Cut the subsidies to wind power and turbine makers soon fold. Siemens Gamesa has been axing hundreds of jobs in Europe and America as the wheels come off the renewable energy gravy train.
Now, Vestas, Nordex and Enercon are also facing financial ruin, and for all the same reasons.
Some of their travails are caused by the fact that Germany suffers Europe’s highest power prices, which necessarily affects the bottom line. Their Chinese competitors – running on cheap coal-fired power – are able to deliver these things at a fraction of the cost.
But it appears that the main reason for the wind industry meltdown is that with Europe’s grand wind and solar ‘transition’ in tatters, orders for new turbines have simply shrivelled up. Pierre Gosselin has this report.
Germany’s Compounding Energy Woes: Even Wind Power Industry Is “Sliding Into Crisis”
No Tricks Zone
Pierre Gosselin
15 November 2022
Germany’s Blackout News here reports that not only is Germany’s energy supply faltering profoundly, but so is its wind industry as well, reporting that it is “sliding into a crisis”.
Wind energy is supposed to step in and play a key role in supplying Germany with energy as other sources get cut off. But that too is not going to plan.
“Nordex is closing its plant in Rostock, Siemens Gamesa is sliding deep into the red and at Vestas the workforce is on strike,” reports Blackout News.
The German government aims to solve the country’s massive energy woes by doubling wind energy output over the next decade or so, but wind parks just aren’t getting built and orders are “collapsing sharply”, falling by “more than a third in the third quarter” at Siemens Gamesa year-on-year.
The result: thousands of lost jobs.
Blackout News cites “incalculable record raw material prices and supply chain problems” and a lack of profitability. Companies like Nordex are closing plants in Germany and moving production offshore to places like China.
The unplanned lack of wind energy expansion in combination with the massive supply stop of Russian natural gas is acting to further compound the German government’s problems as it struggles to keep the country supplied with energy while it suicidally pushes for the electrification of transportation and the closure of nuclear and coal power plants.
“Siemens Gamesa made a loss of almost one billion euros in the past fiscal year and sales fell by four percent,” according to Blackout News. “Vestas has already made a loss of just under one billion euros, compared with a profit of 135 million euros a year earlier.”
Government reforms have to have “driven turbine manufacturers into cutthroat competition” and the German market “has collapsed in recent years,” Blackout News adds. “For the market leaders Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex and Enercon, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find financiers willing to invest in wind turbines.
No Tricks Zone
via STOP THESE THINGS
December 7, 2022 by stopthesethings
You must be logged in to post a comment.