Suspicious Success Stories for green energy

 

Suspicious Success Stories 

Despite their reputations as renewable success stories both Germany and Denmark are struggling to put their green policies into practice.

Germany 

Despite 42% of Germany’s electricity coming from renewable sources, the country has failed to reduce its carbon emissions per capita by any significant amount, and still ranks far higher than other Western European countries like the UK and France, as well as the EU average.

Germany is also experiencing the second highest electricity costs in Europe, second only to Denmark. However, it is worth noting that for Germany over half of this cost is from taxes and other surcharges. With roughly 20% of the electricity cost coming from the renewables surcharge, which supports the expansion of renewable energy.

The transition to renewables has been repeatedly hampered by conservationists and local associations resisting the construction of onshore wind turbines.

Germany has targets to add 4GW of wind power to their energy mix annually, however just 1.5GW was achieved in 2020 and it has been predicted that Germany will have a net loss of wind capacity growth in 2021. This net loss can be attributed to the slow rate of adoption and the decommissioning of existing wind farms.

Germany has also had to rely on energy imports to stabilise its energy grid, particularly from France, which generates the majority of its energy from its fleet of nuclear reactors. 

So far, Germany has been beset by difficulties, with mounting resistance to onshore wind, rising electricity prices, and a lack of energy security, in exchange for CO2 emissions which are still higher than countries with a comparable level of development. 

Denmark

Denmark is often held up as a model country for clean electricity generation, with almost 60% being produced by wind power which is undoubtedly an impressive achievement. However, it is only possible because Denmark can import electricity from its neighbours to make up for its fluctuating power supply.

Fergus emphasises that at certain times Denmark imports as much as 50% of its electricity needs, particularly from Norway which has a reliable hydroelectric baseload.

Denmark’s model is fundamentally flawed as it is reliant on electrical imports from countries with more consistent energy sources. This model very simply cannot be scaled.