XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.talk.weather, pdx.weather   
   XPost: can.politics, alt.politics.liberalism   
   From: katt@gmail.com   
      
   The Reason Renewable Can't Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were   
   Never Meant To   
      
   Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany's renewables energy   
   transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world.   
      
   "Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring   
   electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the   
   fossil age and build clean grids from the   
   outset, " thanks to the Energiewende, wrote a New York Times reporter in 2014.   
      
   With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions   
   into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya.   
      
   But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay   
   its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction   
   commitments. It announced plans to bulldoze an   
   ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.   
      
   After renewables investors and advocates, including Al Gore and Greenpeace,   
   criticized Germany, journalists came to the country's defense. "Germany has   
   fallen short of its emission targets in part   
   because its targets were so ambitious, " one of them argued last summer.   
      
   "If the rest of the world made just half Germany's effort, the future for our   
   planet would look less bleak, " she wrote. "So Germany, don't give up. And   
   also: Thank you."   
      
   But Germany didn't just fall short of its climate targets. Its emissions have   
   flat-lined since 2009.   
      
   Now comes a major article in the country's largest newsweekly magazine, Der   
   Spiegel, titled, "A Botched Job in Germany" ("Murks in Germany"). The   
   magazine's cover shows broken wind turbines and   
   incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin.   
      
   "The Energiewende - the biggest political project since reunification -   
   threatens to fail, " write Der Spiegel's Frank Dohmen, Alexander Jung, Stefan   
   Schultz, Gerald Traufetter in their a 5,700-word   
   investigative story.   
      
   Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany ¤32 billion   
   ($36 billion) annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German   
   countryside.   
      
   "The politicians fear citizen resistance" Der Spiegel reports. "There is   
   hardly a wind energy project that is not fought."   
      
   In response, politicians sometimes order "electrical lines be buried   
   underground but that is many times more expensive and takes years longer."   
      
   As a result, the deployment of renewables and related transmission lines is   
   slowing rapidly. Less than half as many wind turbines (743) were installed in   
   2018 as were installed in 2017, and just 30   
   kilometers of new transmission were added in 2017.   
      
   Solar and wind advocates say cheaper solar panels and wind turbines will make   
   the future growth in renewables cheaper than past growth but there are reasons   
   to believe the opposite will be the case.   
      
   It will cost Germany $3-$4 trillion to increase renewables as share of   
   electricity from today's 35%... [+] to 100% between 2025-2050   
      
   Der Spiegel cites a recent estimate that it would cost Germany "¤3.4 trillion   
   ($3.8 trillion), " or seven times more than it spent from 2000 to 2025, to   
   increase solar and wind three to five-fold by   
   2050.   
      
   Between 2000 and 2019, Germany grew renewables from 7% to 35% of its   
   electricity. And as much of Germany's renewable electricity comes from   
   biomass, which scientists view as polluting and   
   environmentally degrading, as from solar.   
      
   Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines needed, only 8% have been   
   built, while large-scale electricity storage remains inefficient and   
   expensive. "A large part of the energy used is lost,   
   " the reporters note of a much-hyped hydrogen gas project, "and the efficiency   
   is below 40%... No viable business model can be developed from this."   
      
   Meanwhile, the 20-year subsidies granted to wind, solar, and biogas since 2000   
   will start coming to an end next year. "The wind power boom is over, " Der   
   Spiegel concludes.   
      
   All of which raises a question: if renewables can't cheaply power Germany, one   
   of the richest and most technologically advanced countries in the world, how   
   could a developing nation like Kenya ever   
   expect them to allow it to "leapfrog" fossil fuels?   
      
   The Question of Technology   
      
   The earliest and most sophisticated 20th Century case for renewables came from   
   a German who is widely considered the most influential philosopher of the 20th   
   Century, Martin Heidegger.   
      
   In his 1954 essay, "The Question Concerning of Technology, " Heidegger   
   condemned the view of nature as a mere resource for human consumption.   
      
   The use of 'modern technology, " he wrote, "puts to nature the unreasonable   
   demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such... Air   
   is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth   
   to yield ore, ore to yield uranium... to yield atomic energy."   
      
   The solution, Heidegger argued, was to yoke human society and its economy to   
   unreliable energy flows. He even condemned hydro-electric dams, for dominating   
   the natural environment, and praised   
   windmills because they 'do not unlock energy in order to store it."   
      
   These weren't just aesthetic preferences. Windmills have traditionally been   
   useful to farmers whereas large dams have allowed poor agrarian societies to   
   industrialize.   
      
   In the US, Heidegger's views were picked up by renewable energy advocates.   
   Barry Commoner in 1969 argued that a transition to renewables was needed to   
   bring modern civilization "into harmony with the   
   ecosphere."   
      
   The goal of renewables was to turn modern industrial societies back into   
   agrarian ones, argued Murray Bookchin in his 1962 book, Our Synthetic   
   Environment.   
      
   Bookchin admitted his proposal "conjures up an image of cultural isolation and   
   social stagnation, of a journey backward in history to the agrarian societies   
   of the medieval and ancient worlds."   
      
   But then, starting around the year 2000, renewables started to gain a   
   high-tech luster. Governments and private investors poured $2 trillion into   
   solar and wind and related infrastructure, creating   
   the impression that renewables were profitable aside from subsidies.   
      
   Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk proclaimed that a rich, high-energy civilization   
   could be powered by cheap solar panels and electric cars.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)