Amory Lovins: Germany's Renewables Revolution
Amory B. Lovins
April 17, 2013
While the examples of Japan, China, and India show the promise of rapidly emerging energy economies built on efficiency and renewables, Germany—the world’s number four economy and Europe’s number one—has lately provided an impressive model of what a well-organized industrial society can achieve. To be sure, it’s not yet the world champion among countries with limited hydroelectricity: Denmark passed 40% renewable electricity in 2011 en route to a target of 100% by 2050, and Portugal, albeit with more hydropower, raised its renewable electricity fraction from 17% to 45% just during 2005–10 (while the U.S., though backed by a legacy of big hydro, crawled from 9% to 10%), reaching 70% in the rainy and windy first quarter of 2013. But these economies are not industrial giants like Germany, which remains the best disproof of claims that highly industrialized countries, let alone cold and cloudy ones, can do little with renewables.
Germany has doubled the renewable share of its total electricity consumption in the past six years to 23% in 2012. It forecasts nearly a redoubling by 2025, well ahead of the 50% target for 2030, and closing in on official goals of 65% in 2040 and 80% in 2050. Some areas are moving faster: in 2010, four German states were 43–52% windpowered for the whole year. And at times in spring 2012, half of all German electricity was renewable, nearing Spain’s 61% record set in April 2012.
Efficiency and Renewables Bolster Post-Fukushima Germany
To underscore the remarkable German case, let’s review what happened in 2011, right after Fukushima. The Bundestag—led by the most conservative and pro-nuclear party, with no party dissenting—overwhelmingly voted to close eight of the country’s nuclear plants immediately and the other nine by 2022. (In a double U-turn, a nuclear phase-out agreed in 2000 was first slowed and then reinstated; nuclear output has actually been falling since 2006.) Skeptics said this abrupt shutdown of 41% of nuclear output would make the lights go out, the economy crash, carbon emissions and electricity prices soar, and Germany need to import nuclear power from France. But none of that happened.
In fact, in 2011 the German economy grew three percent and remained Europe’s strongest, buoyed by a world-class renewables industry with 382,000 jobs (about 222,000 of them added since 2004, with net employment and net stimulus both positive). Chancellor Merkel won her bet that it would be smarter to spend energy money on German engineers, manufacturers, and installers than to send it to the Russian natural gas behemoth Gazprom. Germany’s lights stayed on. The nuclear shutdown was entirely displaced by year-end, three-fifths due to renewable growth. Do the math: simply repeating 2011’s renewable installations for three additional years, through 2014, would thus displace Germany’s entire pre-Fukushima nuclear output. Meanwhile, efficiency gains—plus a mild winter—cut total German energy use by 5.3%, electricity consumption by 1.4%, and carbon emissions by 2.8%. Wholesale electricity prices fell 10–15%. Germany remained a net exporter of electricity, and during a February 2012 cold snap, even exported nearly 3 GW to power-starved France, which remains a net importer of German electricity.
Was this just a flash in the pan? No. In 2012 vs. 2011...
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_04_17_germanys_renewables_revolution
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What's happening to fossil fueled generation as a result of this exemplary build-out of renewables?
Bupkis.
I thought the goal was to drive down GHG generation as well as nuclear? Nuclear is going down, all right, and because it's a "soft target" compared to fossil fuels one could easily predict that.
I'm very happy to see that, in one country in the world at least, renewables are knocking out nuclear power. The last thing I want to see is a crash of civilization with 400+ reactors still running. But the true danger to civilization (and possibly to life itself) is CO2 produced by fossil fuels. Germany's renewable electricity supply is making no inroads whatsoever on that front.
From 2000 to 2011 Germany's CO2 output dropped by 12.5%, while their FF consumption overall (including transportation) dropped 10%. So while their mix is changing from coal towards NG, the shift is not happening very fast and they are not abandoning FF in general.
Here's the proportion of German electricity generated by FF over time:
I think that this round of civilization has maybe 20 years before it runs into serious trouble due to rising global CO2 emissions. So while it's nice to see one country moving slowly in a good direction, I have not changed my view from seven years ago that renewable energy can not save us from the real problem the world faces, which starts with CO2 and over-consumption. Those are much bigger problems that will not be addressed globally within the next 20 years by windmills and solar panels. As a result, I think that anyone who tries to jawbone renewable energy into a general "solution" of some sort, is naive at best, and a species traitor at worst.
Of course, I always think the best of you, kristopher.
I'll post 2012 numbers when BP releases them in June.
The 2012 numbers are prominent in Lovins' article; something you'd know if you bothered to even go to the link.
