fulltext[2] energy is the key renewable energy problems in germany

8/2/2019 Fulltext[2] Energy is the Key Renewable Energy Problems in Germany

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ENERGY IS THE KEY: RENEWABLE ENERGY

PROBLEMS IN GERMANY

RENEWABLE ENERGIES ARE NOT A SOLUTION RATHER THEY

INCREASE FOREIGN DEPENDENCY.

Michael Limburg

ABSTRACTThe basic requirements for a steady, demand-oriented, economic and

environmentally compatible energy supply are defined and the electrical energy

produced by wind, sun and bio-fuel are then rated accordingly. Although renewable

energies have made considerable progress in some respects, they have major

shortcomings when compared to conventional energy sources when all factors are

considered. One of the main reasons is the extremely low energy density

characteristic that renewable energy sources have. Another reason is the unsolved

problem of the highly uneconomical large-scale storage of electrical energy, and

with still no solution in sight. Bio-fuels can be stored and are thus an exception. But

they have enormous problems in other areas. The deficiencies for all types of

renewable energies are discussed in detail and illustrated with example

calculations.

INTRODUCTION

When passion substitutes reason. This old Roman saying aptly describes todays

political promotion of so-called renewable energies. Renewable energies, we are told,

reduce our dependency on foreign fossil fuels and do not emit climate-harmful CO2

into the atmosphere when used to produce electrical energy. Yet word has gotten outthat the overall CO2 budget when one includes the manufacture and operation of wind

and solar farms is horrendous at best. And when it comes to bio fuels, not even

supporters deny it. Yet proponents now differentiate between good CO2 from

biofuels and bad CO2 from fossil fuels. The fact that nature does not care simply gets

a blind eye. Renewable energies are also not the solution for providing inexpensive and

plentiful energy when based solely on technical and economic reasons, and in fact only

exacerbate the problem considerably. No matter, solar advocates Franz Alt and Euro-

solar pope Hermann Scheer like to tell us that the sun and wind do not send electric

bills, thus giving the impression they are free for the taking. Of course they know

full well this is not true. Wild berries or mushrooms are also provided for free bynature, but their price comes from the labour of picking them by hand one by one.

Suddenly they become very costly. The same is true for sun and wind when used as a

1289


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source of electrical and thermal energy because they require considerable tooling and

investment. The investment and resources needed to extract even minimal amounts of

electricity from the wind are exceedingly high. Even so, free energy from the sun andwind always sounds like a great idea, and masses of people have been duped into

believing the energy swindlers behind them.

This report looks at how expensive and space-demanding wind and sun energy truly

are, and do so by examining the three main requirements for a well-functioning energy

supply: economy, availability and continuous supply. The management of energy

combines availability and continuity to define supply reliability, and, for good reasons,

environmental compatibility also gets factored in. But for the sake of our evaluation,

we will keep them separated. The above mentioned requirements serve as the basis for

justifying every investment decision in building power plants, refineries, gas pipelines,

etc. The result shows that neither electricity from the wind nor electricity from solarcells is able to fulfil the three requirements of economy, availability and continuous

supply. In any test result, these types of energy would receive only a rating ofpoor in

each of the three requirements. And for a composite of the three requirements, only a

rating ofunsatisfactory would be given. Why?

ELECTRICAL ENERGY FROM THE WIND

Lets first take a look at economy. According to German wind energy lobbyist Ralf

Bischof, Managing Director of the National Association for Wind Energy, to the

pressetext:

In Germany, a stable renewable energy feed-in tariff1 accompanied by a clearlegal framework and attractive overall conditions for support and feed-in into power

grids have facilitated the rapid development of electrical capacities from renewable

energy sources. The amendment to the German Renewable Energy Law (EEG)

provides even higher feed-in tariffs and further promotes innovation and investment.

For the wind energy sector, the EEG amendment is truly welcome. It represents a

change in direction and provides incentives for wind park modernisation and will

reinvigorate the sector.

This is great news for those who benefit from the wind business, but unfortunately

not for the consumer. Why not? Today a wind turbine can be set up for approx. 1000

($1350) for each kW ofinstalled power rating. This installed rating, however, is rarely

ever reached. In fact it is reached only when the wind blows at a speed of approx.

12 m/s (28 mph, or 6 on the Beaufort scale). This is already a strong wind that is just

shy of storm force in intensity. The problems begin when the wind blows (if at all) at

lower speeds. At lower speeds a wind turbine generates much less power than its rated

capacity because electrical power output drops off exponentially to the third power.

That means if the wind blows only at half the speed, the turbine power output is not

simply reduced to a half, but rather it is cut to a mere eighth! Vice versa, doubling the

wind speed increases power output eight-fold. Sound great? Unfortunately it doesnt

1290 Energy & Environment Vol. 20, No. 8, 2009/Vol. 21, No. 1, 2010

1+ 24 June 2008 + Germany: Legal framework for profitability is favourable: That the bubble burst of the

dotcom economy would repeat in the wind energy sector is not possible. The conditions are completely

different, claims Ralf Bischof, Managing Director of the German Association of Wind Energy.


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quite work out that way as most wind turbines automatically shut down shortly

after surpassing their rated power due to safety reasons. This protects the wind

turbine from sure destruction when wind speeds do surpass rated capacity. Andwhen the turbines shut down because of high wind speeds, the power they feed into

the grid drops abruptly from a maximum to zero in a matter of seconds. This leads

to a rapid power grid destabilisation and other back-up power generation systems

have to kick in at a moments notice to prevent power grid collapse. This creates

huge problems, and they will only get worse for power companies. Increasing wind

energy sets the stage for potential future power outages and blackouts. Would

anyone in the middle of open heart surgery want to be connected to a heart-lung

machine powered by an unstable power grid that is increasingly fed by

unpredictable wind energy?

Normal and far more frequent in Germany are wind speeds of 4 to 7 m/s. At 6 m/s,the output of a wind turbine, as mentioned earlier, is reduced to a mere eighth of its

rated capacity. And if wind speed slows even further to say only 4 m/s, then the power

output diminishes to a measly 3.7% of the turbines rated capacity. This is the reason

in addition to the generally inconsistent availability of windwhy wind turbines have

an average capacity utilisation significantly below 20% in Germany. The figure was

only 17%2 in 2006, and just a bit more in 2007. Imagine how investors would react if

told the power plant they wish to invest in will run at its rated capacity less than 20%

of its available time, and then remain idle. Compare this to atomic and coal-fired power

plants where the figure is about 90%. Now it becomes clear why the seemingly

moderate investment sum of 1000 /kW mentioned earlier becomes in reality anextremely high investment amount of well over 5000 /kW. Wind turbines hardly ever

run at their maximum speed and rarely do they produce at their so-called rated

capacity.

It gets even worse. There still remains the problem of the extremely vast space

needed by wind parks. It is simply not possible to erect wind turbines directly next to

each other. They have to be located a minimum distance apart from each other in order

to optimally extract energy from the windwhen it actually does blow. According to

physicist Alvo von Alvensleben3:

Air flow behind the rotor is turbulent, and every wind generator produces a wake

behind it. This has to be taken into account when laying out a wind park. As a rule of

thumb the distance between each wind turbine in the direction of the wind should be

between 5 to 9 rotor diameters, and 3 to 5 diameters in the lateral direction. Due to

space limitations, this is not always possible. For example this is why the operator of

2 wind turbines at the Holzschlgermatte am Schauinsland in Germany has a 15% loss

in power output from his second downstream wind turbinedue to the wake from the

first turbine.

Energy is the Key: Renewable Energy Problems in Germany 1291

2According to the German Federal Association of Energy.

3small in a comparison to other specific investment costs: brown coal power plants: 1200 /kW, stone coal

power plants: 1000 /kW, gas-fired power plant: 600 /kW, photovoltaic system: 4000 /kW)

http://www.dimagb.de/info/umwelt/alve2.html


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The green Hamburger Bildungsserver4 writes:

A 650-MW coal-fired power plant is concentrated on an area of only one to two

square kilometres. To get the same output from wind turbines, 325 2-megawatt windturbines or 6500 100-kilowatt (emphasis by the author) wind turbines would be needed

(calculated using rated output). If the 2-megawatt rated turbines were positioned

300 metres apart, a strip of land more than 100 km long would be needed.

This calculation has been heavily sweetened to favour wind energy. In reality,

because of the wind turbines measly 17% capacity utilisation, 1720 2-megwatt turbines

would be required on strip of land more than 600 km long. Indeed extremely vast areas

are needed to produce power from the wind. And because a 2.5-MW wind turbine has

a rotor diameter of 100 metres, a distance of 300 m (3 rotor diameters) is certainly

overly optimistic and simply sugar coated. In reality a distance of at least 500 m is

necessary in the wind direction, and 900 m would be optimal with 300 to 500 m in thelateral direction. If one wishes to substitute a single 650 MW coal-fired power plant

with a capacity utilisation of 90% using the more optimum 5 rotor-diameter distance

between wind turbines, a row of 1376 wind turbines over distance of 688 km would be

needed, more than the distance between Berlin and Aachen! And to avoid wake-

interference completely, the distance should be increased to 700 m, thus increasing the

line of wind turbines to 963 kmabout the distance between Berlin and Paris. It also

really does not help that industrious wind park operators and farmers could grow biofuel

crops on a large parts of the countryside under wind turbines to boot. The large tracts of

land are simply not available. Because wind turbines simply cannot be located directly

next to each other, the needed area is huge (perhaps only earth-embedded, bio-friendly

zero-energy dwellings that do not obstruct the wind stream could be allowed nearby).

With only 300 m of distance in the transverse direction and 500 m in the wind direction,

an area of 206-km2 would be needed. For the optimum distance of 500 m, a vast area of

481 km2 would be needed just to replace a single coal-fired power plantabout 100 to

240 times the area of a single midsize coal-fired power plant. Thats a huge use of land

surface that could only be topped by the much-vaunted organic farming. Just how stupid

do the wind turbine proponents in politics and business think we are?

Yet this is only half the truth, as we know that such a huge wind energy system

simply cannot replace a coal-fired power plant. As soon as the wind stops to blow, thepower goes out. Doubling or even multiplying the number of wind turbines tenfold

would not produce a single extra watt on a windless day. On the other hand a coal-fired

power plant delivers a steady supply of power no matter what the weather does. The

market does not need electrical power with a certain level of probability; rather it needs

power with a certain level of certainty.

Photo 25: A 750 MW coal-fired power plant in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. To

produce an equal amount of energy with wind in one year, 3000 1.5-megawatt wind

turbines would have to be set up next to each other5.

No sane business-person would invest money in wind parks under such conditions

alone. This is only possible with massive pressure, which politicians dub economic


4http://www.hamburger-bildungsserver.de/welcome.phtml?unten=/klima/energie/erw-20.html

5Source: Prof. Dr. Appel in an e-mail to the author, 12 July 2008.


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incentives, and with politics. In 1991 the government of Helmut Kohl enacted the

so-called Power Feed-in Act, which was later amended by the Socialist-Green coalition

government of Gerhard Schrder to become the EEG Act (Energy Feed-in Act). ThisAct, chalk-full of tricks, forced disliked power companies to buy renewable energy no

matter the circumstances, and to do so at exorbitant state-regulated prices. But in a trade-

off, the power companies were allowed to pass the higher costs on to the consumers. The

statethe driver behind the price spiralwas then able to capitalise by collecting more

revenue from energy taxes while dubiously claiming not a single subsidy is paid out. Is

it any wonder that this tricky law has since become one of Germanys biggest exports (so

named with delight by Environmental Secretary Michael Mller of the SPD Socialist

Party)? This is how the EEG Act was either fully or partly exported to over 46 countries

worldwide. Governments assume, and rightly so, that there are enough masses of stupid

people, and that they wont be going extinct anytime soon.Lets turn our attention back to the costs. The so-called energy feed-in rates paid to

onshore wind turbine operators is about 8.9 -ct (12 US cents) per kWh and will

increase to 9.5 -ct/kWh in 2009. For offshore turbines, feed-in rates of 13 to 15 -ct/kWh

have been decided. This money is paid to the wind turbine operators by the power

companies (who then levy hefty surcharges on the consumers) whenever green power

is fed in, whether it is needed or not.

The rule of thumb that applies when feeding volatile wind energy into the power

grid is: Every kW of wind generated power must be backed up an additional kW from

natural gas-fired power plants in order to act as a buffer for windless periods or storms.

Every kW of wind capacity requires 1 kW of capacity from natural gas! This meansdouble capacity must be made available to ensure at least 50% delivery (When the

wind blows optimally, the gas turbines shut down. And when the wind stops the gas

turbines operate at full throttle). Sensible economic management begs the question:

Why not do away with all the expensive wind energy and simply run the gas-fired

plants full time? This would at least save the consumers a bundle.

Figure 26: The increasing share of natural gas for power generation correlates

extremely closely with the increasing share generated by the wind. Both trend-lines

have almost identical slopes. When one observes the shorter period of 2000 to 2007, it

becomes clear that both trend lines are increasing further. This increases dependency

on natural gas deliveries from foreign suppliers. (Source: Winfried Heck HYPERLINK

http://nature2000.tripod.com/naturstrom/wkr100.htm http://nature2000.tripod.com/

naturstrom/wkr100.htm)

Recently journalists have written about the folly of such an energy policy. For

example Edgar Grtner writes in his report Windmills and Co.: The Wind-Gas Cartel

for ef6:

80-year old Texas oil and gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens wishes to erect a

monument for himself by leaving behind thousands of wind turbines to his fellow

citizens. Already he has ordered the first 667 1.5 MW wind turbines with a total

capacity of 1000 megawatts for $2 billion from green US conglomerate General


6Edgar Grtner: Windrder und Co. Das Wind-Gas-Kartell (Windmills & Co: The Wind-Gas Cartel):

http://ef-magazin.de/2008/07/14/414-windraeder-und-co-das-wind-gas-kartell


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Electric (GE). Suddenly Pickens, who seems to have converted from Saul to Paul,

wishes to reduce his countrys thirst for foreign oil imports. What a man going senile,

could easily dismiss as philanthropic madness, is in reality a well-thought-out businessstrategy. While earlier wind power investors were convinced they could help save the

world through their good deeds, todays situation is completely different. Word has

gotten out that every kilowatt of installed wind energy capacity has to be backed up by

a kilowatt from a gas-fired turbine to buffer wildly fluctuating wind power. People who

vigorously support wind energy are now, more often than not, in the business of selling

natural gas or gas turbines. Indeed one discovers that the extraordinarily successful

XTO Energy gas exploration company belongs to Pickens company group. Also, it is

also not surprising that GEs Ecomagination campaign has a lot to do with natural

gas. GE offers its wind turbines at an especially low price in order to boost its gas

turbine sales. GE is the undisputed leader in the gas turbine market, where it earns farmore money than it does in the highly competitive wind turbine market. Even Rex

Tillerson, CEO of giant ExxonMobil can be delighted with this development. Even

though Tillerson drives tree-hugging activists up the wall with his belittling of

investments in renewable energies and insists that oil will remain Exxons core

business, he realises theres a lot of money to be made with natural gas. Currently

Exxon is investing massively in natural gas.

Even the notoriously green German news magazine Spiegel Online has allowed

author Wolfgang Reuter to write under the catchy headline:Kohle in den Sand gesetzt7

(Pouring money down a hole):

.... and this is how that the Gulf Region countries have developed a highly lucrativebusiness strategy: They sell their oil at the record price of 140 US dollars per barrel

on the world market, yet meet their own energy requirements by importing cheap coal,

whose supply by sea is without problems.

But Reuter forgot to add: And their natural gas is then sold at premium prices to

ecologically correct Europe for the purpose of buffering their wind-produced energy.

He also writes poignantly and with regret:

This development illustrates the absurd results that a nationally limited energy

policy can lead to. While Germany aims to reduce its CO2 output 20% by 2020, and

wishes to achieve the double savings, many Gulf states are still considered developing

countries, including the United Arab Emirates.Although these countries have ratified

the Kyoto Protocol, they themselves have no obligation whatsoever to reduce CO2emissions.

Getting back to eco-holy, climate-protecting Germany and its generous

subsidies for wind energy, it costs 8.9 -ct/kWh to generate electricity from the

wind, whereas it costs only approx. 2.4 -ct/kWh for brown coal and atomic

energy, and about 4.0 ct-/kWh8 for stone coal. The costs for additional

transmission networks, hook-ups to the power grid and regulation-energy for wind


7http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/dokument/54/71/dokument.html?titel=Kohle+in+den+Sand+gesetzt&id=5

7781745&top=SPIEGEL&suchbegriff=dubai+kohle&quellen=&vl=0

8This price was recently 3 -ct/kWh, and has since increased to 4 ct/kWh because of the sub-optimal

operation of coal-fired power plants brought on by the need to buffer renewable energy, an increase of 33 %.


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add up to another 2.4 ct-/kWh, bringing the total to 11.3 -ct/kWh. The result: The

consumer is saddled with up to 4.5 times the cost encountered with conventional

energy. The German state of Lower Saxony even allows itself, by law, the luxuryand its citizens the burdenof having underground power transmission lines from

the wind parks to the power grid instead of the supposively unattractive yet

relatively inexpensive overhead power lines (why pegging the entire countryside

with wind turbines is not unattractive remains to be explained by

environmentalists). One no longer sees the power lines in Lower Saxony, but they

cost eight times more than overhead lines! Its no wonder large energy corporations

like Siemens and EON are now enthusiastically in the business and happily taking

the consumer to the cleaners. A. v. Alvensleben writes:

The luxury surcharge mentioned above runs at80.30 per megawatt-hour. This

leads to a total cost of (2003 hic) 1.57 billion per year, which the consumer couldspare if the power from wind energy was generated by conventional methods...

To make matters even worse, about 20,0009 wind turbines were installed in

Germany in 2008. And the costs have gone up further. In the meantime we are at

89.17 per megawatt hour, and thus have an additional cost of 3.44 billion for

consumers, all thanks to the EEG and wind power. To say it in another way: each

wind turbine burdens the citizens to the tune of176,512 per year. The madness has

a method.10 Yet, this still does not include all the direct and indirect subsidies

incurred. In 2002, according to a compilation by v. Alvensleben, these costs

amounted to approx. 2 billion annually. Since then the figure has certainly gone up.

But let us use the conservative figure of only 2.5 billion today. The devastating

luxury of wind energy costs in total 6 billion annually. The wind industry employs

roughly 45,000 workers, thus requiring each job to be subsidised every year with

133,000! These monster-size subsidies for the wind-energy job-creation program

are outdone only by solar power, which we will examine later. Some politicians have

recognised the enormity of this consumer rip-off and have finally spoken out. People

who invest in wind turbines at the right place can get a payback that is not possible

anywhere else, and at no risk. For this reason Kurt Biedenkopf, former Prime Minister

of the German state of Saxony, once called wind turbines money printing machines,

and in September 2003 then German Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement statedin an interview:

It simply cannot be that some peopleand we know this because figures have been

publishedget a return on an investment in wind energy plants of 16 to 20 percent.

Show me any other investment where one can get such a return. It has to be possible

to speak openly about these things, and Im doing just that, Im speaking openly: This

simply cannot continue.

Both gentlemen are correctand maybe because of their openness, are today no

longer in office.


9Numbers calculated from: HYPERLINK http://www.weltderphysik.de/de/4829.php

http://www.weltderphysik.de/de/4829.php and DEWI Magazine August 2008, p., 26: 19.869 Plant with

23,044.28 MW as of 30 June 2008.

10Further information on the costs of wind energy can be found here: http://www.windstrom-kosten.de/


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SUPPLY CONTINUITY

Continuity in power supply is closely related to availability, yet it is a different

problem.

11

The grid system must be kept in balance between the available power for input to

the grid, the demand for power from the grid, and the distributions of where the power

is available and where it is needed. These characteristics must be maintained with an

extremely high level of precision in order to prevent systems faults and so-called

wattless power where power companies do not coordinate their activities, and may

even work against each other. Power grids may interfere with each other and even

cause others to be switched off, which has often happened in the past. This was the case

in the widespread blackout of November 4, 2006 when half of Western Europe lost

power because of a planned, yet wildly fluctuating wind-power feed-in that occurred

in the north German Weser-Ems region.12 As an unusually high amount of wind powerwas fed in, an error at the EON control centre resulted in a cascade of emergency

regional grid shutdowns which produced a frequency drop-off that led to an automatic

shut-off and subsequent automatic switch-on of the renegade wind park. These

automated steps, which fed power into the grid when it should not have, and did not

feed power in when it should have, prevented the grid from returning to a stable

operating condition in multiple ways. Without the troublesome, required feeding-in of

wildly fluctuating and flickering wind power, the error would have been removed

quickly and the problem would have gone unnoticed. But thanks to wind power this

was not the case. A huge swath of Western Europe blacked out. In general, all

consumers will have to suffer because they rely on a steady, uninterrupted voltage levelbeing fed into the power grid. The improper function of synchronous clocks will be the

least of their problems.

ELECTRICAL ENERGY FROM THE SUN

Like wind, solar energys inadequacy as a reliable power supply practically applies

1:1. It too is uneconomical, inconsistent and supply-dependent. Quantitatively,

however, they are worlds apart. This is especially true with respect to cost and need

for space. It cannot be overstressed: solar energy is much more expensive than the

already very expensive wind energy. The efficiency of expensive solar technology


11Prof. Alt wrote about this in a letter to the Central Committee of Catholics in Bonn (23 Nov. 08) Quote:

....The fact is that Germany and Europe is already using all useable hydro-electric power potential, this

was already accomplished by our grandparents. For example already in 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm put into

operation at that time what was the worlds largest hydroelectric power plant in Heimbach using 6 Francis

turbines and a power capacity of 12 MW.

At the time, it was enough to power the region of Aachen, Dren and Cologne with renewable electrical

energy. After that, the demand for electrical power increased greatly, but the supply from the local Olef river

and other nearby rivers could not keep pace. Thus the additional electricity demand had to be met with coal,

gas and atomic power plants. As a result, compared to brown coal and atomic power, the also cost-effective

hydroelectric power share is only about 5% today. As before, it is certainly being used to a maximum,independent of whether or not consumers switch over the green power, or of the power company.

12 Details can be found here in the UCTE Report HYPERLINK http://www.ucte.org/_library/otherreports/

Final-Report-20070130.pdf http://www.ucte.org/_library/otherreports/Final-Report-20070130.pdf


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currently stands at a miserly 8%less than half of the already lousy wind energy. At

night the sun does not shine, and every single daytime cloud further reduces the

energy extracted from sunlight. In addition the conversion efficiency on average isonly 12% under ideal conditions. And once aging takes its toll on solar panels,

conversion efficiency quickly declines further. Despite the boom in solar companies

and all the political hype about the industry of the future, solar energy contributes only

a puny 0.4% of Germanys total energy supply. Solar energys share is expected to

increase to only about 1.5% by 2020. Yet, even this very small amount is going to cost

the consumer a bundle! Today the legally-guaranteed feed-in tariff paid to solar

energy producers is 57.4 -/kWh, far above the previously projected 12.5 -/kWh

by solar billionaire and Future Award Prize winner Frank Asbeck of Germanys

conservative CDU party. This exorbitant feed-in tariff is paid to any person who has

a solar panel on the roof, and guaranteed for 20 years! Solar power replaces only thefuel-share of power generation in a power plant mix. This is a maximum of about

2 ct/kWh; for nuclear power plants its only 0.5 cent/kWh. Thus, the mandated

57.4 -ct/kWh for solar power generation as to the EEG Act is 25 to 50 times more

expensive than conventional energy sources. In addition it is also highly unlikely that

the black panels mounted on roofs will deliver power for 20 years. Their maintenance,

removal and disposal costs are high, and will certainly incur expenses during their

lifetime that far exceed their original investment. Many of these ballyhooed solar cells

contain especially toxic heavy metals like cadmium. Isnt it strange how the most

ardent organic food producers are often found singing the virtues of solar technology?

Yet, preservatives in foodno way! Heavy metals (toxic waste) on the roof? Whynot! Especially if it serves an ideology.

Getting back to costs, a study conducted by RWI1315 shows that the energy feed-in

tariffs for the miniscule amounts of solar electricity, other subsidies and the destruction

of jobs that would have otherwise existed in other economically viable industrial

sectors amount to already 7 billion today. They calculate that subsidies paid out to the

solar industry amount to approx. 205,000 per year for each job. The environmentally

conscious Focus weekly news magazine writes:

Through the massive construction of additional solar systems and the EEG-

guaranteed feed-in tariffs for 20 years, the Rhine Westphalia Institute for Economic

Research (RWI) calculated that up to 100 billion in accumulated cost could incur.

Here the RWI experts actually used the lower power feed-in tariffs that are planned by

the amendment now in discussion.

Even the argument of high-tech job creation sounds cynical. Daniel Wetzel writes

in the German dailyDie Welt:


13Wenn die Sonne Geld verbrennt (When the Sun Burns Money), Daniel Wetzel (http://www.welt.de/print-

welt/article206001/Wenn_die_Sonne_Geld_verbrennt.html )

14Although the German government has enacted the EEG Amendment to be effective 2009 and decreases thetariffs paid for newly installed panels to 8% annually (9% starting in 2010), it changes nothing with respect

to the thrifty profits of the already established solar system operators, which are guaranteed for 20 years.

15Germanys solar cell promotion http://repec.rwi-essen.de/files/REP_08_040.pdf


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To make the subsidies appear politically attractive, the Federal Association for

Solar Energy (BSW) hyped its own industry sector as a job engine. Bold words.

According to the BSW 3500 workers are employed by the high-tech areas of cellmanufacturing, silicium, chip production and frequency converters. The less

technically demanding module production employs 1600. Most jobs (20,000

employees) are in the relatively low-tech building and installation trades. In fact, the

number of jobs was never actually counted. The BSW simply assumed that one job

exists for each 150,000 euros of industry turnover.

There are people who really take pleasure in this wasteful technologylike a few

German solar companies, such as one owned by Frank Asbeck. But the folks poised to

cash in are Chinese and Japanese company owners. According to Frank Wetzel in the

above mentioned article inDie Welt:

During the past two years more than 50% of the solar electricity systems installedin Germany was supplied by foreign companies. German companies were able to bring

only 201.7 megawatts onto the market in 2004. A total of at least 770 megawatts were

installed in Germany according to Photon. Large foreign suppliers such as Suntech

in China openly boast in the internet 80 percent of our production is exported to

Europe, with Germany being the biggest market.

And the prices of these solar systems exported to Germany are much higher than

what they would otherwise fetch in their own domestic countries, as company Sharp

recently admitted. This is the cause of much delight (and profits) for foreign

manufacturers. Just call it development aid for climate protection of a whole new kind.

According to Wetzel:. . . scientists have come up with other figures. Wolfgang Pfaffenberger, Director of

the Bremer Energy Institute, recently investigated the impact of renewable energy on

the job market. Firstly the huge cost of photovoltaics siphons off so much buying

power from consumers that more jobs are lost due to the solar industry than those

generated by it. The net effect is negative job creation.

Just as the financial demands for solar systems are enormous, so are the needs for

surface area. A single kW of real electrical output requires approx. 187 m 2 (approx.

2000 ft2). And this is true only when the installation is done in the same manner as

on the island of Pellworm, which has an efficiency of 8% of the output of a

conventional power plant. To achieve the 650-megawatt output of a normal coal-

fired power plant, which requires approx. 2 km2 of land surface, solar voltaic cells

would need 122 km2. But that still would not be enough because without the sun

everything stopsno matter how many km2 of solar calls one has. In addition, the

area needed for infrastructure like streets, power lines, fences, maintenance

buildings, transformer facilities, etc. has to be taken into account too. Allowing

another 20%, the required area needed to replace the annual output of one coal-fired

power plant grows to approx. 146 km2and this is possible only when the sun shines

brightly. To say it in another way, we need the area of 73 coal-fired power plants to

produce annually the calculated equal amount with solar power. Yet we would stillbe left with the huge problems of high costs, lack of availability and unsteady output.

Former IBM Europe CEO Olaf Henkel told the German newspaper Bild on

September 15, 2004:



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The enormous wind scam has brought us at least one thing: It has made a few

manufacturers and operators rich through subsidies paid by the consumers.

EU Commissar Andris Piebalgs, responsible for the sector of Energy, recently said:In a time of rapidly rising crude oil prices and climate change, renewable energy

sources give us the opportunity that we must not pass up. They allow us to reduce CO2emissions and to ensure our supply of energy.

What could he possibly mean? Certainly not the previously described renewable

energies. And it certainly was not intended as a Rhine Carnival joke.

BIOFUELS

Ethanol and biodiesel are set to provide 17% of Germanys fuel needs by 2020,

according to the German Federal Government in its Meseberger Resolution. It is to be

the wonder weapon against climate change: renewable primary raw materials as fuels.Much has been recently written on the subject. Corn for the Gas Tank, or A full

tank can feed a person for an entire year etc. are some of the headlines seen during

the spring of 2008. Biofuels can, once extracted, power automobiles, but not all

automobiles. Indeed 3.5 million older cars in Germany alone would not survive even

the relatively scant admixture of only 10% biofuel. But it could still work somehow.

The question is at what cost? The cost, as is the case with all renewable energy, except

for large-scale hydroelectric, would be extremely high. Currently biofuels can be made

from food crops such as corn, grain crops like wheat, or rapeseed, palm oil or sugar

cane. As is the case with other crops, these also have to be planted, irrigated, fertilised,

cared for, harvested and transported before being refined into biofuel. The landpreviously used for food crops would then compete directly with land for biofuel

plants. In addition, the energy content per kg of plant mass is very small (all renewable

energies have the same problem: very low energy densities). This means huge masses

of plants must be processed in order to get the same amount of energy you could get

from a gallon of gasoline or a cubic meter of natural gas. According to agricultural

scientist Professor Konrad Scheffer at the University of Kassel:16

Biodiesel delivers only a relatively minimal net yield. The energy needed to

process the raw material is almost as much as the energy value of the end fuel product.

Harmful gases are produced by growing rapeseed. Oleiferous fruit with their yellow

blossoms produces up to 3.6 kg of nitrous oxide per hectare.

With the biofuel yielded from 1 hectare of land, one can power a midsize car. But it

was not reported how long and how far the car could be driven. Driven by the huge

subsidies for biofuel crops, the amount of available, now less lucrative, food crops has

decreased markedly. The result has been a drastic price spike in food commodities such

as wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and other grain crops needed for food production. This

hits the poorest of the poor the hardest. Of course it hits the rich industrial counties too,

but in poor countries it becomes a matter of survival. In the spring of 2008, more than

100,000 citizens took to the streets in Mexico City to protest at the high prices of

tortillas which are made of corn flour. Corn prices had almost doubled in a matter of afew weeks due to the ethanol boom. In Haiti the first fatalities occurred during unrest


16http://www.udo-leuschner.de/basiswissen/SB110-06.htm


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as hungry citizens rioted and vented their anger at traders and authorities. Swiss UN

Special Envoy even termed biodiesel: a crime against humanity17 The German daily

Die Welt reported:New YorkUN expert Jean Ziegler has called for a 5-year moratorium on the

production of biofuels. Biodiesel is manufactured from grain crops, and has driven up

food prices. More people have gone hungry. Using fertile land for producing biofuels

is a crime against humanity, said Jean Ziegler. To produce 50 litres of ethanol one

needs 232 kilograms of corn. This is enough to feed one child in Mexico or Zambia

for a year, says the AP.

And even if it did not directly threaten the sensitive food situation for millions of

people, the manufacture of biofuels using plants is an extremely uneconomical venture.

In 2007, at a convention for Nobel Prize winners in Lindau, Germany, Prof. Hartmut

Michel reported1819 on the topic of biogas and biodiesel as follows:Biogas is 60% methane and the rest is mostly carbon dioxide. It comes from

agricultural waste that is decomposed by methanogenic bacteria inside air-tight

digesters. If the entire yield of a cornfield is converted into gas, one gains 4600 m3 of

biogas per hectare. This is equivalent to the production of 1.7 kWh per square meter,

or a continuous power of 0.2 watts per square meter. Not taken into consideration in

the calculation is the fact that 40% of the generated energy is again needed just for

planting and transporting the raw material. And because the sun at middle latitudes

radiates energy at 150 W/m2, the total efficiency of the biogas system is less than 0.1 %.

The Federal Republic of Germany itself needs 630 TWh of electric energy per year. To

produce this amount of energy with biofuel, 560,000 km2 of cultivable land would beneeded. However the entire country of Germany has only 357,000 km2of territory.

The picture looks just as bad for biodiesel. Prof. Michel also reported at the same

convention:

Biodiesel is produced from rapeseed oil, which is converted to methylester. The

yield is about 1200 litres per hectare. The energy yield can be further improved by

sending the leftover waste material to a biogas production facility. About 62 % of the

total energy extracted must be consumed for the production of the biodiesel itself. Only

certain parts of the plant mass are used for producing bio-ethanol and biodiesel. In the

BTL process (biomass to liquid) the entire biomass is used by burning it in low oxygen

conditions to a mixture of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and water

vapour. After separating the non-combustible component, one ends up with a synthesis

gas, which can be converted to liquid hydrocarbons using the Fischer Tropsch process.

This process is suitable for processing wood and wood waste. From 4 kg of wood,

which consists mainly of cellulose, one can produce 1 litre of Fischer Tropsch diesel

or sun diesel. Another way of using cellulose is its enzymatic decomposition to

produce sugar, but the necessary enzymes are too cost-intensive to allow an

economical production of bio-ethanol.


17http://www.zeit.de/online/2006/41/Biodiesel-Ethanol?page =1

18http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article1307989/Biodiesel_ist_ein_Verbrechen_gegen_die_Menschlichkeit.html

19Wissenschaft Rundschau No. 9, 2007 S 470 ff Wie sinnvoll sind Biotreibstoffe? (How much sense do

biofuels make?)


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And he continues:

. . . poplar and switch grass originating from Asia, which can be harvested every

year, deliver the bulk of biomass at European latitudes, and yield approx. 0.5 litresof fuel per square metre. When compared to the energy invested for its production,

the net energy gain is about 60%. However, to supply motor vehicles in Germany

with BTL fuels, 200,000 km2 would be required. Thats 56% of the countrys entire

area.

But the German government is modest, and only plans to replace 17% of its fuel

needs with biofuels. Using the above calculation, Germany will only need to plant

34,000 km2 with poplar. But the entire cultivable land area in Germany is only 171,000

km2. This means 20% of cultivable land is to be planted with poplar instead of food

crops. In Germany, the back-to-nature slogan has now taken on a whole new

meaning. The costs would be astronomical. But at least the farmers would be delightedbecause the prices for grains and food crops would skyrocket. Peter Brabeck, CEO of

Nestle, the worlds largest food conglomerate, warned in an interview with the German

newspaper NZZ am Sonntag20 of the devastating effects on food production:

If you wish to replace 20% of our rising fuel needs with biofuels as planned, then

there will be nothing left to eat.

It is completely irresponsible and morally unacceptable that huge subsidies are paid

to convert food into fuel for cars. Parliamentary State Secretary of the German Federal

Ministry of Development Karin Kortmann (Socialist Party) told the German news

agency dpa:

The prices for sorghum and wheat have risen exorbitantly. If we dont changesomething soon, then we will have completely new cycles of poverty.

Kortmann points to studies by the International Food Policy Research Institute in

Washington which shows that for every one percent increase in food prices, 16 million

more people on earth become threatened with hunger.

Thats political madness. That clearly illustrates the dimensions of what we are

dealing with.

In Indonesia land has been taken away from citizens for the purpose of planting

palm oil trees. Currently 6 million hectares of palm oil trees have been planted in this

Southeast Asian country. According to estimates from non-governmental organisations,

this figure is expected to increase to 20 million hectares by 2020. According to

Brabeck, the USA converted 138 million tonnes of corn into biofuel. The amount taken

away from food production not only pushed up the price of corn, but for soybean and

wheat as well. Agricultural land is becoming a scarce commodity. And so is water,

which threatens to be in short supply, says Brabeck. 4000 gallons of water are needed

to produce a single gallon of bio-ethanol.

SUMMARY

1. Renewable energy is a metaphor that gives the impression there are low-cost, reliable and

steady supply alternatives to power generated by nuclear plants, coal, fossil fuels or natural


20 HYPERLINK http://www.pro-physik.de/Phy/leadArticle.do?laid=10299 http://www.pro-physik.de/Phy/

leadArticle.do?laid=10299


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gas. This politically desired impression is false, misleading and inflicts much damage on our

economies.

2. The production of electricity from wind and sunlight has major systematic deficiencies.These sources multiply the costs when compared to conventional power generation, and

massively reduce supply consistency, reliability and availability and have to be backed up

1:1. Up to now in Germany, not a single conventional power plant has been taken offline

because of fed-in wind and solar power. Back-up capacity has to be provided by gas-fired

power plants. The gas needed to power these plants further increases foreign dependency.

3. Supplying power to Germany with electric power from wind and solar plants dramatically

increases the instability of the power supply, while greatly increasing prices for all

consumers. This destroys the foundation of energy intensive industries and their jobs, e.g.

raw materials industry. These job losses are not compensated by the fewer jobs generated

by renewable energies. To the contrary, according to studies from various scientists, there

is a net loss of jobs.

4. Land-space requirements by renewable energy sources are gigantic. Solar energy needs 70

times more space than a coal-fired power plant, wind energy up to 240 times more space.

For biofuels, the extremely high use of agricultural land leads to critical food shortages and

price explosions. Soil leaching also results as the entire plant is used for bio-fuel production,

and fertilisation from plant leftovers does not occur.

5. The CO2 budget that results shows little or no net savings. The environmental results

(measured with respect to pegging the countryside with wind turbines, land area

requirements, manufacturing, etc.) also show no benefits. Furthermore CO2, whose

emissions rights are traded, will simply be shifted elsewhere, often to less efficient

countries.

6. Biofuel is also considerably more expensive than fuel from oil. Food will be in shorter

supply and thus cost more because of the competition from biofuels. The risks of civil

unrest are substantial.

7. Overall, the use of renewable energies neither has an impact on the climate, nor does it

reduce our foreign dependency. To the contrary, they may even increase foreign

dependency.



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fulltext[2] energy is the key renewable energy problems in germany

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