As an American living in the EU, I sometimes marvel at the ability of Europeans to adopt best practices from each other. Likewise, I marvel at the tendency of Americans to label foreign best practices un-American.
Debunking Myths about Germany’s EEG
Feed-in tariffs only pay for power produced, which depends on the weather – and no one can guarantee that.
MYTH: Germany has figured out that the feed-in tariff does not work, so they are canceling it and opting for net-metering instead. . . FACT: The German feed-in tariff has largely been a remarkable success story.
Major English-language media have been propagating a false narrative about the stunning success of Germany’s transition to renewable energy: the Energiewende. To hear them tell it, the transition has been a massive failure, driving up power prices, putting Germany’s grid at risk of blackouts, and inspiring a mass revolt against renewables. . . Nothing could be further from the truth.
Over the past two years, Renewables International has repeatedly argued that there will be no shift to coal power as a result of the nuclear phaseout. So it’s nice to see that other independent analysts see things the same way.
In English, the current German energy policy debate sounds like no one likes the Energiewende. The Social Democrats and the Greens, who first implemented the Renewable Energy Act, don’t like what Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition plans, and her government now manages a policy they once opposed, so top government officials now have trouble expressing their support for their opposition’s baby.
The latest energy statistics suggests that Germany is doing much better in restraining coal used to generate electricity compared to the UK. Yet, to read the British press you would automatically assume that the exact opposite was true and that coal use was increasing dramatically in Germany compared to the UK – All, allegedly, because of the German policy of switching away from nuclear power and towards renewable energy and energy efficiency. . .
German Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said on Friday his country would never return to nuclear energy, hitting back at a top EU official who doubted Berlin’s commitment to phase out nuclear power. . .
Over the past decade, Germany has successfully boosted renewable energy resources which today power 25% of all electricity demand. . . “The Energiewende is a bottom up switch that is driven by citizens across the country.”. . “By now, the Germans have developed a can-do attitude,” says Craig Morris, one of the lead authors of the website. Morris, a Freiburg-based American journalist and translator, points out: “Over the last two decades, renewables matured much more quickly, become more reliable and much cheaper than expected.” That is why most Germans are confident about the transition. “They perceive technical challenges like grid instability not as problem, but as a task,” says Morris. . .
An article today in German weekly Die Zeit reveals how completely overblown the likelihood is of power outages resulting from the country’s Energiewende. . .
