Renewable energy problems in Germany (Scott Bean) USofA

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Renewables, Germany, and What the Headlines Exclude Scott Bean November 3, 2017 Yet another article was recently published about how Germany on a random day did or will produce gobs of cheap and/or negatively priced renewable energy, with the usual wave of greens praising the news as, among other things, the way to fight climate change. Given the confidence many have that renewables are the all-inclusive answer to our climate and energy problems, it is worth examining how negatively priced, intermittent renewable energy affects consumers, grid economics and stability, and how effective they really are at mitigating climate change. After all, the ultimate objective is to reduce GHG emissions as much and as quickly as possible while ensuring economic growth and prosperity, not to install infinite capacities of one source of energy over another without regard for the end objective.

Negative Prices Germany has now installed more solar and wind capacity than it requires, even at peak times of electricity consumption. Thus, under conditions ideal for wind and solar, there is a surplus of output that German grid administrators are forced to dump onto other countries at prices so low that they can be negative, thus defying any and all competition and drastically disrupting the electricity market. Thanks to feed-in tariffs and regulations, however, renewables producers are guaranteed that whatever output they have will be duly remunerated (as a rule at above-market prices), so they could not care less who is paying them for their output as long as they get paid.

Since there is no such thing as a free lunch, it is German citizens and small businesses who end up footing the immense bill. Case in point, household electricity costs in Germany hit a record 291.6 â‚Ź/MWh in 2017, easily the highest in Europe. Given the desire to fund the Energiewende and protect energy-intensive industries from the costs, consumers and small businesses are slapped with over 55% in tariffs. As a result, there is an ever-widening gap between the final sale price and production cost of electricity, creating the false and dangerous conviction amongst many that not only are renewables inexpensive, but also that very low, at times negative, prices are unequivocally a good thing for everyone no matter the circumstances.

Output

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The intermittent, large output from solar and wind often gets a lot of attention. People see the big numbers, how much consumption is theoretically covered, and ultimately assume that renewables are the answer. It is this intermittent output, however, that is at the root of why renewables can never be relied upon for providing a significant portion of our energy, let alone 100% of it, as people such as Mark Jacobson of Stanford contend, with a lawsuit waiting for you, should you dispute the viability of their findings.

Taking into account that renewables' output fluctuates heavily, their performance can range from nothing to full blast. Since output always has to be kept in close harmony with demand, the highly intermittent nature of renewables requires that just as much manageable baseload capacity is available, and this is almost always done so with natural gas or coal.

Germany is no exception to this rule: it has just as much baseload capacity as renewables, with lignite coal (the dirtiest type) being the overwhelming choice to fill this role. If Germany were to not have at least an equal amount of baseload to renewables, then the country's grid would be prone to chronic blackouts, crippling their economy and putting countless lives in danger.

Moreover, equal baseload to renewables capacity entails having to double necessary grid capacity (Germany has 202 GW of installed capacity to satisfy roughly 84 GW of peak demand), and thus to deal with the concomitant economic, social, and environmental costs.

Storage Renewables advocates, when addressing the intermittency issues (which in and of itself is a rarity), often resort to statements about energy storage, how much it has progressed, and the breakthroughs that are in store. When being realistic, however, with the exception of pumped storage hydroelectricity, no mature, affordable, and industrial-scale storage technology is available now nor will be in the foreseeable decades.

In Germany's case, pumped storage hydroelectricity represents far and away the biggest and most efficient (70% to 80%) method for energy storage in the country. Its capacity, however, is only roughly 7 to 11 GW for demand that surpasses 80 GW at peak times. Given pumped storage hydroelectricity's extensive resource needs and geographical constraints, it is not a viable option for being relied upon for backing up industrial-scale grids in full, such as in Germany and other energy-hungry countries. Therefore, on the whole, majority-renewables policies anchored in hopes for future developments in energy storage sufficient enough to support entire grids are simply irresponsible.

Climate Change Unless there is an instantaneous, worldwide effort to backup renewables capacity with just as much GHG-free nuclear energy, renewables will, in the best-case scenario, have little, if any, positive effect on mitigating climate change, despite the billions of dollars invested in them annually (government financial support just for electricity from renewables in Germany in 2016 cost taxpayers some 24 billion euros, and is estimated to total 520 billion euros from 2000 to 2025). In the worst-case scenario, and what is also already proving to be true, renewables will worsen our plight by perpetuating the world's growing dependence on coal and natural gas for 2

baseload needs, the latter consisting mainly of methane, which is some 25 times more potent in trapping heat than CO2. Moreover, although natural gas contains less CO2 compared to coal (approximately 117 pounds of CO2 per MMBtu vs. greater than 200 pounds for coal), claims of it being "clean burning" and "a bridge in the energy transition to renewables" are malarkey: natural gas emits scores of harmful GHG, methane being the main culprit, while renewables can never exist on their own given their intermittent nature and the lack of a realistic storage/deployment solution.

In fact, the worst-case scenario has been gaining steam, with natural gas increasing in dominance on the U.S. market thanks to its low price and the misguided yet popular concept of it being "clean" and part of "responsible energy development". Meanwhile, lignite coal in Germany, cheaper than natural gas, is rising in capacity to stabilize the grid and offset the pointless, politically charged shutdown of nuclear power plants. This is especially worrisome, as nuclear represented some 30% of Germany's electricity production in 2000, while now it is at 14%. As Germany continues to pursue its anti-nuclear policies toward shutting down all nuclear plants by 2022, it will lose that remaining 14% of its GHG-free output, something that renewables will not even come close to replacing.

Conclusion Germany's energy policies, and those of countries for that matter, often get good press highlighting fleeting moments of significant output, negative prices, capacity installation, and more. Rarely, however, does news coverage add context to these stories that allows us to comprehend what the consequences of these events are for consumers, the grid, the environment, the economy, and Earth as a whole. In other words, these stories rarely address how renewables perform in achieving a rapid and significant reduction in GHG. If politicians, decision-makers, environmentalists, and others truly care about achieving the end objective of fighting climate change, then they must discard renewables/anti-nuclear ideology and focus on solutions that allow to reduce GHG emissions as much and as quickly as humanly possible while ensuring economic growth and prosperity as many people as possible. Often used as the cornerstone for arguments in favor of majority-renewables electricity grids, the obvious and numerous economic and environmental drawbacks of Germany's Energiewende must be widely recognized and taken into account by policymakers and business in order for real progress on climate change to be made worldwide.

Sources: 1. Layer, Hartmut et al. "Bilan d'étape de la transition énergétique allemande", Revue générale nucléaire 1 (janvier-février 2017) : 56-60.

2. Grisey, Nathalie et al. "e-Highway2050: préparer le réseau européen à un mix énergétique décarboné", Revue générale nucléaire 1 (janvier-février 2017) : 1922.

3. Percebois, Jacques. "Les contraintes d'une électricité renouvelable variable sur la gestion du mix électrique", Revue générale nucléaire 1 (janvier-février 2017) : 1418.

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4. Feutry, Stéphane. "Production renouvelable et nucléaire : deux énergies complémentaires", Revue générale nucléaire 1 (janvier-février 2017) : 23-28.

5. Keppler, Jan Horst et al. "Compétitivité des systèmes de production d'électricité au sein des réseaux : application au nucléaire et aux énergies renouvelables variables", Revue générale nucléaire 1 (janvier-février 2017) : 29-33.

Wind energy in Germany

Nuclear Power in Switzerland 4