Telling The Truth About Germany’s Clean Energy Rush
by Rocky Mountain Institute
I recently wrote about—and debunked—the renewables “disinformation campaign” that spreads misinformed and falsely negative stories about the growth of renewable energy. A special focus of such disinformation has been reportage on Germany’s efficiency-and-renewables revolution. The impressive success so far of the German Energiewende (energy turnaround) is an important existence proof for the world, because Germany is cloudy, high-latitude, heavily industrialized, highly competitive (it rivals America’s merchandise exports with one-fourth its population), and the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
Perhaps because German success would therefore belie the supposed necessity of fossil-fuel and nuclear energy, some media regularly report the Energiewende’s failure or supposed impossibility. As Ihighlighted, Germany’s renewables revolution is in fact highly successful and strong as ever, but that hasn’t stopped three myths from gaining traction in the media: 1) Germany’s supposed turn back to coal, 2) how renewables undermine grid reliability, and 3) how renewables subsidies are cratering the German economy. None of those are true, and here’s why.
Myth #1: Germany’s Turn Back To Coal
An efficient new German coal plant begun in 2006, with fast ramp rates to complement variable renewables, was widely but wrongly heralded on its commissioning in 2012 (Europe’s only new coal plant that year) as signaling Germany’s post-Fukushima turn back to coal—not mentioning that it replaced a larger amount of dirtier and far less efficient coal capacity that was shut down. Moreover, replacing old 35-to-38-percent-efficient coal units with modern 46-percent-efficient ones, like some of the 5.3 GWlikely to come online this year, would save a fifth of their coal even if net capacity didn’t change. And though capacity may fluctuate for a few years, the German Energy Agency expects 11.3 GW of coal capacity to be added and 18.5 GW closed by 2020—a net decrease of at least 7.2 GW.
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Myth #3: Renewables Subsidies Are Cratering The Germany Economy
Perhaps most confusing is Germany’s lively debate about the surcharge that utility customers pay to finance the feed-in tariff (“FIT”)—a fixed 20-year power purchase contract offered to anyone installing new renewable generators, whether solar, wind, biomass-fueled, or other kinds. (Since 2012, you can instead choose market-based payments, as half of renewable producers and four-fifths of windpower operators do, and since autumn 2012, new solar systems over 10 megawatts are no longer eligible for FITs). The FIT declines as renewables’ growth drives down their prices; rooftop solar’s FIT is falling 1.8 percent every month. But partly because prices are falling, solar sales are far outpacing forecasts, raising the surcharge. USA Today columnist Sumi Somaskanda recently wrote: “German consumers are waking up to the costs of going green: As of Jan. 1, they are paying 11 percent more for electricity than they did last year thanks to government plans to replace nuclear plants with wind and solar power that requires significant and constant public money to be made cost effective.” But as I wrote in April, the truth is quite different.
Germany’s renewables surcharge is artificially inflated by hefty and rising industry exemptions ...
http://www.earthtechling.com/2013/08/telling-the-truth-about-germanys-clean-energy-rush/
Energy giants pull plug on coal and nuclear
Published: 18 Aug 2013 09:42
Ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a phase-out of nuclear energy over the next decade and pledged to generate as much as 80 percent of the country's electricity from renewables by 2050, big question marks have been hanging over the future of coal and gas-fired plants in Germany.
...
But the turnaround is depriving utilities, including market leaders RWE and E.ON, of massive profits from their atomic plants and turning their gas and coal-fired stations into loss-makers as they are sidelined by rival renewable sources of energy.
Last week, the two biggest players in the German sector unveiled steep drops in profits, and "many of our plants are operating at a loss," complained RWE's finance chief Bernhard Günther.
Indeed, RWE announced that it would shut down a number of plants --representing combined capacity of 4,300 megawatts -- in both Germany and the Netherlands. And more could follow, Günther warned....
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20130818-51455.html
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