Market Distortions

Subsidies

Solar Panels

Solar System

Public Policy

Solar Energy

Alternative Energy

SustainableTechnology

Energy

Germany

Science

Economics

Edit Topics

Twitter

Facebook

102,434

222

QUESTION STATS

Views

Followers

Latest activity: Fri

QUESTION TOPICS

SHARE QUESTION

222Follow Question Comments 2 Share 12 Downvote

32 ANSWERS ASK TO ANSWER

Alternative Energy: Should other nations followGermany's lead on promoting solar power?Add Question Details

RELATED QUESTIONS

Gujarat, India: Should the whole of Indiafollow the Gujarat model of solar powergeneration? What are its pros and cons?

Solar Energy: What are some other typesof solar energy that you can utilise asideon solar power?

If the voltage of a solar panel is greaterthan the voltage the battery should becharged, will it lead to a loss of power...(continue)

Where are good places to promotewebinars on Solar Power forhomeowners?

Microeconomics: In a duopoly, why don'tall firms collude instead of competingwith one being the price/output leaderand other a follower... (continue)

NSA Data Collection & Privacy Scandals(2013): If Edward Snowden's leaksultimately lead to the threat of war withRussia and/or other nations, should weview his action... (continue)

Can solar panels and wind turbines beused as load following or peaking powerplants?

How can I make a dual power sourcecircuit (one source is AC and the other isSolar energy i.e. DC)? (When batterypower i... (continue)

Will China's level of science andtechnology ascend proportionally with itsnational power in following 10 years?Should w... (continue)

Sustainable Technology: How does theSoccket (kinetic soccer ball) compare tosolar and other off-grid power sources?

More Related Questions

�

Ivan PekarikEdit Bio • Make Anonymous

Add your answer, or answer later.

The answer is the most forceful possible no.

Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany's pro-renewables policy hasbeen a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of badenergy policy:

1. Bad for consumers

2. Bad for producers

3. Bad for the environment (yes, really; I'll explain)

Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solarpanel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment isgrowing among the German press and public.

I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. Thisis a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest ofthe world which hopes to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experimentin renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has onlystarted to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewablesadvocates for not realizing it yet -- but it's time for the green movement to do a180 on this.

Some awful statistics before I get into the details:

Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over athird of the world's nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany hasover twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn't sound bad, but keep going.)

Germany's residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highestrates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizingrenewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price inEurope. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from Franceand Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut offbecause they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming highresidential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would savehouseholds less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predictedby the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]

Germany's utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due toexcessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environmentminister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the nexttwo decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn't eveninclude the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, amajor supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that thedirect lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion,

Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer1.5k upvotes by Erik Madsen (Ph.D. candidate in Economic Analysis and Policy...),

Jorge Ferrando (Ph. D. in Economics from Sorbonne University), Jackson Dugong Miley,(more)

which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany's GDP for 50 yearsstraight. [4] That doesn't include economic damage from high energyprices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.

Here's the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany'scarbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing[5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned "renewables first" market mechanisms. This regime isparadoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaicsolar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence ofelectricity storage -- it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricitymust be produced at the exact same time it's used. [29] The more daytimesummer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power theyneed for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forcedoffline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar powerproduction makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, andmakes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scalePV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage,but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out ofbusiness by the severe grid fluctuations. They can't run steadily enough tooperate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source thatdoesn't hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choosebetween coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much morepollution.

So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you're convinced by thesefacts, feel free to stop reading now, throw me an upvote, and go on about yourday. This is going to get long -- I haven't even explained the half of it yet. Thereare lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worsethe picture gets.

Issue 1: Wrong place, wrong tech to start the greenrevolution

Renewables advocates constantly hold up Germany as an example of howlarge-scale rooftop solar power is viable. But the problem is, Germany'semphasis on solar power is bad policy. I'm pretty sure other countriescan do solar better, but that isn't saying much because German solar is justawful. To be blunt, it's a stupid place for politicians to push solarpanels. I was there all last week for a work meeting and I didn't see the sunthe entire time. From talking to the locals, it's overcast for about a third of theyear in the region near Hanover where I was staying. Their solar resource issimply bad, nearly the worst of any well-populated region in the world:

Annual Solar Irradiance

Between the northern latitude, the grey weather, and the Alps blocking much ofthe diffused morning sunlight from the south, Germany is a terrible place forsolar power. When you put the US side-by-side on the same scale, you realizethat Germany has the same solar power potential as dismal Alaska, even worsethan rain-soaked Seattle:

Solar Radiation Map

I look at this and ask, "what on earth are they thinking?" They couldn't havepicked a worse generation technology for their climate.

But most people seem to look at it and say, "if Germany is investing so much insolar power, then it's obvious the US should build solar panels too." I insist weexamine the contrapositive: if solar power is only taking off slowly in the US,even with significant subsidies/incentives and one of the world's best solarresources, then the Germans should be building even less solar capacity. It'sclear their market must be severely distorted for them to pursue such a sub-optimal energy policy.

You're welcome to disagree with my thought process here, but the simplestproof can be seen in the capacity factor, which is the percent of the nameplatecapacity that is actually generated over the course of a year. The existence ofnighttime means solar capacity factors must be less than 50%, and when youadd clouds, dawn, dusk, dust, and non-optimal installations, 18% is the averagecapacity factor for panels in the continental US. [9] In contrast, Germany'stotal solar capacity factor in 2011 was under 9%! [1]

German residential solar panel installations today cost about $2.25/wattcapacity, [10] versus a hair over $5/watt in the US. [11] (Numbers vary over aconsiderable range. Most of this is labor/permitting costs.) But German panelsgenerate less than half as much actual power over time. So when younormalize the panel install cost by capacity factor, US and Germansolar power generation are already at cost parity. The payback periodsfor solar investments are about the same in California and Germany. This issurprising to most solar advocates, who tend to blame higher costs for the lowuptake rates in the US. But system economics alone do not explain disparitiesin installation rates.

So why does Germany have 16 times as much nameplate panel capacity percapita as the US? [12] Yes, permitting is much easier there, but that's mostlycaptured by the $/watt costs since installation companies usually pull thepermits. And I don't think the German people are that much more pro-environment than the rest of the world. There's no good reason for thedisparity that I can find -- it ought to swing the opposite way. Solar just isn't agood power source for a cold, dark country that has minimal daytime airconditioning load. Solar in Phoenix, Arizona makes sense, but not in Frankfurt.The only conclusion I can come to is that Germany's solar power boom isbeing driven entirely by political distortions. The growth of solar is noteconomically justified, nor can it continue without massive politicalinterference in power markets.

Many people are surprised to hear that Germany only gets a tiny 2.0% of itstotal energy / 4.6% of its electricity from solar power (in 2012). [5,13] All theheadlines about new records on peak summer days make it seem more like50%. Despite all the cost and pain and distortions, PV solar has turned out tobe a very ineffective way of generating large amounts of energy. They couldhave generated at least four times as much carbon-free power via new nuclearplants for the same cost. [14] (Nuclear would have been a better option for a lot

of reasons. I'll get to that later.)

With subsidies for new solar systems phasing out over the next 5 years, solargrowth has already started to decline. The installation rate peaked and isnow dropping. [13, 15] Despite falling panel and installation costs, themajority of new German solar projects are expected to stop when subsidiesend. They're already on the downward side of the technology uptake bell curve:

(Data after 2008 from [14], prior to 2008 from Wikipedia)

If you pay close attention, all the pro-solar advocates are still using charts withdata that stops after 2011. That's because 2011 was the last year solar wasgrowing exponentially. Using data through July 2013 and official predictionsfor the rest of this year, it's now clear that solar is not on an exponential growthcurve. It's actually on an S-curve like pretty much every other technology,ever. Limitless exponential growth doesn't exist in the physical world. [13]

Also note the huge gap on that graph between the actual generation and thenameplate capacity. That's where the miserable capacity factor comes in. (Ithink this is the source of a lot of misplaced optimism about solar's growthrate.) Green media outlets only report solar power either in peak capacity or aspercent of consumption on sunny summer days. Both of these measurementsmust be divided by about 10 to get the true output throughout the year.

In reality, solar is scaling up much slower than conventional energysources scaled up in the past, despite solar receiving more governmentsupport. This graph shows the growth rate of recent energy transitions in thefirst 10 years after each source reached grid scale (1% of total supply):

[13]

I think this chart is the best way to make an apples-to-apples comparison ofuptake rates. Only about a quarter of the "renewables" line is due to solar (themajority is biomass, wind, and trash incineration). So the true solar growthrate from 2001-2011 is only 1/4th as fast as nuclear from 1974-1984, and 1/6thas fast as natural gas from 1965-1975. [13]

When a new energy source is genuinely better than the old energy sources, itgrows fast. Solar is failing to do so. Yet it's had every advantage the governmentcould provide.

What this all implies is that without government intervention, PV solar can't bea significant source of grid power. The economics of German solar have onlymade sense up til now because they tax the hell out of all types of energy (evenother renewables), and then use the proceeds to subsidize solar panels. Utilitiesare forced to buy distributed solar power at rates several times the electricity'smarket value, causing massive losses. The German Renewable Energy Actdirectly caused utility losses of EUR 540 million in August 2013 alone. [16] It'sa shocking amount of money changing hands. When you strip away the well-intentioned facade of environmentalism, this is little more than a forced cashtransfer scheme. It's taking from utilities (who are losing money hand over fiston grid management and pre-existing conventional generation capacity) andfrom everyone who doesn't have rooftop panels, and shoveling it into thepockets of everyone who owns or installs panels. Which means it's both amassive market distortion and a regressive tax on the poor.

This explains why per-capita solar uptake is so high in Germany. Thegovernment has engineered a well-intentioned but harmful redistributionsystem where everyone without solar panels is giving money to people whohave them. This is a tax on anyone who doesn't have a south-facing roof, orwho can't afford the up-front cost, or rents their residence, etc. People on fixedincomes (eg welfare recipients and the elderly) have been hardest hit becausethe government has made a negligible effort to increase payments tocompensate for skyrocketing energy prices. The poor are literally living in thedark to try to keep their energy bills low. Energiewende is clearly bad for socialequality. But Germany's politicians seem to have a gentleman's agreement toavoid criticizing it in public, particularly since Merkel did an about-face onnuclear power in 2011. [17]

Issue 2: Supply Variability

One major problem with all this solar-boosting, ironically, is oversupply. It'smind-boggling to me that a generation technology that provides less than 5% ofa country's electricity supply can be responsible for harmful excess electricityproduction, but it's true. On sunny summer afternoons, Germany actuallyexports power at a loss compared to generation costs: EUR 0.056/kWh averageelectricity export sale price in 2012, [18] vs EUR 0.165/kWh average lifetimecost for all German solar installed from 2000 to 2011. [14] (This isoptimistically assuming a 40 year system life and 10% capacity factor -- realityis probably over EUR 0.20/kWh.) German utilities often have to pay heavyindustry and neighboring countries to burn unnecessary power. On sunnysummer days, businesses are firing up empty kilns and furnaces, and aregetting paid to throw energy away.

You can argue that this excess summer solar generation is free, but it's not --not only is this peak summer output included in the lifetime cost math, butexcess solar power actually forces conventional power plants to shut down,thereby lowering the capacity factor of coal & gas plants. Yes, this meanslarge-scale solar adoption makes non-solar power more expensiveper kWh, too! On net, excess solar generation is a significant drag onelectricity economics. You're paying for the same power generation equipmenttwice -- once in peak conventional capacity for cloudy days, and again in peaksolar capacity for sunny days -- and then exporting the overage for a pittance.

Why would they bother exporting at a loss? Because the feed-in-tariff lawsdon't allow utilities to shut off net-metered rooftop solar. Utilities are forcedby law to pay residential consumers an above-market price forpower that isn't needed. Meanwhile, Germany's fossil-burning neighborsbenefit from artificially-low EU energy market prices. This discourages themfrom building cleaner power themselves. It's just a wasteful, distorted energypolicy.

Remember, electricity must be used in the same moment it's generated. [29]

The technology for grid-scale electricity storage does not yet exist, and nothingin the development pipeline is within two orders of magnitude of being cheapenough to scale up. Pumped-hydro storage is great on a small scale, but all thegood sites are already in use in both Europe and the US. The only plan on thetable for grid-scale storage is to use electric car batteries as buffers whilethey're charging. But that still won't provide anywhere near enough capacity tosmooth solar's rapidly-changing output. [19] And if people plug in their cars assoon as they get home from work and the sun goes down, the problem couldget even worse. California's regulators have recently acknowledgedthat the generation profile at sundown is the biggest hurdle to thegrowth of solar power. The classic illustration is the "duck chart" (shapedlike a duck) that shows how solar forces conventional power plants to ramp upat an enormous rate when the sun stops shining in the evening:

[29]

People often complain about wind power being unreliable, but when you getenough wind turbines spread over a large enough area, the variability averagesout. The wind is always blowing somewhere. This means distributed windpower is fairly reliable at the grid level. But all solar panels on a powergrid produce power at the same time, meaning night-time under-supplyand day-time over-supply. This happens every single day, forever. At least inwarm countries, peak air conditioning load roughly coincides with peak solaroutput. But Germany doesn't use much air conditioning. It's just a gridmanagement nightmare. The rate of "extreme incidents" in Germany's powergrid frequency/voltage has increased by three orders of magnitude sinceEnergiewende started. [20]

The severe output swings have even reached the point where Germany's gridphysically cannot operate without relying on neighboring countries to soak upthe variability. The ramp-down of solar output in the evening happensfaster than the rest of Germany's generation capacity can ramp-up.(Massive power plants can't change output very quickly.) Which either meansblackouts as people get home from work, or using non-solar-poweredneighbors as buffers. Here's one day's generation profile for German solarpower, showing how net electricity imports/exports are forced to oscillate backand forth to smooth out the swings in production:

[21]

If Germany's neighbors also had as many solar panels, they would all be tryingto export and import at the same time, and the system would fall apart. Themaximum capacity of the entire EU grid to utilize solar power is thereforemuch lower than the level reached by individual countries like Germany andSpain.

Solar boosters often say people need to shift their energy consumption habitsto match generation, instead of making generation match consumption. That'sfeasible, to an extent -- perhaps 20% of power consumption can be time-shifted, mostly by rescheduling large consumers currently operating at nightlike aluminum electrosmelters. But modern civilization revolves around aparticular work/sleep schedule, and you can't honestly expect to change that.People aren't going to give up cooking and TV in the evening, or wait threehours after the sun goes down to turn on the lights. And weekends haveradically different consumption profiles from weekdays.

It all adds up. PV solar output doesn't properly sync up with powerdemand. That severely limits the maximum percentage of ourelectricity needs it can provide. Germany hit that limit at about 4%. Theyare now finding out what happens when you try to push further.

Issue 3: Displacing the wrong kinds of power

You may have noticed in the daily generation chart above how wind power isthrottled back when the sun comes out. Residential solar has legal right-of-wayover utility-scale wind. A lot of the power generation that solar is displacing isactually other renewables. Most of the rest is displacing natural gas and nuclearpower. Coal power is growing rapidly. [6,8]

Here's what the weekly generation profile is predicted to look like in 2020:

[22]

Notice the saw-tooth shape of the big grey "conventional" (coal/gas) category.What all this solar is doing is eating into is daytime base load generation, whichseems good for displacing fossil fuels, but in the long run it's doing theopposite.

The majority of electricity worldwide comes from coal and nuclear base loadplants. They are big, efficient, and cheap. But base load generation is extremelydifficult and expensive to throttle up and down every day. To simplify the issuea bit, you cannot ramp nuclear plants as fast as solar swings up anddown every day. It takes several days to shut down and restart a nuclearplant, and nuclear plants outside France are not designed to be throttled back,so nuclear cannot be paired with the daily oscillations of PV solar. Supply isunable to match demand. You end up with both gaps and overages.

Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of theFukushima accident, but the Germans didn't really have a choice. They arebeing forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output.That's a big, big problem -- Germany gets four times more electricity fromnuclear than solar, so the math doesn't add up. The generation time-profile iswrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replacenuclear plants with something else.

The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas "peaker"plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and load-following gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they're doing isbuilding more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It'sexpensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and thenthrottle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilitiesthan nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has beenfighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, andcoal is in.

If you're a regular follower of my writing, you'll know what a terrible idea thisis. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionablythe most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistakethat any group of environmentalists has ever made. It's unbelievablehow much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushimameltdown was pretty much a "worst case scenario" -- one of the largestearthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactormeltdowns and three hydrogen explosions -- and not a single person has died

from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer ratesdue to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number toosmall to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful tothe public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation haskilled more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone hadjust stayed in place. [26,27]

In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceanswith mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other humanactivity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of theindustrialized world. [23]

This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important.Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricitydemand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damagethis does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit fromthe solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solarpower that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When youget to the "duck chart" stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you'll end upworse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.

So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet.But there's more.

Issue 4: The kicker

The category for "biomass" power you see in all these charts isactually firewood being burned in coal plants. 38% of Germany's"renewable energy" comes from chopping down forests and importing woodfrom other countries. [28] Effing firewood, like we're back in the Middle Agesor something. Due to overzealous renewables targets, and a quirk in the EUcarbon pricing system that considers firewood carbon-neutral, Europe ischopping down forests at an alarming rate to burn them as "renewablebiomass." The environmental movement has spent most of the last 200 yearsof industrialization trying to fight deforestation, and that noble goal has beenreversed in an instant by bogus carbon emission calculations.

In the very long run, over 100 years or so, firewood is close to carbon neutralbecause you can regrow the trees and they absorb CO2 as they grow.Unfortunately, using firewood for fuel destroys a living carbon sink andreleases all its carbon to the atmosphere right now. When you consider thatyou're destroying a carbon sink as well as releasing stored carbon, firewood isactually much worse than coal for many decades thereafter. [28] The nextfew decades is humanity's most critical time for reducing carbon emissions, sothis policy is mind-boggling lunacy.

Germany is so focused on meeting renewables targets that it is willing totrample the environment to get there. They've managed to makerenewables unsustainable! It's tragicomic.

To summarize: Energiewende is the worst possible example of how toimplement an energy transition. The overzealous push for the wronggeneration technology has hurt citizens, businesses, and the environment all atthe same time.

I want to make it clear that I'm not saying we should abandon solar. It shoulddefinitely be part of our generation mix. Due a mix of bad climate and badpolicy, Germany ran into problems at a very low solar penetration, and othercountries will be able to reach higher penetrations. But even if we ignore cost,there is still a maximum practical limit to solar power based on the realities ofgrid management.

You can't build more PV solar than the rest of the grid can ramp up/down toaccept. The necessary grid storage for large-scale solar power is a "maybesomeday" technology, not something viable today. Calls for 50% of power tocome from solar in our lifetimes are a fantasy, and we need to be realisticabout that.

You can't force utilities to buy unneeded power just because it's renewable.

Written 2 Oct, 2013.

The energy and materials to build the excess capacity just goes to waste. Thatis the opposite of green.

We have to learn those lessons. We can't sweep this failure under the rug.

Every time a renewables advocate holds Germany up as a shining beacon, theyset back the credibility of the environmental movement. It's unsupported byreality and I think even gives ammunition to the enemy. We have to stoppraising Germany's Energiesheiße and figure out better ways toimplement renewables. Other models should work better. They have to --the future of the world depends on it.

[1] Solar power by country [2] Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good -SPIEGEL ONLINE[3] German 'green revolution' may cost 1 trillion euros - minister[4] Global Warming Targets and Capital Costs of Germany's 'Energiewende'[5] Germany's 'Energiewende' - the story so far[6] Germany: Coal Power Expanding, Green Energy Stagnating[7] Merkel's Blackout: German Energy Plan Plagued by Lack of Progress -SPIEGEL ONLINE[8] Merkel’s Green Shift Backfires as German Pollution Jumps[9] Capacity factor , Price per watt[10] German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at$4.44[11] It Keeps Getting Cheaper To Install Solar Panels In The U.S.[12] Germany Breaks Monthly Solar Generation Record, ~6.5 Times MoreThan US Best[13] Germany and Renewables Market Changes (source link in original articleis broken, here is an updated link:http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp... )[14] Cost of German Solar Is Four Times Finnish Nuclear -- Olkiluoto NuclearPlant, Plagued by Budget Overruns, Still Beats Germany’s Energiewende[15] 313 MWp German PV Capacity Added in July 2013 - 34.5 GWp Total[16] EEG Account: 5,907 GWh of Renewable Energy in August Sold for EUR37.75 at Expenses of EUR 399.52 per MWh - EUR 540 Million Deficit [17] Germany will dilute - not abandon - its Energiewende plan[18] German power exports more valuable than its imports[19] Ryan Carlyle's answer to Solar Energy: How large would an array of solarpanels have to be to power the continental US? How much would such an arraycost to build? And what are the major engineering obstacles to powering theUS this way?[20] Electricity demand response shows promise in Germany[21] Energiewende in Germany and Solar Energy[22] Problems with Renewables and the Markets[23] Ryan Carlyle's answer to Society: What are some policies that wouldimprove millions of lives, but people still oppose?[24] Stephen Frantz's answer to Nuclear Energy: What is a nuclear supporter'sresponse to the Fukushima disaster?[25] Fukushima Cancer Fears Are Absurd[26] Evacuation ‘Fukushima’ deadlier then radiation[27] Was It Better to Stay at Fukushima or Flee?[28] The fuel of the future[29] Fowl Play: how the utility industry’s ability to outsmart a duck will definethe power grid of the 21st century

I sent Ryan Carlyle's exhaustive answer to this question to Amory Lovins ,Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute , who, notsurprisingly, disagrees. In equally exhaustive depth. On nearly every point. I'm no expert on this subject, and don't want to enter the fray myself, but if youwant to have a truly informed opinion on the subject, I would suggest that youread Ryan Carlyle's answer together with Lovins' answers, which are in thesetwo posts on his blog:

Matt Chanoff, Follow http://flashpoint.gatec... (more) 57 upvotes by Bill McDonald, Jake Millan, Hubert Gertis, (more)

Updated 17 Apr.

Downvote Comments 6+ Share 1

Germany's Renewables Revolution

Separating Fact from Fiction In Accounts of Germany’s RenewablesRevolution

57Upvote

Written 23 Oct, 2013.

Downvote Comment Share

Judging by the latest news out of Germany, the politicians are getting themessage. The article referred below states that in the current coalition talks"Among the central themes will be agreeing a minimum wage, overhauling arenewables law that has sent energy costs soaring, "

Economy, energy center stage as German coalition talks begin .

George Gombay6 upvotes by Bill McDonald, Iain McClatchie, Philip Ngai, (more)

6Upvote

Written 29 May.

Downvote Comment Share

Some numbers for this winter:

Germany’s #Energiewende Q1 2014: solar + 82.5%, offshore wind + 33%,natural gas -19.7%, coal - 17.4%, nuclear - 4.6% Source: Germany’s Energiewende Is Very Much Alive & On Track

Avg temps winter 2013-2014: Monats- und Jahreswerte Deutschland

Political situation: Europe’s future energy security requires political cooperation with Russia

Orjan Lundberg5 upvotes by Judith Meyer, James H. Kelly, Jason Hardjosoekatmo, (more)

5Upvote

Actually, that's the wrong question.The emphasis of "Energiewende" has been on renewables, not solar-only.That's why capacities in wind and solar are more or less on the same level (and,as it looks, pretty complimentary over the year).

And no, other nations should not follow the lead of Germany. But build uponher learnings and experiences.

Let me expand on that, as an addendum: As energy is the lifeblood of our western economies, there are two largeimporters which are on the verge of becoming net exporters of energy, the USand Germany. It's just two completely different approaches.

The US went for oil. By around 2020, the United States is projected to becomethe largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia until the mid-2020s),says the IEA. And, eh voilá, North America becomes a net oil exporter around2030.

Oil wells in Germany are about as common as grand cru vineyards in Alaska.Lignite and coal are so 19th century. Nuclear power plants are a hard sell inGermany (and the necessary fuels would have to be imported anyways). So,being a rather industrious people, it seems like some Germans anticipated theIEA World Energy Outlook 2012: Renewables become the world’s second-largest source of power generation by 2015 (roughly half that of coal) and, by2035, they approach coal as the primary source of global electricity.

Hubert Gertis, optimized generalist. @hubert17 upvotes by Erik Halberstadt, Adam Gieseler, Christopher Strobel, (more)

Updated 23 Oct, 2013.

Downvote Comments 2+ Share

http://www.iea.org/publications/...

Call me biased. But in this case, I prefer the German approach.

17Upvote

Written 6 Dec, 2013.

Downvote Comment Share

They should follow Germany's lead in doing something. Energiewende may ormay not be the best possible solution to the problem, but it does have a lotgoing for it. Germany may or may not wind up with the best long term energysolution, but it's pretty certain to be much better than what they have (andwhat we have) today.

Speaking from an entirely US-centric point of view -

All of our infrastructure is designed for, and around, first and secondgeneration industrial corporations. All of it. Transportation, education,healthcare, finance, government, and energy.

First generation industrials are almost all dead. Second generation industrialsare mostly dying, or being moved offshore. The third generation is a lot lessindustrial, a lot less centralized, and a lot less energy intensive, than the firstand second generations were. Advances like 3D printing and laser sintering aremaking the availability of large quantities of dense electrical power less andless critical, and that trend is going to continue.

I don't think solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal can replace our existing grid.But that doesn't matter, because simply replacing what we have is the wrongthing to do. A less centralized industrial model requires a less centralizedinfrastructure to support it, or at least doesn't require as centralized of a model.

If we keep building infrastructure to meet the needs of General Electric andGeneral Motors, we're doomed. The barriers to entry that made thosecompanies viable are falling all over the world, and if they don't change theirown models soon they won't have long to live. We need to build infrastructurefor the next generation. Massive power plants servicing grid quadrants isn't it.

Matt Wasserman, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'... (more) 17 upvotes by James H. Kelly, Erik Halberstadt, Anna Demers, (more)

17Upvote

Ivan PekarikEdit Bio • Make Anonymous

Add your answer, or answer later.

Top Stories from Your Feed

TOP CONTENT ON QUORA.

Aging: What does it feel like tobe old?

Stan Hayward, Film/TV/Bookwriter

8.9k upvotes by Jack Yu, Emma Lee, SiddharthKrishnaswamy, (more)

TOP CONTENT ON QUORA.

Boredom: What makes a personboring?

Last week I purchased a particularly nice 24piece set of pale blue plastic Tupperwarecontainers. It was financially reckless of mebut they were ...

James Sutherland8.2k upvotes by Garrick Saito, Rogier

Kolstein, Alex Gomes, (more)

TOP CONTENT ON QUORA.

Tips and Hacks for EverydayLife: What can I learn right nowin just 10 minutes that could beuseful for the rest of my life?

Abhishek A. Singh, --- Dude with aprogressive at...

16.2k upvotes by Ben Young, Karl Müller, MatthewBenevento, (more)