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If the tech savvy Germans can’t make wind and solar power work, no one can.

The Germans love cobbling together endless, guttural syllables to create nouns longer than the Autobahn.

‘Energiewende’ roughly translates as ‘energy transition’, which Germans have taken to mean a new path with energy. Germans were told that instead of coal and nukes, they’d run on sunshine and breezes, as if by magic.

Except that it didn’t quite pan out that way.

Germany has policies in place that will squander close to €1 trillion in subsidies ladled out to wind and solar.

Years ago, its brains trust determined to shutter its safe and reliable fleet of nuclear power plants by 2022; hypocritically, Germany still imports plenty of nuclear generated electricity from France and will do for decades to come.

Coupled with its push kill off its nuclear fleet, the chaos delivered by solar and wind power has caused Germans to build new coal-fired power plants and to refurbish its large, existing coal-fired fleet of generators.

Power prices have rocketed – more than a million German households have been chopped from the grid, unable to afford electricity, with an added 328,000 left powerless in just 12 months: ‘Transition’ to Wind & Solar Sends German Power Prices Into Orbit: 328,000 Families Chopped from Grid

And blackouts and load shedding are now a part of daily life in Deutschland: Renewables Rush Sends Germans Back to the Dark Ages: Blackouts Now Part of Daily Life

So those responsible for the Energiewende could be expected to feel a little sheepish about what was meant to be a cheap and easy transition to nature’s wonder fuels.

Fritz Vahrenholt was among Germany’s renewable energy pioneers and was Hamburg’s Senator for the environment.

Faced with the inevitable consequences of attempting to run a first world economy on Third World ‘fuels’, Vahrenholt has done a monumental about-face. Albeit, far too late to salvage an inevitable, self-inflicted disaster.

Fritz Vahrenholt: German Opposition To Wind Farms Is Growing

Die Welt

Olaf Preuss

12 March 2018

Fritz Vahrenholt, Hamburg’s former environment senator, was one of the pioneers of Germany’s Energiewende.

Today, he finds its implementation miserable and believes that the new federal government urgently needs to change course in response to growing public resistance against more and more wind turbines.

Fritz Vahrenholt, 68, always liked to argue against the mainstream. As Hamburg’s environmental senator in the 1990s, the Social Democrat fought with environmental organisations and the Greens. As the founder of the wind turbine manufacturer Repower Systems in Hamburg – now Senvion – and RWE’s subsidiary Innogy in Essen, Germany, he was a pioneer of the green energy transition (Energiewende), which was rejected by large parts of industry at that time. Today, Vahrenholt, the director of the German Wildlife Foundation, is critical about the expansion of wind power. He is calling for the deceleration of Germany’s transformation of the energy system.

WELT AM SONNTAG: Mr. Vahrenholt, what do you think of the coalition agreement between CDU/CSU and SPD with regards to energy and climate policy?

FRITZ VAHRENHOLT: When it comes to energy policy, the 177 pages of the coalition agreement are an act of stupidity. In 2019 and 2020, the expansion of wind power in Germany is set to be massively accelerated even though nobody knows what to do with all this wind power in times of heavy winds.

And when there is little wind, the expansion does not help, as electricity production then remains close to zero. It is like the foolish acts by the people of Schilda (Schildbürger) who tried to carry sacks of light into the windowless town hall.

WAMS: Rainer Baake (Green Party) who for many years had been Secretary of State in the Ministry of the Environment and later in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, resigned this week, claiming that he did not support the climate and energy policy of the new coalition government. Baake is considered the most important architect of Germany’s Energiewende.

FRITZ VAHRENHOLT: Baake’s resignation is a stroke of luck for German energy policy. He has played a decisive role in shaping the green energy transition and is responsible for its undesirable developments. If he had his way, the energy transition would have been even more expensive: He wanted to reduce the EEG levy for wind and solar power while consumers would have to pay through new levies on heating oil and gas and the drivers with a further fuel tax. Thank God he didn’t succeed.

What is your main criticism about the Energiewende?

With our move towards intermittent wind and solar energy we have reached a dead end. Correcting the undesirable developments by imposing ever-increasing costs on households and drivers, that smells like a planned economy.

A few years ago, the then Federal Minister of the Environment, Peter Altmaier (CDU), who will now become Federal Minister of Economics and Energy, estimated the possible total costs of the Energiewende at up to one trillion – i.e. thousand billion – euro. This is destroying the competitiveness of Germany as a location for industry. In his new office, he must do everything possible to ensure that this does not become reality.

Die Welt