Video report on how exactly Germany’s renewable energy revolution has worked.
From Renewable Energy Magazine
0 Retweet 38 Share 0 Google +1 3 StumbleUpon 1 Printer Friendly Send via email
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Print
Juan Cole
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
Informed Comment is made possible by your support. If you value the information and essays, I make available and write here, please take a moment to contribute what you can.
Keep up with Informed Comment at:
Google+
Germany is also a pioneer in building a fully renewable grid structure, balancing solar in the South with wind in the North and biomass all around:
link to dailykos.com
The video doesn’t say much about costs or alternatives, unfortunately. Germany has managed to get solar PV prices down enormously. However, the usefulness of this is debatable, as solar PV energy is still very far from being competitive with traditional power or even wind.
Also, the progress has come at a staggering cost for the German consumers as well as for the climate. Germany has around 3% solar PV now. For the amount of money they have given out for this and promised to give out over the next decades in FiT, they could have replaced all their lignite generation (some 23% of total generation) with wind power.
For anyone concerned by global warming, Germany may be perceived as kind of a self-sacrificing good samaritan, lowering the costs of others, but Germany’s own record and their near-term plans are very discouraging. They started to effectively replace coal with nuclear power in the early eighties, but shut it down due to TMI and Chernobyl, and now they have decided to focus their renewable efforts in the coming decade on replacing nuclear power. Thus they will, in 2022, have lost some 40 years in terms of combating global warming.
Furthermore, when Germany is done replacing nuclear power with sun and wind, it is unknown if they will be able to integrate more intermittent power in their grid.
We are playing with fire.The U.S should take thirty billion out of the defense/offense budget and install solar and wind at warp speed creating jobs and lowering emmissions.