Environment & Energy

NNadir

(34,839 posts) Mon Dec 16, 2024, 09:13 PM Dec 16

The Norwegian Energy Minister States It Bluntly: "It's an absolute shit situation."

Germany’s ‘Dunkelflaute’ is causing an energy crisis in Europe

A new German compound noun is currently gaining traction in international news: Dunkelflaute. It describes weather that is cloudy and windless — in other words, the kind of conditions that highlight the vulnerabilities of renewable power production. Germany is currently experiencing a prolonged spell with stark consequences for itself and its European neighbours.

The Dunkelflaute began to make headlines last week when the shortages in renewable electricity production caused a spike of wholesale prices. At times a megawatt hour cost up to €1000 — the highest level recorded in 18 years.

In theory, Germany’s energy system is designed to be flexible since solar and wind energy fluctuate so much. Between May and August this year, Germany produced a quarter of its electricity through solar energy. But in November it was only 4.3%.

In theory, increasing wind in the autumn and winter months is supposed to pick up the shortfall. But when the worst-case scenario happens and a Dunkelflaute hits in the winter months when energy consumption is at its highest, fossil fuels are supposed to step in...

Never, ever, act as if Germany gives a flying fuck about extreme global heating. They're a fossil fuel hellhole, and their new fossil fuel supplier is whining about it.

...Still, Germany’s fossil fuel plants haven’t delivered enough, and imports were ramped up from neighbouring countries like France and Poland. Data from November showed that nearly a fifth of imported electricity was made from fossil fuels and another 18% from nuclear energy. The latter seems particularly bizarre since Germany switched its last nuclear reactors off last year. For context: at their peak in the early 2000s, German nuclear plants produced a third of the electricity the country needed.

In order to facilitate its ideologically driven withdrawal from nuclear energy and meet domestic climate targets on paper, Germany has increasingly banked on importing energy from other countries even if its neighbours produce this in ways Berlin frowns upon. France produces 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy and Poland generates three quarters from fossil fuels, the vast majority from coal...

Germany has reverted to its old habits of killing Poles. (The Poles are working to go nuclear against coal, however, but for now, they're coal dependent and coal plants kill people whenever they operate normally.)

The article continues:

Norway is particularly affected. Last year, Germany received 43% of its gas from the Scandinavian country. It’s also one of the biggest source countries for electricity imports to Germany. As a result of the spike in German demand, energy prices in Norway have shot up too. On Thursday, the Norwegian energy minister Terje Aasland didn’t mince his words when he told the Financial Times that “it’s an absolutely shit situation”. Renegotiating energy relations with Europe is now set to become an election issue — “a crunch moment for EU-Norway relations,” as one EU ambassador in Oslo put it.

Sweden, which is also affected by the price hikes, was even more explicit about who and what is to blame. The Swedish energy minister Ebba Busch told the newspaper Aftonbladet that “Germany’s energy system isn’t right”. On X she added: “it is a result of decommissioned nuclear power. When it’s not windy, we get high electricity prices”. If Germany was able to produce more electricity for the European network, she argued, prices would stay lower for all of us...

I added the bold.

Norway, of course, got rich pushing fossil fuels, with some fun Stadtoil claims it was going to, um, sequester carbon dioxide, putting on a show of it, and then quietly dropping it as "too expensive." Most of Norwegian electricity however is generated by dams. Still high demand for electricity because the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing in Germany does effect prices.

So much for "green" Germany. The situation is rather like the hydrogen bullshit that flies around here: Antinukes trying to paint fossil fuels "green."

Reality bites.

The article features a picture of the asshole Robert Habek holding a toy if you go to the link.