Behind Germany's political turmoil, a stagnating economy
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The German malaise is more likely tied to the shift to EV, the weakness of Germany's car industry and a general slump in China which are all hitting at the same time.
An aging population and an increase in social benefits are likely also part of the issue.
They are not. Electricity is around 30% more expensive. More like 50% if you add back the EEG subsidy that is now paid via taxes rather than via your electricity bill. (Exercise for the reader: form the intersection between "Tax payer" and "Electricity consumer")
https://www.verivox.de/strom/strompreise/
And we haven't turned off the coal power plants yet (meaning very little has been accomplished for the climate). There is no real plan of how that should work, and all the inklings of a plan come at huge expense.
The EEG tax subsidy is getting less and less. We are paying primarily for very old solar installations.
Just below that graph it says "Die Preisdynamik bei Strom ist stark. Innerhalb von 15 Jahren hat sich der durchschnittliche kWh-Preis fast verdoppelt. "
So the price of electricity has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, which is roughly the timeframe of the Atomausstieg.
The EEG tax subsidy is not getting "less and less". The government always predicts it will be less next year, really really really!, and then act super surprised when it is much more than they predicted.
"Die staatliche Förderung für Erneuerbare Energien erreicht in diesem Jahr laut den Wirtschaftsforschern vom RWI mit 23 Milliarden Euro einen neuen Höchstwert. Dieser liegt deutlich über den Prognosen der Bundesregierung."
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/energie/erneuerbare-ene...
https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-1014724
It turns out that the current amount was pretty much the amount that the government split up over, because they couldn't agree on the budget. So per definition not trivial.
If customers don't switch energy providers and are stuck with high prices why is this the EEGs fault?
Also the EEG is not equivalent to the cost of the net zero transition. We need to approach net zero (I am not convinced we need to get really to zero) and it will cost on the order of 100%-200% of GDP. Which isn't too much considering the time scale of roughly 30 years by which we want to achieve this.
The answer is contained in the question: because it is the average price. As in the actual average price that is paid. It's pretty much tautological.
Just like the revenue of a company is the income from actual goods sold, not hypothetical income from the published catalog. And GDP for a country is measured with goods/services actually bought/sold/delivered, not hypothetical products and services that could be sold.
(That should be sufficient, but it also turns out that prices for new customers pretty much invariably are not sustainable prices, but prices made to entice customers from other companies. They tend to be unsustainable, more a marketing cost than a real price, and if all customers took advantage of them they would disappear. Just like new customers get much higher interest rates from banks than existing customers. Again: it's a customer acquisition cost, not an actual price).
> EEGs fault?
Prices are not a "fault". They just are. Prices, that is. And the EEG is only a small part of the overall price increase we've seen for electricity in Germany. Since the start of the Atomausstieg, prices more than doubled. Before the Atomausstieg, prices were decreasing for years.
And the correlation between percentage of intermittent renewables and higher electricity prices is pretty consistent throughout Europe.
> Also the EEG is not equivalent to the cost of the net zero transition.
This is true. The true cost is much, much higher, though specifics are not known, as was recently criticized by the auditors, the Bundesrechnungshof.
Cost up to now are somewhere between €300 - €700 billion, and we have achieved little to nothing. Replaced a reliable, cheap CO₂-free electricity source with an unreliable, expensive, CO₂-free electricity source.
And of course the future costs have been estimated to be somewhere between € 1.5 trillion and € 5 trillion. Insane.
Compared to the German Energiewende, Brexit was a smart move. And Brexit was one of the dumbest moves a country ever made.
> We need to approach net zero
And shutting off nuclear power did not bring us any closer to that goal. In fact, it moved us away from that goal and also made it much, much harder to ever achieve that goal. Because there is no feasible way of achieving net zero based on just intermittent renewables.
France has around 1/10th of our CO₂ emissions for electricity. Has had them for decades. With nuclear. For a fraction of the cost. With lower electricity prices.
Nowadays you can get those cheaper from China in not much worse quality.
Additionally all internet profits go to tax avoiding companies originated in the US (Germany is not alone on that, it's the same all over Europe).
None of them has to do anything with electricity.
It will cause huge problems, but it has barely scratched the surface.
Everything else has been going on for decades - aside from the electricity prices which have sky-rocketed, mostly due to Germany's harebrained idea to shut down all of its perfectly working nuclear reactors for no reason other than politics.
What comes around goes around, and that decision will kill the party that made it, thankfully.
It is an insult to German ingenuity for those idiot politicians to have shut down reactors that generated almost $12B of CLEAN electricity per year.
Getting rid of the nukes was primary reason for the founding of the Green Party, it was an off-shoot of the German anti-nuclear movement.
That SPD/Green coalition was the first time the Greens were in power, shutting down the nuclear reactors was their precondition for entering into the coalition with the SPD.
So for the Greens it was their raison d'être. For the SPD under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder it was expedience in order to obtain and maintain power. And, as we later discovered, personal enrichment: Schröder, or Gazprom-Gerd as I call him, was handsomely rewarded after he stepped down with a seat on the board of Russia's Gazprom energy giant. A seat he retains to this day.
The corruption is so blatant, it still boggles the mind: a former head of government of one country given a seat on the board of the state-run energy company of a different (and not entirely friendly) country after enabling major deals for that company with the country he was the leader of.
The Nordstream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany via the Baltic was approved and started soon after the Atomausstieg was inked, by the same government.
The CDU-led government that followed immediately after (Merkel 1) did not touch this, because it was a grand coalition that included the SPD who had made the original decision. The second Merkel government did not include the SPD, and so they actually had planned to reverse the shutdown. Then Fukushima happened and Merkel, always the triangulator of popular opinion, flip-flopped. In the end, nothing of substance was changed compared to the original law passed in 2002, just the times were pushed back a little.
Nuclear power is only (relatively) clean until something goes wrong.
Edit: The party that has finalized the decision is widely predicted to win the upcoming election. The GP is wrong that it would kill them. The Green party might end up with poor a result, but they were not in power when the decision was made.
No, nuclear power is still comparatively safe and clean, even when you include the few times that something did go wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKz4XePRfQ
It was a fair review and the product looks very compelling. We definitely need to pay attention and update our priors.
Because that 'Peng', like 'Päng' translates as 'Bang!', so something coming apart with a loud bang, or shall we say: 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' ?
The X could be interpreted as X-tra, so super likely, as a bonus :)
“Rapid unscheduled disassembly” might be your personal reading of it, but that is not my reading.
The UK is certainly not free of problems, but I count my lucky stars that I applied for the EU settlement scheme back in 2019 -- I'm now back in the UK, because better jobs, better healthcare, better social services, better restaurants, better transport system, better airports, better _everything_.
And I say this as a transgender woman living in what trans people call "TERF island". I'm at pains to remind my English sisters that TERFs abound in Germany, too.
Better jobs? Overwork, fewer holidays, less social security, and after years in the workforce, you’re left with a paltry state pension of £800–900 per month at best.
Better healthcare? Only if you compare private healthcare in the UK to public healthcare in Germany. My NHS experience involved endless waiting times, no personal doctor, no choice in doctors, and mostly brief 10-minute telephone appointments.
Better social services? Don't rely on them but childcare is prohibitively expensive. Out of work? You get 70% of your last salary in Germany for 1-2 years and after that the gov is paying your electricity, water bill and rent + a couple of hundred € to sweeten the deal.
Better restaurants? I agree.
Better transport services? Slightly more punctual, but the trains are in terrible condition, as is public transport in London. Strikes are frequent, and the costs are outrageous compared to Germany. Traffic? Ever took a bus through London. You might as well walk.
Better airports? They’re all the same to me. At the end of the day, you’re just passing through to another country. I fly regularly (1–2 flights a month), but I only spend 2–4 hours per month in an airport, so I’m not sure why this is considered a major factor.
And on a more personal note: Crime in London is out of control.
I’ve seen multiple people have their phones snatched—there’s not much you can do when the thieves are armed with hammers.
Just outside my flat, three people were recently stabbed, one fatally.
Where I play tennis, people have been robbed at "knifepoint".
Nearby, drug use is rampant in a park — in the summer laughing gas canisters litter the ground right next to a playground...
I’ve never experienced any of these issues in Germany. Admittedly, We all have different life experiences and priorities, but claiming that life in the UK is better than in Germany—and justifying it with these points—seems wild to me. Especially since I already live in London and not in the "North" were some things are even rougher.
https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/leichte-sprache
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Of course you can disagree with it, but the way people frame it as as some sort of doomsday decision is just utterly, totally, ludicrous.
If this were a regular german language news site this would not be the top comment, nor would there would be a discussion about nuclear power in literally any post about Germany.
I'm quite sure I could make a post about some German film director and someone would claim his films would have been better if only it wasn't for the cataclysmic decision to not have 13% nuclear power.
I mean seriously, WTF? You think all the problems of the economy(global demand trends, phase out of ICE cars, red tape, lack of skilled staff), and all the problems of politics(immigration, healthcare, social cohesion, taxation, budget balancing, social system) could be solved by having a different type of power station?
Posts like this are what is utter madness.
2. It has now spent €400-600 billion to replace that reliable, CO₂-free, cheap energy with unreliable expensive CO₂-free energy. That's a lot of cash for getting a worse product.
3. That first part was the easy part, because up to now Germany has retained base-load capacity, in the form of coal power stations. There is no precedent for an industrial country powered by 100% intermittent renewables, and the models are clear that there is a good reason for this: "...which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...
So from here on it will get worse. Much worse.
4. Electricity prices in Germany have soared since 2002 (the year the Atomausstieg was enacted). Heavy industry is leaving the country. They say energy prices are to blame. Not wholly to blame, but to blame.
5. Inflation in Germany is high, largely due to energy prices. Now this is difficult to disentangle from the global energy crisis, but it is pretty clear that Germany was hit worse by this than other countries.
6. "You think all the problems of the economy...". Nobody made the claim that it was "all" the problems, except you. So calm down.
The coal power plants are the reason for high prices and huge profits for the energy companies.
The „botched“ exit from the exit from the nuclear exit brought them additional billions in compensation.
People like Söder, who now want nuclear energy back, threatened to resign if the shutdown is delayed. Of course, they don't want nuclear waste anywhere near them, nor do they want wind turbines or power lines.
And they were in power for 16 years.
They then left the problems to their successors, who are now being blamed for it.
It's at least partly true of the SPD
Hardly anybody would have considered Söder's resignment to be a threat. :-D Many Germans rather would have been happy if he had resigned.
Why not both?
Certainly Schröder, or Gazprom-Gerd as I call him, got his.
For the Greens it's more idiotic ideology.
Especially Habeck is more driven by necessity, Baerbock not so much.
And don’t forget that the plant operating companies themselves didn’t want to keep the plants.
If you think of wind, you need to cover vast areas of a country to generate meaningful amounts of energy.
Not to mention that nuclear energy leads to centralization what makes it a valuable target for sabotage.
Finland just built a repository. The US one was finished and then shut down for purely political reasons.
Wherever it's a problem it is politics. Technically it's a non-problem. And of course temporary storage is also a non-problem, which is why politicians can play stupid games with the final repositories.
Oh, and of course we shouldn't be throwing it away in the first place, as it still contains >95% of the energy when we do. We should be recycling the fuel, preferably with reactors that can burn it directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Grid_Corporation_of_Chin...
Neither was the exhaust from the first cars.
See
Nuclear waste is both solved and largely a non-problem, which is why politicians can use it to score publicity points.
Is that burying it deep underground?
Safety? Three-mile island? Chernobyl? The one in Japan? Ok, earthquake zone so not a good idea anyway. I heard the French nuclear program has a 100% safety record. But that could be false to keep the public in board with it.
Wouldn't wind and solar be the way to go? U don't need a big centralised for profit energy source.
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
See also:
Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daini_Nuclear_Power_... < This one, just a few miles away worked according to plan, and was a base for safe operations in all that chaos that ensued, because Fukushima Daichi was planned bad, ignoring hundreds of years of local knowledge, including stone markers which showed how high former tsunamis reached there. And then putting emergency infrastructure below that line, also not installing available systems which would have stopped the hydrogen explosions from happening.
Chernobyl? Human stupidity commited by 'Apparatshiks'.
TMI? Shrug. Shit happens. Was there more than a great panic about not that much? Is there a large exclusion zone? Was there ever one?
> Is that burying it deep underground?
Yes, why not? It's perfectly workable to 'feel good' about it, though not strictly necessary. The Fins do it. The US could have this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... , the opposition against that is ridiculous, considering Nevada is irradiated anyway because of all the nuclear testing there :)
Otherwise: Eminent domain! Comply or die!
This is partly my point. Nuclear is dangerous because idiots can make mistakes. Can you do that with wind and solar?
Yes, there are lots of things that, in the hands of idiots, can be a disaster but I think Nuclear Power is one of the most dangerous. So far we've avoided annihilation via Nuclear Weapons but lately that's become a concern again. It all depends on who is running the show. And that to repeat is my concern over Nuclear Power.
They thought they could win elections calling everyone a racist who disagreed.
That strategy didn't work.
The problems with immigrants are largely exaggerated.
The regions that see the biggest problem in immigration have the fewest immigrants.
Just ask german hospitals what would happen without Syrian personnel.
Funny you're mentioning that, because personnel from german hospitals is complaining about the behaviour of clients from that, and neighboring regions.
As do general medical practitioners, or EMTs.
The answer is that parts of the country that have enjoyed homogeneity the longest are the most upset about having that homogeneity violated. If one lives in Berlin, which has been heteregenous for a long time, the introduction of mass migration was less upsetting. If one lives in a village or small city that was 100% German for a long time, and now has the pleasure of “welcoming” strangers with a higher crime rate, alien social customs, and different appearance—your response is different.
In UE we need a POLITICAL union, WIPING OUT the kleptocracy, and a strong EU+EAEU partnership, us with the best tech, them with natural resources and space. USA need central Asia and South America and they probably can't get both, China need both as well, UK need a world war to justify the deep impoverishment of their subject to avoid a civil war. Different needs by different bodies.