Subsidizing inefficient power seems like a really bad idea; in the long run, no one is going to keep paying for that. The minute things get tight, that will be the first thing cut.
What they should be subsidizing is how to do it better. Subsidizing research is good. Even better is X-prizes: Reward actual progress. Offer a billion dollars, tax-free, to the first company that can store ___ Joules within a volume of ___ cubic meters, discharge it and recharge it ___ times in a week. Experts can figure out the conditions, I am not an expert. It costs you nothing - nothing - unless someone succeeds.
5 X-Prizes like that would do far more to foster innovation than anything else I can imagine. And once they succeed, you won't need to subsidize it at all.
What did you think when you read 200.000 power outages in the paper? The author did not give a context. Did you think: a lot? Worse than before? Worse or better in comparison to France? Very good? Second best in recent German history? Much better than in 2006?
"The government intends to have one million battery-powered cars on German roads by 2020, but experts view that goal as unrealistic."
Don't you think the headline derives directly from the quote from Mr Umbach: 'He 'is not sure that the transformation will come off as soon as planned. But he is convinced that Germany is the right country to try the great experiment. “If it fails it will be bad for Germany,” he says. “But if it succeeds the whole world will profit.”
Umbach - who exudes optimism in contrast to other interviewees - thinks it is possible that the energy transition will fail.
that is a good explanation. I see my mistake: gamble does not mean to play an irresponsible game, but can mean: uncertain end, risks.
Yes, seeing this in this way, the headline works because the wide spread usage of renewable energy in a huge industrial nation is an ambitious plan. While all information in article are well known, the article is a nice summary. Personally, I liked the concise definition of the EEG (the difference) and I disliked the part about network failures.
"Meanwhile, European consumers are facing up to the reality that their political leaders have already squandered more than €200-billion ($277-billion) on completely inane and ineffective climate policies. A new report by Swiss bank UBS reveals that the EU’s emissions-trading scheme has cost European consumers €210-billion for “almost zero impact” on cutting CO2 emissions"
Well then, let's have another look at BAU scenarios, at the scientific basis of 2° targets and the urgency of a "Great Transformation".
The black slope shows a rather general residual load duration curve for a renewable scenario - t.i. how many hours of a year (x) we would have surplus power (y positive) or insufficient power (y negative):
Peak surplus can be as high as three times the average load (which is around 60GW for Germany). Peak deficiency can be as low as 1.2 times the average load.
In this situation what must be achieved is storing the green area (area: power x time = energy) and releasing it so to fill the blue area. Then (at least most of the year's time) the residual load will equal zero ... meaning production and demand are in balance.
Limitations of both grid enforcement and storage are rather obvious to see. First we would need storage power around 180GW or else the energy marked orange would go waste. However such high capacity would only be used to the full some few hours in a year.
Investment and maintenance costs for storage and transmission power as huge as this thus would be prohibitive per kWh.
I like this article, because there are so many different paths and ideas mentioned, and it is obvious that there are many more not yet mentioned. We can see that the Energiewende is framed in a pretty narrow discourse; it's almost all about costs and planning problems. No reason to negate those aspects, of course, but the Energiewende is as much a cultural and a political project. For about 40 years, people in Germany pushed for such an Energiewende, very often against the government. Many so-called economically disadvantaged regions make a good deal with it, which is true for Southern Europe, too. It's also a growing industry.
Energy supply is always political and full of risks. Just look at the political history of nuclear or fossil fuels - high monetary, environmental, political and cultural costs involved. Wars, revolts, dependencies from unstable partners - all fueled by those energies. Thus, the Energiewende reminds us that energy supply is a deeply risky, political and often time messy project. In times of change, the political aspects come to light. The Energiewende is also one about democracy and geo-political shifts in the 21st century, and there is no King's way how to answer this question. We are in the middle of it.
What made me wonder was Roger Pielke's statement, who connects the Energiewende with the Euro crisis and states that people won't be willing to carry the costs in times of crisis. First part is maybe due to the view from the US, which automatically implies that Europe is a political and economic unit comparable to the US; second part is a statement which could be just right or wrong. Thus, it's as much a statement about the belief of the author as it is about the Energiewende - and this is how it perfectly reflects the debate. We cannot easily sort out what this process is all about; we only know that we are in the middle of it. Sounds familiar for those interested in climate change, right.