It has for many years been a tenet of the Progressive religion that solar and wind power must replace fossil fuels as the source of supply for our energy-hungry civilization. Critics of the idea have said all along that this is an impossible dream, a colossal waste of resources, is destructive to the environment in rarely mentioned ways, that it makes the West dependent upon suppliers of exotic materials, and is a moral error besides.

Germany, which has wasted hundreds of billions of euros on this “faith-based initiative”, is now learning these lessons the hard way. A recent report at the Canada Free Press tells the story in depressing detail. I won’t excerpt it here — you should read it all — but I’ll offer a brief summary.

Above all, there’s the inconstancy of sun and wind. When they are strong, Germany’s solar generators and wind farms produce so much energy in such a short time that there’s no way for the German grid to absorb it. This means that Germany has to unload the temporary excess to other countries — who don’t want it, and must be paid to take it. This cost is passed along to German consumers. Sometimes the overproduction is so high that the solar and wind facilities have to be ordered to shut down. When this happens, the operators of those facilities (which were built with lavish government subsidies in the first place), are reimbursed for their downtime. Once again, the cost is passed along to the consumer (or to the taxpayer, which amounts to the same thing).

When wind and sun are weak, as often happens, commercial consumers must be told to reduce their usage, slowing industrial production. They quite rightly insist on being compensated for this, which they are — and once again, consumers foot the bill. If sun and wind fall short for any length of time, however, fossil-fuel plants have to be fired up to cover the gap. This is an extremely inefficient use of these facilities, and makes for greater CO2 emissions than if they’d just been chugging along full-time as before (that is, back when they easily and reliably supplied Germany’s electrical demand). This inefficiency means the electricity they create is far more expensive than it otherwise would be, a surplus cost that is, once again, borne by the ordinary German citizen — who can at this point be heard groaning, off in the distance, in a gigantic steam-powered lemon-squeezer.

There’s more to this depressing little parable, but now you must go and read the article. You can do so here.

Update: In response to comments, I’ve looked up the actual cost of electricity for German households. It is about €0.295 per kilowatt hour, nearly three times the average cost in the U.S. (which at current exchange rates is about €0.11).

This of course wouldn’t include the costs absorbed by the German government (i.e., by the German taxpayer).

We should note also that it seems that an overwhelming majority of Germans think the extra cost is worth it. Here, for example, is an article putting that number at an astonishing 95%.

Why? For religious reasons, of course:

“People in Germany know the deployment must continue so we can fulfil our obligations regarding climate protection and future generations…’

In other words: salvation through atonement. The “deployment”, however sweetly painful, “must continue” — until our sin is washed away.

As I’ve written elsewhere: