From KlimaNachrichten

By Fritz Vahrenholt

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

even though the global temperature has hardly changed compared to July, the cooling trend remains intact. The American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sees a cool LA NINA approaching in the Pacific Ocean this winter, which will also lead to a decline in global temperatures. The deviation from the long-term average of satellite measurements is 0.39 degrees Celsius in August.

The oath of disclosure about the German power supply
 

“The energy transition is at a crossroads”. This is how Minister Katharina Reiche begins her analysis of German energy policy at the presentation of the annual monitoring report on the energy transition on 15.9.2025. For 15 years, in which the climate-protection-oriented energy transition has been celebrated by all federal governments as having no alternative, Katharina Reiche has dared to point out that the energy transition has not sufficiently taken care of security of supply and affordability: “Reliability, security of supply, affordability must be placed at the center.” And further: “An honest stocktaking is unavoidable.”

What have we had so far? Citizens in Germany have been systematically misinformed about the consequences of the energy transition. As the East German works councils recently wrote to the chancellor: “The political promises of a green economic miracle are just smoke and mirrors. The reality is that never before have so many good jobs been threatened as they are today.”
The minister picks up on this criticism in her 10-point programme, which is well worth reading: “The energy transition can only succeed through pragmatism and realism.” Yes, all the dreams that have been concocted so far by the political religious leaders of the energy transition such as Röttgen, Altmaier, Gabriel and Habeck are far from being realizable. We still have you in our ears:

In 2010, Röttgen saw a fundamental contradiction in renewable energies and base load: “You have to decide, you can’t go both ways at the same time. For investment reasons, but also because the economic concept of base-load power plants – nuclear energy in particular – is economically incompatible with the expansion of renewable energies.”
The Spiegel headline about Altmaier was: Altmaier rules out nuclear energy for all time. He promised the repository for 2030.Gabriel
2017 on the energy transition: In the long term, everyone will benefit from this: business, politics and, above all, consumers.

Grandmaster Habeck’s miscalculations have cost Germany a lot of prosperity: “The debate about the Building Energy Act,… was honestly a test of how far society is willing to support climate protection – if it becomes concrete.
 

The 10 points of the Minister of Economic Affairs, which are worth reading, are a resounding slap in the face to the altar boys of the green Bullerby idyll from 2010 to 2025. The public financial requirements have also not yet been reliably calculated. It calls for more market and more openness to technology. A clear verdict on the intervention of the previous government with the shutdown of 6 nuclear power plants, which produced electricity at 2.5 euro cents per kilowatt hour. Diplomatically, she formulates: “The phase-out of nuclear energy and the gradual shutdown of coal-fired power generation by 2038 is ambitious; stable, reliable base-load power plants must be rebuilt as the backbone of the supply.” By this she means above all the approximately 50 to 70 gas-fired power plants that are now to be built with high subsidies.

She also correctly notes that solar and wind power plants often produce more than demand. This means that in the event of overproduction, solar systems and wind power plants have to be shut down at great cost or are given away as a waste stream across the borders with billions in additional payments. In the Monitoring Report 2025 (p.68) you can see the whole undesirable development in all its glory:

In the 1st half of the year, the share of photovoltaic electricity generated that is fed into the grid at negative prices rose to 29%! Almost a third of the photovoltaic electricity generated is practically worthless and has so far been remunerated with billions of euros.

The dark doldrums are also worth mentioning by the minister: “In times of little wind and sun, the gap can only be closed by fossil fuel producers or imports.” And she also clears up Franz Alt’s fairy tale, which whole armies of green-tinged journalists have brought to the people: The sun does not send an invoice. Reiche: “The assumption that electricity from renewable energies can be made available practically free of charge is wrong when the overall system is taken into account – this shortened view creates enormous economic risks.” Which of the four climate policy leaders mentioned above has ever addressed the out-of-control system costs for renewable energies?
 

Not a word about lost industrial jobs 

Minister Reiche makes the biggest change in the estimate of electricity demand until 2030. While the traffic light coalition was still dreaming of 750 terawatt hours, its estimate is in the lower range of 600 to 700 terawatt hours, because it took into account a weaker ramp-up of electric cars, heat pumps, but also the decline in energy-intensive industry in Germany. The achievement of the target by cutting industrial jobs should fill the Minister of Economic Affairs with concern. Instead, it does not find a word in your 10-point plan about the loss of industrial jobs due to the energy transition, which has been going on for years.
Reiche, on the other hand, rightly criticizes the excessive bureaucracy in energy policy. More than 15,000 legal norms lead to administrative overload for participants in the energy market. The recently published report by Frontier economics “New Paths in the Energy Transition” quantifies: “the energy transition-driven bureaucracy causes an estimated annual bureaucracy costs of around €10 billion at the federal level alone”. The next chart shows this rapid increase in bureaucracy costs since 2017.

The minister’s conclusion: No company, no product, no idea must fail because of the price of electricity! But that is exactly what is happening at the moment. Every week there are reports of industrial closures or relocations abroad due to high energy costs. With regard to the development of artificial intelligence, the coalition agreement still stated: “We are strengthening Germany as a data center location as a beacon of Europe.” A few months later, according to Manova, the demand for network connections for data centers in the Frankfurt network area – 1/3 of the capacity of all data centers is concentrated here – exceeds the available range of services. E.DIS, distribution system operators in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, have received 170 inquiries for data centers with a capacity of 20 to 320 MW each, the majority of which cannot be served. Westnetz GmbH, Germany’s largest distribution grid, has received requests from data centers for North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony amounting to 10,000 MW. The secured power and grid capacity are largely lacking. AI centers that require reliable performance around the clock will bypass Germany.
 

The political breaking point of the energy transition 

Security of supply is becoming a political breaking point. This is also shown by the latest study by PWC. According to this, the German electricity supply is threatened with massive bottlenecks in the coming years. The author of the study, Andree Gerken, has calculated that from 2035 onwards, there will be a shortage of care in half of all hours in a year. The study speaks of a “complex market failure”, which is reflected in the increasing number of hours of negative electricity prices on the stock exchange. But the dark doldrums are the even bigger problem. In the meantime, Germany imports 6% of its electricity demand after the nuclear phase-out, and the trend is rising with each additional coal-fired power plant that is shut down. Battery storage systems are not a solution for prolonged dark doldrums. According to the study, the only way to help is the construction of gas-fired power plants. However, it could take “ten or even fifteen years for such plants to go into operation. Among other things, because there are global bottlenecks in gas turbines.”
 

Germany is heading for a supply gap 

This is also the result of the annual security of supply monitoring of the Federal Network Agency. “Security of supply in Germany is guaranteed if additional controllable capacities of 22,400 MW (target scenario) to 35,500 MW (delayed energy transition) are built by 2035.” As early as 2030, there will be a shortage of 17 to 21,000 MW.

In the letter accompanying the cabinet proposal, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Reiche points out to her ministerial colleagues that “under certain assumptions, there could be a supply gap”. In 2030, the demand for electricity “could not be fully covered in a few hours on the electricity market”. Robert Habeck had already called for 12,500 MW of gas-fired power plants in his draft of the Power Plant Safety Act. The coalition agreement of May 2025 then spoke of 20,000 MW of missing secured capacity, which would have to be covered by gas-fired power plants. Now there are 22,400 to 35,000 MW to be added.

By 2035, the following coal-fired power plants are to be taken off the grid:
Weisweiler, Jänschwalde, Boxberg, Niederaussem, Neurath, Schkopau, Lippendorf, Altbach, Heilbronn, Herne, Bergkamen, Rostock, Karlsruhe, Hamburg-Tiefstack, Wilhelmshaven, Berlin-Reuter, Walsum-Duisburg, Gelsenkirchen-Scholven, Staudinger, Groß-Krotzenburg, Weiher-Saarland, Bexbach, Zolling, Völklingen, Mannheim, Karlsruhe-Rheinhafen 7.
The head of the transmission system operator Amprion, Christoph Müller, sees unpleasant developments as early as autumn this year. He can imagine that there will be high electricity prices.

He also considers controlled load shutdowns, i.e. interruptions in the power supply of companies, to be possible, although not necessarily next autumn. “Our actions will be appropriate to the situation, but not pretty,” said the energy manager.

To this end, “predefined groups” are warned in advance that their electricity will be switched off for a certain time the next day, Müller continued. For about an hour and a half. “Hospitals would have to switch to emergency power and perhaps also postpone operations, supermarkets would close their shops, industrial companies might pause a production line.” Against the background of this statement, the decommissioning of the last 6 nuclear power plants by Habeck, Scholz and Lindner is a serious irreparable violation of the oath of office that the three have taken.
 

 LNG natural gas power plants produce more CO2 than coal-fired power plants

The green dream world has burst, leaving billions in costs and a supply risk, writes Heinz Steiner in report 24. Incidentally, the missing 35,000 MW of gas-fired power plant capacity means 70 new gas-fired power plants. They must be fuelled with additional LNG imports. If the LNG comes from overseas, the equivalent CO2 emissions of the natural gas production-LNG-liquefaction-transport-combustion chain in the gas-fired power plant are even greater than the CO2 emissions of the coal-fired power plants to be decommissioned. (Howarth 2024)

The cost of 15,000 MW of gas-fired power plants in 2024 was estimated at around €27 billion in necessary subsidies. For 35,000 MW gas-fired power plants, it would be over €60 billion. If the EU does not approve the subsidies by the taxpayer from the federal budget, electricity in Germany would have to be subject to a further levy of 3.7 €ct/kWh. So much for the sayings that solar and wind are making electricity generation cheaper and cheaper.
Frontier economics estimates the total cost of the energy transition by 2045 at 4800 to 5400 billion euros. DIHK President Peter Adrian can be agreed with when he says that there is an urgent need for a rethink in energy policy. But we don’t just need a rethink, we need a change of course. However, this will only be possible if we move away from the self-destructive goals of Europe going it alone in climate policy.

Sincerely,

Fritz Vahrenholt