From STOP THESE THINGS

Germany’s self-inflicted renewable energy disaster is on display for all to see. It’s a calamity that the MSM refuses to acknowledge. An inconvenient truth, no doubt.

Sure, the Russians pulled the plug on gas supplies to Germany, but mother nature does the same with sunshine and breezes, every day. Sunset, cloud cover and calm weather, do it every time.

The Germans call it ‘dunkelflaute’ – a period of gloomy, windless weather. Which roughly translates as a complete collapse in the output of their more than 30,000 wind turbines and millions of solar panels.

Quietly, logic and common sense are returning to retake control of Germany’s idiotic energy policy, with coal-fired power front and centre.

As Pierre Gosselin outlines below, Germans appear less keen on pointless virtue signalling and more in tune with the need to have power 24 x 7, whatever the weather.

Wall Street Journal Makes Fun Of German Energy Policy. “Hilarious Green Irony” As Coal Rescues
No Tricks Zone
Pierre Gosselin
21 March 2023

Germany’s Blackout News reports how the global media is making fun of the clown show that’s become Germany’s energy policy.

Incompetent hands
For decades, Germany’s energy policy has been overtaken and revamped by green environmentalist and pacifist politicians who have little or no technical competence at all in the fields of energy engineering. They promised it would be cheap, clean and plentiful. The sun and wind, after all, are free for the taking!

Today, the German public is painfully starting to find out that solar and wind energy indeed do send bills, and quite large ones at that. And if you think Germany’s energy policies sound really dumb, then come out and see how they feel! One single grandmother I know recently got her new natural gas prices: 600 euros a month!

“World’s dumbest energy policy”
So it’s little wonder that not long ago, the Wall Street Journal called Germany’s: “The world’s dumbest energy policy.”

Now the famous, renowned financial journal is back again with a follow-up article: “Coal keeps Germany’s lights on“.

First, the WSJ reports how Europe managed (ironically) “to avert an energy-shortage recession this winter”, by using “evil coal”, citing recently released data. This past winter, without coal stepping up to the plate, the natural gas shortages would have left a number of German households out in the cold.

Coal is doing the job, according to the WSJ, because “wind and solar don’t work when the winds are still or the skies are cloudy” and “when the weather doesn’t cooperate” – which is often the case in Germany in the wintertime.

“Another explanation for coal’s resurgence is the political hostility of Germany’s green left to nuclear power” and to its shale-gas reserves,” comments the WSJ. “So in an hilarious green irony, coal is keeping the lights on.”

The WSJ keeps the hope alive that “Berlin will catch up to what the market already knows: Fossil fuels remain indispensable for powering modern economies.” My message to the WSJ editors: Don’t keep your hopes up. The “world’s dumbest energy policy” is being run by the world’s dumbest energy politicians. So don’t expect them to solve the huge mess they themselves have created.
No Tricks Zone

Coal Keeps Germany’s Lights On
Wall Street Journal
Editorial Board
9 March 2023

Germany did itself and Europe a favor by managing to avert an energy-shortage recession this winter, and now we know how they did it: supposedly evil coal. Data released Thursday show coal’s role in electricity generation growing in Germany for the second year running.

Coal accounted for 33.3% of electricity production in 2022, according to the Federal Statistical Office, up from 30.2% in 2021. This is partly because coal picked up some of the slack from natural gas—whose share of electricity production dropped to 11.4% from 12.6%—as a halt of gas imports from Russia forced Germany to use other fuels. But coal’s resurgence started in 2020, before the Ukraine war triggered fears of a gas crisis.

Blame renewables and the politicians who love them. The renewable share of Germany’s electricity generation grew to 46.3% from 42.3% in 2022, the data point Berlin will want to highlight. But wind and solar don’t work when the winds are still or the skies are cloudy. Utilities require cheap and easy alternative sources of power to match supply with demand in an advanced industrial economy when the weather doesn’t cooperate. Cheap and easy means coal, which is why coal’s share of German electricity increased even as the overall share of conventional sources of energy declined to 53.7% from 57.7%.

Another explanation for coal’s resurgence is the political hostility of Germany’s green left to nuclear power, whose share of electricity production fell to 6.4% from 12.6% as three reactors were shut, leaving only three left to limp along this spring. Germany could tap its shale-gas reserves for a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, but that option is politically toxic too. So in an hilarious green irony, coal is keeping the lights on.

Berlin still plans to ban coal by 2030. Maybe before that day arrives politicians in Berlin will catch up to what the market already knows: Fossil fuels remain indispensable for powering modern economies.
Wall Street Journal

Saving Germany from weather-driven mass blackouts.