EU science advising policy. Any new from an equivalent calculation in english would be welcome. Or plain translation if someone desires so http://www.hirlimann.net/Charles/journal/2007/06/beton_et_eoliennes.html This positive estimate does not mean that wind power is such a good source. Tidal is more predictable. And I wonder why geothermal is not more considered (the source of earth heat is potassium 40 radiactove slow disintegration, billions of year ! Is it so complex to make wells at 3 km below crust and practice heat exchange ? You then get the heat and not the CO2...).
siddhahast 07.11.2009
An exorbitant investment in empowering renewable energy is call of the hour. earlier no country pushed for this proposal since power generation though fossil fuel was cheaper,but as the conventional fossil fuels are running short from mother earth so its high time for all to think about the alternative sources of energy,not only to become energy sufficient or power efficient but to save ourselves from the future darkness. the sudden climatic change that occured in my region this year has been like a severe warning for all of us to think and put our mind in to the very cause..
Majid Farmad 07.11.2009
Hi.
Soylent 07.10.2009
If you're anti-nuclear, you're pro-coal. If you're pro-wind, you're pro-gas; is there any wonder a certain Gerhard Schröder buggered off to join Russian gas giant Gazprom?.
David M. Clemen 07.10.2009
Anthony A rather long statement, but I think most electrical power engineers are also asking, to quote you "...to wisely implement and locate renewable energy provision whilst encouraging us to dramatically cut down on waste...". I believe that a number of the below comments have said, in summary, that we are presently charging into massive windpower installations without considering the consequences to the grid, or the cost of power. This is a most "unwise" policy. I agree that windpower is a renewable, zero emission energy source. I do not agree in blindly supporting windpower installations if the associated transmission line upgrades, energy storage facilities, and back-up generation are not included with the windpower installations. And I especially want to know the "total" cost per Kwhr of the wind installations, including the cost of the transmission lines and energy storage facilities..
allen 07.10.2009
Wind in not only unreliable it is variable. Trying to add this electricity source to the grid is an inefficient, costly, engineering nightmare. The German problem manifests the idiocy of this energy source. The US will learn this as Germany has. .
Laurie Wong 07.10.2009
If the sun energy is going to drop by 5%(Paul, 07.09.2009), it would imply that the global warming impact can also be mitigated. It allows us thinking solutions to have global grid of solar PV connected together. The way enables solar energy to home 24 hours a day and energy security. Solar PV so far is mechanically more reliable than wind turbines. Technology breakthrough is required to improve power conversion efficiency from solar to electric in the coming days. .
John 07.09.2009
What a shame that those poor Germans have to pay such a huge tariff just to satisfy someone's political agenda. It is no wonder that more sensible heads have delayed these money-wasting turbines..
Mark Strauch 07.09.2009
A very nicely done article on a topic that usually has enormous "spin." At the end of the day, reality takes over..
Carlos E. Rangel 07.09.2009
This article dwells on Germany's difficulties to increase its installed renewable energy capacity; but, as president Barack Obama said on April 22, 2009, "The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy, it's a choice between prosperity and decline," and I think that this applies not only to the U.S., but to the whole world, "regardless of costs." The hard truth is that, if there are any "gaps" anywhere, we are responsible for them, specially the industrialized countries; and we have to overcome any problems that we may encounter in order to drastically reduce the consumption of coal and oil if we want to save ourselves from world catastrophe. I think that this article would have been much more balanced and positive if it had included an analysis of the eolic power industries in Denmark and Spain, where the wind power's share of the electric demand, and the installed wind capacity per inhabitant are higher than in Germany. .
Anthony 07.09.2009
"Renewable energy" is the ubject of manipulation as the politics of it are profound. It doesn't matter at the end of the day or even tomorrow whether global warming is man made or not. The rape of the planet for fossil fuel seems to me to be the avaricious debauchery of an hierarchy desperate to maintain its lifestype and power irrspective of the results to those of "lesser" elevation. The efforts at staggering expense to find other planets to rape and populate and use to militarise "outer space" into what will truly become "star wars" will not be so essential, if at all, when and if our throw away and fossil fuel driven concept of capitalism is dramatically reduced. Certainly the new world order, openly acknowledged now by Gordon Brown, has shown its hand clearly in enslaving people in the disposing of public assets since 1980 and encouraging or at the present, enforcing peoples in debt so as to subdue them. This long term enslavement through debt is happening now, the "major catastrophe" Bilderberger's Rockefeller is publicly recorded as saying to be essential to the acceleration of the New Order into power as was organised post WW11. Long ago now worldwide Central Banking system owner Bauer said that all debt should be created through government as repayments were guaranteed by taxing the people. War has been avery profitable business for example when the same entity lends to all combatants. He then stated his mission was to control government policy through controlling the supply of money. This has been achieved now. We the people cannot easily fight these political malfeasances which affect our renewabl energy and ability to survive in peace harmony health and happiness but we can fight to demand that three things are implemented; the first is the expanding installations of wind and tidal power, solar being relatively ineffective, but at some reasonable prices...a large sum of money stated as being misappropriated by a party in executive management in one of my Vesta reports indicated that the company was not terribly concerned. Such approach indicates massive profits and that indicates massive overcharging. The second is to ensure the power remains in the hands of the people, that any private influence cannot withold grid power, that citizens committees hold the ownership of the power generated by our environment, that no individual or entity which is not represented by the people can own or control the environment and its resources. The third is that preparation be made for the changes to our societies to make a better life than we have had under the industrial revolution and its division of classes into the extremely privileged who are paid more in 3 months or less than most are paid in their lifetimes. The beautification of areas, the changes in diet to stop raping the seas, the reducing of the emphasis on livestock particularly in concentrated grain feeding conglomerates and other unhealthy aspects including sole rights in concentrated genetic engineering instead of solving environmental aspects which "demand" dna alterations and such stock concentrations also as in fish farms. Altering the vastly disproportionate distribution of wealth will profoundly assist in reducing the expansion of the population and give better lives to those ordinary peoples, the vast bulk of the planet who are controlled by less than 10,000 and their military who populate the planet. Germany is one country well involved in the Bilderberger movement and its working with renewable energy will always be a trade off between its power base and the satisfying of the people.The writing is on the wal after less than 200 years of industrial devestation which has elevated us to a point of largely not knowing what is being done, not being done, by whom and in whose interests. One thing is certain, that the massacres and atrocities of people by powerful nations show clearly, and are intended to show, that the new World Order has no interest in the organisms of the people, such as the UN was purported to be so long ago. I say that the implementation of renewable energy can be the greatest benefit to the planet since the views of Jesus were expounded to offer us a new view of our social obligations and conscience.I say that renewable energy will itself introduce changes to our climate and air and sea currents but that at least they can be controlled without poisoning us. I say that we should as citizens ask Germany, yes certainly, but all of our nations to wisely implement and locate renewable energy provision whilst encouraging us to cut down dramitically on waste, particularly commercial waste. Encouraging people to return to personal entertainments instead of watching TV, spending long term on computers and that myriad of uses of electricity we have been bred into and encouraged to engage-in but without engaging in war for entertainment can be much better organised when the delerious searching and producton of fossil fuels dies right away.No longer will oil driven wars be embarked upon, no longer will governments seek to feather their nests by invading the middle east or supporting atrocities there by the NWO. The massive radioactive, poisons and other atmospheric pollutions as well as dormant weapons being laid for indiscriminate killing as has been done in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine in particular, in our time, our lifetimes, not in that of someone else we can blame, must also be halted and the military sent to clean up what is already causing horrific maiming and death but also in birth defects of appalling nature, Mighty changes for the better depend upon the implementation of renewable energy, whether one thinks it is needed of not. Let's stop talking about it, arguing for political purpose or to prove ourselves smarter than the next person, or to cling to some power situation and just do it, as we do reforming society into greater wisdom and freedom and satisfaction and equitable distribution of all resources and advantages..
Stig Nilsson 07.09.2009
Has anyone calculated the amount of CO2 generated to supply the hundreds of tones of material per MW of wind turbines? .
Paul 07.09.2009
Wind power is just that. Power driven by the trivialities of the changing winds. Controllable power sources are required to ensure the safety and well being of a society. And solar energy estimates are based on 1950-1960 studies. Since, the sun is moving into a cooler period, the expected solar energy falling upon earth will drop by 5%. This alone will make solar cells almost unusable. The automation of gov't approval for any power plant would reduce real cost by 20% --- A true money savings. .
Mark McCloy 07.08.2009
Refreshing journalistic integrity shining on a subject that sorely needs it..
P. Gavrilovic 07.05.2009
the map on page 43 is incorrect -- Austria does not share a border with Poland as shown in the map. I believe that the country border shown as Austria should actually be labeled "Czech Republic". It is amusing that in the era of Google Earth such mistakes slip through....I guess Central/Eastern Europe is still mystery-land for many..
David M. Clemen 07.04.2009
Nice article, but it should have identified the following: 1. Cost/Kwhr in Germany (very green) vs. U.S. Germans pay approx. 21 cents/Kwhr (Denmark - 4 GW of wind power pays 29 cents/Kwhr) I pay 9 cents/Kwhr to Exelon in Chicago. This tells me that the EU countries went overboard on their tariffs to implement wind energy. 2. Capacity Factor The average European capacity factor from wind generators is less than 20% (14.7% for Germany to 24% for the U.K.) The low capacity factor drives up the price of power. 3. Network Limitations Installing massive amounts of Wind Energy should not be attempted until you have either an energy storage system that can handle it, or a transmission system that has been upgraded to handle it. Installing large amounts of wind energy first is just asking for trouble, and high electricity rates. 4. Benefits/Disadvantages of Wind Wind is a renewable, zero emission source of energy, but it has the following problems: Low efficiency Low capacity factor High Maintenance costs Short Lifetime Migratory Bird/Bat Kill Aesthetics Noise generation If you can address all the aforementioned in a logical fashion (including the energy storage & transmission lines), wind generators can be very beneficial. If you blindly charge in building more wind generation than your network can handle, you only complicate the existing network problems; and produce "very" expensive energy. .
Neville Black 07.04.2009
On page 43, "Germany's Wind-Energy Realitaet", the bar graph "EXPECTED ENERGY YIELDS" shows a value of 27 "Millions kWh/year". This is ludicrous. 27 thousand Megawatt Hours per year works out to an average power production of about 3 Megawatts. .