From KlimaNachrichten

By KlimaNachrichten Editor

Monthly newsletter from Fritz Vahrenholt

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

As the chart shows, global mean temperatures in August remained roughly the same as in July 2024.

Today, I will first deal with the fluctuations in PV and wind power generation, which intensified in August and are becoming a burden on the federal budget. Then I will show the means with which the federal government will turn the gas price screw from January 2025 onwards in order to be able to better enforce the unpopular heat pump.

First of all, I start with a graphic that I showed at the citizens’ summit in front of an audience of 900 in the Liederhalle Stuttgart. It shows the core of the energy transition: Stable, low-cost, CO2-free electricity generation based on nuclear energy is exchanged for unstable, too expensive electricity generation based on wind and solar energy.

600 billion for the energy transition

The chart shows that the energy transition has brought nothing else in terms of CO2-free electricity generation than to replace cheap nuclear energy with more expensive and unreliable wind and solar power since 2002. In a publication by Jan Emblemsvåg of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in the prestigious journal “International Journal of Sustainable Energy”, he comes to the conclusion: If Germany had stuck with nuclear energy in 2002, it would have saved €600 billion and produced as much CO₂-free electricity as with all its renewable energies. Axel Bojanowski writes in Die Welt:

“If Germany had even invested in nuclear power from 2002 onwards, its greenhouse gas emissions would have been reduced by around 73 percent more – and the country would still have saved €300 billion compared to the energy transition.”

So far, Germany has become 600 billion euros poorer as a result of the energy transition, without this turnaround having had any benefit. In this respect, the Norwegian energy expert confirms the assessment of the Federal Audit Office: “The German government invests billions in climate protection, but does not know how successful its investments are and whether they are worthwhile.
But it will be even worse if this policy is not stopped by 2025 at the latest. The consulting firm EY and the German Association of Energy and Water Industries put the investments to be made from 2023 to 2035 at a staggering €1214 billion.

The Federal Minister of Economics, on the other hand, assesses the energy transition as follows: “Germany must take risks in the energy transition”. And further: If things don’t go well, they will have to “set up a different business model”. That will not be the business model of an industrialized country.

The cost spiral of wind and solar energy is turning faster and faster

August 2024 dramatically shows the absurdity of the uncontrolled further expansion of wind and solar energy. As can be seen in the graph, solar (yellow) and wind energy (blue) were sufficient to cover the demand for electricity (brown) in the midday hours of August. In addition, however, the hydroelectric power plants and always conventional power plants are still running, which must be connected to the grid for reasons of grid stabilization, so that the electricity demand would often be exceeded by electricity generation at noon if plants were not switched off and paid for anyway or the electricity was given away abroad. Stock market prices are falling to zero.

However, the solar and wind power operators receive a bindingly guaranteed feed-in tariff (wind currently 7.35 €ct/kwh, solar roofs about 8-12 €ct/kwh), although the solar or wind power generated has a value of zero or even falls below zero again and again. The difference to the stock market price is taken from the federal budget. In August, the sum of daily co-payments (red in the lower part of the graph) amounts to €1,640,069,048.60. €1.6 billion in August results in about €20 billion per year, €10 billion more than originally planned. We remember: The coalition parties could not agree on a balanced budget for 2025. A €12 billion gap is not covered by revenue. Nobody thought of the cancellation of the EEG tax gifts at the traffic light.

However, the chart also shows how useless the attempt by the Minister of Economic Affairs and his Federal Network Agency is to shift the production of goods in Germany to the times when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing by changing the grid fee. Of course, this change in grid fees will disadvantage the continuous production of goods in Germany and drive it out of the country. This was described in detail in my last newsletter.
The real scandal, however, is that this change in network fees with these far-reaching consequences is not discussed and decided by the German Bundestag. This non-transparent policy has already been practiced once before with the change in gas network fees, which can be increased from January 2025.

Citizens are to be

asked to pay for the destruction of the gas networks from 2025 It is hard to believe. Quietly and secretly, the Federal Network Agency, under the leadership of the Green Party member Klaus Müller, has decided that gas network operators will be able to increase gas network fees by a whopping 20 – 40% from 1 January 2025. The reason is outrageous. The Federal Network Agency assumes that the Climate Protection Act will mean that no more CO2 may be emitted in Germany from 2045 and that gas heating systems will therefore no longer be allowed to be operated from 2045 onwards and that the gas grids in Germany will therefore have to be shut down by 2045. That is only twenty years left and therefore many gas pipelines with an economic service life of 50 years will not yet be fully depreciated in 2045.

For this reason, the Federal Network Agency allows gas network operators to increase depreciation of up to 12% and to shorten the remaining depreciation period to 20 years or less. This will lead to an increase in depreciation costs, so that even the Federal Network Agency expects an increase in gas network fees of 20%, experts expect up to 40%. Neither parliament nor citizens have been asked whether they really want all gas networks in Germany to be shut down or torn out by 2045. We are talking about 550,000 km of gas pipelines in our cities, municipalities and districts with a value of €270 billion.

The increase can also be summed up under the motto: How do we spoil the citizens’ fun with their own gas heating? By making the use of gas expensive, then the unloved heat pump will still be accepted. In the last 10 years, investments in gas pipelines, especially in the new federal states, have risen from about €1 billion to €1.5 billion per year, and now these brand-new pipelines are also to be scrapped in 20 years.

The Federal Network Agency has a very special treat for the cities that wanted to be particularly green and wanted an earlier phase-out date from oil, gas and coal. Cities that want to phase out by 2035 can increasingly ask citizens to pay a higher gas network fee until 2035. These are the cities of Augsburg, Stuttgart, Bonn, Oldenburg, Krefeld, Munich, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Dresden. The citizens of Mannheim, Münster and Aachen, who want to get out in five years, will also “enjoy” the particularly strong fee increase. From 15 October 2024, gas network operators will be allowed to announce their increases for 2025. Gas network charges averaged €1.89/kwh in 2023. With a 20% increase, households and businesses (excluding industry), which consume 477 billion kWh of gas, will incur costs of an additional €1.8 billion per year.

Much more important, however, is the consideration of the costs incurred in replacing the gas network with an expansion of the power grid and end-use equipment. It is €268 billion, as VNG from Leipzig, one of Germany’s largest gas traders, calculated in the study “The Value of Gas Infrastructure for the Energy Transition”. 3 years ago, the ousted State Secretary Graichen announced the closure of the gas pipelines. During the government of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, the idea was implemented.

How do we get out of the wrong path? A new federal government must first redefine the CO2 reduction target for 2045 in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement. It states: “The contracting parties are striving to… in the second half of this century, a balance between anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases from sources and the removal of such gases by sinks … ( Article 4 of the Paris Agreement)”

First, “the second half” does not mean 2045. Secondly, more than half of the world’s annual CO2 emissions are now absorbed by plants and oceans (sinks in the Paris Agreement). Net zero therefore means at most halving emissions. And you can even calculate that for the Federal Constitutional Court. This will make many of the encroaching bans such as the ban on heating, the ban on internal combustion engines, and the ban on power plants obsolete. Only in this way will Germany have a good future.

Sincerely,

Fritz Vahrenholt