Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

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The German situation was even worse then you describe. They decided to move out of coal and nuclear, but at the same time made windpower significantly more difficult and reduced investment into solar. If you look at the installed windturbines (https://www.wind-energie.de/english/statistics/statistics-ge...) you can see an initial boom around 2000 and a large reduction after 2004 similarly things picked up again in 2014 only to be reduced very low again 4 years later.

Coincidentally the first reduction came with a change of power from the SPD/Greens coalition to the CDU/FDP and the second slump when the energy and business ministry went from the SPD in the coalition to Peter Altmaier of the CDU.

In a recent debate on energy in parliament the current chancellor from the SPD (labor equivalent) responded to criticism from the CDU (conservatives), that the current government is fixing the huge mess left over by the previous governments (lead by the CDU). I'm not a big fan of Olaf Scholz (the current chancellor) in general, but rarely was there a truer statement.

Germany never moved away from coal, in fact we just had a new coal plant online without a valid construction permit and illegaly removed protetswrs to kind of illegaly cut down a forest to get the coal for that plant.

Nuclear plant run times have been extended as well, by those mean green anti-nuclear environmentalists that are in the new government by the way.

This really begs the question on whether there was some outside influence on german energy decisions. It's not a given that Russia hasn't been using non-standard negotiation methods for making Germany more dependent on Russian gas by drumming up fear on everything else.

After his term as German chancellor was up (1998-2005), Gerhard Schröder became chairman of several gas companies that were (majority) owned by the Russian state (Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, Gazprom). There was nothing covert about the Kremlin courting Germany with its cheap gas - it was plain to see.

Cheap energy is great for Germany's energy intensive heavy industries, and strategically important. Russia and Germany getting cozy and growing together economically couldn't have made the US or the UK very comfortable and I believe this was at least a part of the US motivation to pull Ukraine from Russia's orbit. I mean it makes a lot more sense to me than the US actually giving a shit about Ukrainians and their freedom. It's very well played on the part of the US.

After all the point of NATO was to "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-agenda-idUSKBN0FB06B20...

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a reasonable take, especially following the way the US reacts to any prospects of getting the Nord Stream 2 started. “US pulling X from Y’s orbit” has been happening around the world since at least the 70s, nothing surprising here.

> “US pulling X from Y’s orbit” has been happening around the world since at least the 70s

It's been going on for far longer than that and pretty much since the late 1940's.

There actually seems to be an investigation into leadership of the energy department of the relevant department. Nothing is proven but some things raised suspicions.

No need to assume, it's publicly documented history: The 1969-1974 German goverment of Willy Brandt pursued a new foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, "Neue Ostpolitik". Part of that strategy was to build a system of mutual economic dependency, so that neither the german nor the soviet side would have any interest in going to war against each other.

And while Brandt was eventually replaced by the more conservative (but still social democrat) Helmut Schmidt, the general strategy of mutual economic dependency was upheld, and contributed to the eventual reunion of both Germanies.

In general, back then this strategy worked so well, that even the chancelors from the conservative CDU didn't feel compelled to change it.

Even Merkel, while far more cool and restrained towards russia than her predecessor, did not really change much in that regard. Kinda expected from a conservative though...

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