Energiewende : Our dear German friends are starting to seriously break our balls(3)

Wind power in serious crisis in Germany- failure and dull for Energiewende

A pillar of Germany's energy transition, wind power is plunging investment and facing growing hostility from local residents, prompting Angela Merkel's government to hold a crisis meeting on Thursday.  After years of increasing capacity, the sector now accounts for one-fifth of Germany's electricity production, but suffers a crisis open to social and political ramifications.

The number of new turbines installed in Germany since the beginning of the year is down 82% year-on-year, according to the German Industry Federation (EBW). In 2018, Germany implemented an additional production capacity of less than half that of 2017. Tenders for new production capacity are not finding a buyer, a trend deemed "worrying" by the federal network agency.

The reversal occurred in 2016, when the government, deeming the sector mature and subsidies too heavy for the taxpayer, changed its aid. The amendment to the German Energy Law (EEG) abolished guaranteed income, and encouraged competition through tenders. It must be said that, before the adoption of the Renewable Energy Act in 2000, wind turbine operators have benefited from support ensuring them twenty years of guaranteed income...

Comment: very curious these so-called super competitive energies that collapse as soon as they are no longer massively subsidized!

Among the big missing in the sector is Senvion, a 4,400-employee company based near Hamburg, which announced at the end of August that it was shutting down, hit hard by the collapse of the German market in 2016, which accounted for 60% of its income. There had already been the bankruptcy in 2014 of the wind turbine manufacturer Prokon, which was financed by "citizen participation". This company had the distinction of having been financed by 75,000 small private investors. It had enticed them with an investment presented as "ethical" and accompanied by high interest rates (from 6% to 8%). This bankruptcy filing resulted in very large losses for many small savers and prompted the German government to ask the financial market authorities (Bafin) for stricter control of this type of investment.

In the months that followed, 26,000 jobs were cut in this sector in Germany, more than in coal, according to figures recently published by the Bundestag at the request of the left-wing Die Linke party

Comment: 1) It is not only in France that the crooks of wind power are rampant. 2) These massive job creations that the proponents of wind power promise us, they fail to say how fragile they are and... essentially unsustainable because they are related to massive subventions . Nothing compared with jobs in nuclear power plant !

The wind crisis "calls into question the success of the energy transition in Germany (???)," Hermann Albers, president of the German Wind Energy Federation (BWE), said in an interview with AFP. Germany plans to close its last nuclear power plant in 2022… and get rid of the highly polluting coal only  by 2038 ! Renewable energy, led by wind and solar, must continue to increase their power to account for 65% of electricity production in 2030, up from 40% today..

Comment: 1) Oh, damned crook !! There is no success of the energy transition in Germany, there is a massive and catastrophic failure, a total ecological and economic failure. Despite its 29,000 wind turbines, despite total support for renewable energy in Germany which reached 680 billion euros, Germany has not reduced its carbon emissions by one iota (yes, intermittent wind ("fatal"), must be compensated to the MW by pilotable production (gas or worse coal). In the first case, we have dependence on Russia in addition, in the second, pollution. Germany does not reduce its CO2 emissions per capita, which are still one third higher than those of France, yet German pay 70% more for their electricity than in France..

2) Replacing nuclear power with wind power is increasing greenhouse gas emissions, not reducing them!! The decision to exit coal very, very late is in these conditions perhaps an economic necessity for Germany, but a double ecological crime, for the fight against climate change, and for pollution, of which incidentally a part is shortening the lives of the French. Thank you for the climate, thank you for the pollution.

So it is not wind power that should continue to be subsidized, but the whole Energiewende that is to be thrown away!

Other problems for wind power: obsolescence, unmanageable peaks of production, nuisances

Especially since wind power has other problems. First of all, Germany will have to (yes already!) dismantle more than 5,000 old wind turbines that are difficult to recycle - the life of a wind turbine is not that of a nuclear power plant! And it is likely that the peasants who welcomed them to their fields will remain with their 20-meter block of concrete buried in their land. Then, for a decentralized production like wind turbines, the costs in terms of connection are very important and several thousand wind turbines are not even connected!

And then, the fact that.., little or no , all wind turbines in Europe, in any case in Northern Europe, turn at the same time, with the arrival of transatlantic disturbances, producing then in abundance an electricity ... that no one needs and is worthless.

However, due to the inadequacy of the German very high voltage network (THT) to transport wind power from the north to the consumption centres of the south, this wind power from the north of the country must use the Polish networks and Czech Republic, thus exporting the intermittent energy overflow; in 2011, this situation almost led to the saturation of the Czech electricity grid, triggering a real tension between the two countries.  To avoid the risk of a "blackout", the Czech Republic has warned that it is considering being able to block any new influx of renewable electricity that could run the risk to cause a breakdown in its network; to do this, the Czech network operator has decided to build a giant transformer near the border, designed to let in only the amount of power that the national network can handle; This transformer is due to enter service by 2017; Poland intends to do the same and install transformers on the border with Germany; the German government has appointed an ambassador in charge of this one file.

And again, the nuisances; and therefore the proliferation of complaints that greatly lengthen the deadlines and increase the price of projects, complain the crooks of wind power. These complaints most often come from conservationists and birds, or from local residents who wish to establish a minimum distance from homes in order to avoid nuisance. "Protecting our landscapes, people and animals": the AfD has made the fight against wind power one of its main campaign themes in regional elections. (Remember that in the Netherlands, the tension is such that the authorities have classified environmental movements hostile to wind turbines as terrorists). More than 600 citizen initiatives have flourished against new wind turbine installations and in the East

What solutions ?

Well, for the German authorities, it seems that it is to give in to the demands of the wind crooks: “to reduce regulatory constraints, and in particular the distances imposed on wind turbines compared to homes; Restore the income guarantee for wind farms and facilitate the installations by relieving legal constraints. The authorities will have to work to strengthen the acceptance of wind turbines by citizens..”

..

Well, let's see! By sending them green brigades?

Germany is sinking into the irrational and this is very worrying!  Its absurd Energiewende is a climate crime, a crime against humanity, a specialty in which Germany once had some special skills. 

Here, by the way, to fix the ideas, with 680 billion euros thrown in the wind production, Germany could have built 68 nuclear power plants of Olkiluoto-3 type (EPR). Well, for fun, because in fact a dozen would have been enough to provide them with abundant, economical, non-polluting and decarbonized electricity. Ecological and economic. For 70 years!