Nowadays, renewables provide far more jobs in Germany than the rest of the energy sector combined. (Photo by Loozrboy, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Recently, I wrote about Strukturwandel (structural change), the German campaign to transition away from conventional heavy-industry sectors to new technologies. I later came across this wonderful PDF in German, and I wanted to share its content with the non-German-speaking world.

The author, Meinhard Geiken, is a leader in IG Metall, Germany’s major labor union for heavy industry. He explains that the union now “promotes democratic structures in future industries” but that labor unions were once fierce opponents of renewables.

Last year, labor unions co-organized the “human chain” of 120,000 people that connected the Brunsbüttel nuclear reactor to the Krümmel reactor in a protest. But as Geiken explains, the labor unions promoted the “peaceful use of nuclear energy” in the 1970s as a way of creating jobs. After all, these unions represented such sectors as the railways, mining, and energy itself.

Geiken says that, during the popular protests against plans to build a new nuclear plant in Wyhl (where the Energiewende movement started in the 1970s), labor unions held a pro-nuclear demonstration in 1976 at the stadium in Dortmund. According to a different report, some 40,000 union members took part in the demonstration. And some labor unions told their members they would be kicked out of the union if they demonstrated against nuclear.

Nonetheless, by 1978 the first members of labor unions started campaigning against nuclear, and by 1981 “several thousand” union members took part in a protest against the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear plant in northern Germany. As Geiken tells the story, the pro-nuclear stance of labor unions – including IG Metall – completely collapsed after Chernobyl in 1986, leading to support for the initial nuclear phaseout of 2001, which he calls a “consensus,” not a “radical phaseout.”

These days, German labor unions understand that far more jobs are to be had from renewables than from nuclear. But things are much different in other countries. Like Germany, the US has no labor union specifically for nuclear, perhaps because labor unions are so weak in the US; this one has a list of nuclear plants showing how often the labor at nuclear plants is non-union. But in the UK, nuclear labor union GMB is campaigning hard for new plants.

In France, the nuclear sector also has its own labor union (CFDT), but actually anything that would hurt the bottom line of former French power monopolist EdF (which renewables certainly would) is bound to meet with popular resistance. Since 1946, EdF has devoted one percent of its sales revenue – not profits! – to the CCAS, which uses the money to provide inexpensive restaurants and holiday resorts to union members. Indeed, the French themselves say that the Communist Party would have died long ago in France without these transfers to the CCAS.

The switch to renewables is harder when such vested interests resist all kinds of change. One unsung reason why Germany has been able to transition slowly but consistently to renewables over the past 20+ years is that Germany has so few large corporations and so many mid-size firms. And the energy transition fits right into the structural change that German labor unions have been promoting during the past two decades.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

Göppel addressing the German Bundestag. (Photo by goeppel.de)

Fifteen years ago, processes were set in motion that would turn Germany’s energy market on its head. The main catalysts: liberalization of the energy market and passage of the Renewable Energy Resources Act. Since then, Germany’s energy market has been transformed from one in which four giant utilities companies and several dozen small municipal power companies ruled the roost, to today when Germany’s decentralized energy production includes around 3.5 million mostly small and medium-sized energy producers. Nowhere is the economic impact of this metamorphosis more evident than in Bavaria where land owners and farmers have taken advantage of the new space and incentives to become “prosumers,” above all with photovoltaic and bio-energy, but also of late with wind power, too.

Josef Goeppel, 62 years old, is a German parliamentarian from central Franconia in Bavaria and a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavaria-based sister party of Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU). He was the first in his traditionally arch-conservative party to grasp the relevance of the Energiewende, or clean energy transition, for his constituents and party. “This happened as the result of a powerful mass movement from below,” he told Berlin-based journalist Paul Hockenos. Goeppel is one of Germany’s staunchest proponents of renewables, and as such is often at odds with his CSU colleagues and even with the Merkel government. Hockenos spoke with him in his Bundestag office in Berlin.

Mr. Goeppel, you’re known in Germany for your strong support of the Energiewende and renewable energies. Are you alone in your party?

I was at one time, but not anymore. The Energiewende initiated a broad shift in thinking in the CSU. This happened as the result of a powerful mass movement from below that demanded it. In southern Germany, Bavarians and others jumped on the possibilities posed by renewable energy production. You hardly see a single house these days without at least one solar panel on the roof.

Well, this shift in perspective seems to have impacted some in the CSU more than others. Most of the party is not of your opinion…

We have to keep in mind that Germany’s previous energy production regime, namely one dominated by big, centralized power plants, evolved over 60 years. And in the minds of some politicians, this ossified to the extent that they can’t imagine an alternative to it. But with the expansion of renewables, we’ve now got a completely different form of electricity production, one dominated not by big power plants but by much smaller, decentralized energy production. This is difficult for some people to accept, still, which is why there are still differences of opinion on the matter in the CSU and other parties, too. Over the decades, a certain mentality has set in that big is reliable and good. It’s difficult to convince them that energy production that is dominated by small, diverse producers is also reliable.

Is this why on energy matters the position paper from the CSU’s most recent party congress in Wildbad Kreuth earlier this year looked much like the ones before it?

If you mean by that that the guiding principles of our energy plank – reliability, cost effectiveness, and environment-friendly – haven’t changed, then you’re right. But behind this, things really are changing. In the old days, our power system was much like television programming of the day: There were a handful of major channels and you watched what they gave you. Now, the energy market is more like the Internet: you can choose from many different offers, get and provide feedback, and more. This is the way energy is going, too. And, as I said, some are still in the process of grasping this fundamental transformation. But there’s no going back to the TV programming of the past anymore.

As for your constituents in central Franconia, are their interests limited to photovoltaic energy production?

This is where they began but now there’s also biogas production and ever more wind turbines. My constituency is among those with the most biogas production units per inhabitant in Germany. The reason that so many Germans are interested in pursuing renewable energy is a simple one: It is the desire for independence from big companies. They put up solar panels in order to win this independence. This is the most important thing, not simply profit. This will to be independent is a strong motif in conservative thinking, and above all among farmers in rural areas. In political terms, German political conservatism is being underpinned with a new idea. So it’s the case that in some constituencies, the voters have a completely different attitude to clean energy than that of their elected representatives.

It seems to me that the Energiewende is currently experiencing a backlash. Negative media about prices and grids and other issues dominates, not good news, although there is plenty of reason to cheer, too. Do you see it this way?

Yes, this is the case. But the most recent attempt by the opponents of the Energiewende to turn it back was the last of its kind that will be possible during this administration. This attempt failed and next year there’s going to be a different coalition in office in Germany. And then politically there’s going to be a definitive breakthrough for the Energiewende.

But why this backlash? In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, when Chancellor Merkel declared the Energiewende, there was a feeling of pride and optimism around the transition. Then, about a year ago, the mood changed, at least as it was being reported in the German media. How to you explain this shift?

Because the old power companies that used to dominate the markets understood that their very livelihood was at stake. In the press just the other day, there was an interview with the director of a municipal utility in northern Germany who said that “in ten years, E.ON [a major German power company with extensive holdings in fossil and nuclear fuels] won’t exist anymore.” This fear on the part of the old energy regime is behind this campaign. But it was unsuccessful and the Energiewende is going forward in 2013. You can see it by the new turbines that are being installed across the country. And just a week ago, on April 18, a new record was set: on a workday more than 50 percent of the entire country’s electricity was generated by wind and solar power! That’s a signal.

The Merkel government’s positions on Energiewende-related issues puzzle me. Sometimes, it is solidly pro-Energiewende, other times against, and very often it’s even divided within itself, take the recent effort to bolster the EU Emissions Trading Mechanism. Environment Minister Peter Altmaier was for it, Economy Minister Philipp Roesler against. In the end, the center-right MEPs voted down modifications that would finally make it effective. All Merkel had to do was pick up the telephone and call them; they’d have done her bidding. But she didn’t and now a key piece of the puzzle remains missing.

I was deeply disappointed by Ms. Merkel’s passive stance on this matter. Nevertheless, I’m certain that Ms. Merkel, who is a physicist, understands the technical essence of the Energiewende and that it can’t be turned back. This is why it was the chancellor herself who stopped the recent attempt by her own ministers to undermine the Energiewende.

Let’s look beyond the autumn vote this year, since it is unlikely that much is going to happen on the policy level between then and now. What will the priorities be?

Most important is a new legislative framework for the energy market. We have to reorganize the market around the small-scale energy producers. This means that the small producers will have to make it their task to supply a reliable service. Here’s an example from my district: the solar panels that supply energy during the day and more during the summer are supplemented by wind turbines that generate power at night and more during the winter. Then we have the biogas plants, which have to be configured so that they will fill in when both sun and wind are low. The producers have to get used to providing a reliable supply at regular times. Only then will they get a good price for their energy. We’re already moving toward that goal right now. The consumers can have contracts with, for example, solar plants in their neighborhoods or virtually over the internet or even produce it themselves. But then the rest that they need they have to buy at a high price. This means that the electricity prices will fluctuate quite a bit. They’ll be a baseload supply from renewables. But, say in February in the night, when there’s nothing from wind and solar, then it may be that I’ll have to pay 40 or 50 cents a kilowatt. This will then also inspire new innovation, like in storage capacity, to find a cheaper way of bridging the low-load hours of wind and PV.

There’s going to have to be a new mentality among energy consumers, too. Energy has to be managed. This requires more individual responsibility. House owners too are going to have to look into ways to better manage their demand. Energy is going to be an issue which ordinary citizens are going to have to engage with, in a way no society has ever had to before. In terms of environmental protection, this is very welcome.

You mentioned the need for back-up capacity to fill in when sun and wind are low. Would you consider subsidies or even a feed-in tariff for the likes of gas plants, which are currently doing this job but finding it very hard to make ends meet in light of their limited hours of production?

When we have a new energy market based on renewables, then gas works aren’t going to need their own special laws. Rather, in the few hours that they generate electricity, they’ll get such a high price that it will make it worthwhile for them. That’s the free market! I tell my adversaries: I’m the one who’s for the real free market on this issue. You with your old mentality are stuck in planned-economy thinking.

What about these bigger projects like offshore wind power or Desertec, will they contribute significantly to Germany’s Energiewende?

The essence of renewable energy is small-scale production dispersed across the entire country. Bavaria is striving to produce a full 50 percent of its own energy in the near future. The other half we want to buy from northern and eastern Germany. As for Desertec, I think it’s going to take a long time to get up and running. In underdeveloped places like Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia, first we have to help them build up renewable energy production in order to win the trust of the people there. It would be a fatal mistake for us to produce electricity for our factories when there’s 50 percent joblessness there. That won’t work.

Last question, is a Christian Democrat-Green coalition a possibility in autumn?

Yes.

Photovoltaic power station in Lower Saxony. (Photo by Martina Nolte, CC-by-sa-3.0 de)

In my last post, I compared ownership statistics from 2011 and 2012 for renewables in Germany. One of the major energy policy changes in 2012 was the expiration of feed-in tariffs for new solar arrays larger than 10 megawatts. To give you an idea of how big that is, the average homeowner probably has space for 3 to 5 kilowatts – 10 megawatts is 10,000 kilowatts.

The tradeshow halls in Freiburg are covered with photovoltaics, but the system still only has a capacity of 245 kilowatts. (Photo by Craig Morris)

There was therefore a rush in 2012 to finish up the last systems larger than 10 megawatts, which may account for the two percent uptick in ownership among funds & banks, a likely group to own such systems. But the largest shift – five percent – went from private citizens to the commercial sector. Here, the German policy of “own consumption” (Eigenverbrauch) is probably at work.

Essentially, own consumption is a bit like net-metering with a time factor added to it. In net metering, your power meter simply runs backwards if you produce more solar power than you purchase from the grid. But in Germany’s “own consumption,” the meter never runs backwards – if you produce more than you consume at some point, you are required to store it on your side of the grid connection for later consumption.

The problem for most homeowners is that solar roofs produce most of their power in the afternoon, when most people are at work, not at home. A lot of power therefore has to be stored, and bigger battery packs make the approach less profitable. But the situation is fundamentally different for businesses, which generally have quite a large roof area and consume power during business hours. As I wrote back in 2010, this policy was thus bound to be popular among businesses.

Your average mom-and-pop shop that pays retail rates (around 27 cents) can thus benefit greatly from a solar roof, with feed-in tariffs for new systems installed in June dropping to 15 cents. But even midsize and large industry – which pays wholesale, not retail rates – is discovering the benefits of direct consumption, even of wind power. Last year, BMW put up four wind turbines at one of its plants in Germany. You see, it’s not just a question of the price of a kilowatt-hour, but also of maximum load. Power companies may charge extra if a firm consumes more than a certain amount at any time. Renewables can help keep the maximum load from the grid down.

This trend will continue. Indeed, it is hard to see how it could be stopped. And because commercial roofs are so much bigger than residential ones, the commercial sector may continue to take up a larger piece of the pie.

Likewise, the losers are also clear to see: the Big Four. They are sitting on a large fleet of conventional power plants designed to run for decades, and there is less and less demand for this power. Their strategy will therefore not be to increase their already small investments in renewables (which would only speed up the process), but to increasingly export power to Germany’s neighbors.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

Bioenergyvillage Juehnde, one of thousand examples of communal energy cooperatives throughout Germany. (Photo: Bioenergiedorf Jühnde)

The AEE has released the figures for ownership of renewables in 2012. The chart we used with data from 2011 (see our graph on ownership of renewables in Germany) was one of the most popular on our website, but also one that raised a lot of questions. For instance, how should “project firms” to be categorized?

Before we talk about category definitions, let’s compare the two charts (the one for 2012 is available in German here):

In four of the eight categories, there has been little or no change. Interestingly, investments made by Germany’s four largest utilities (Big Four) dropped considerably last year – so much for the idea (PDF) that these are the companies are “meant to invest in renewables.” They make up 75 percent of power production in Germany but only five percent of investments in renewables. But the biggest difference seems to be a shift from “private citizens” to “industry” – what’s going on there?

Here, I refer you to a definition of the terms in this PDF (in German) for the statistics from 2011. The Big Four are easy: EnBW, Eon, RWE, and Vattenfall. “Other energy suppliers” are the other energy firms, many of which are municipals excited about renewables.

Private citizens and farmers are also easy to define, with the distinction being important because of the large roofs and land area that farmers have (and the average citizen does not). Farmers can thus have far larger solar roofs than the average citizen, and they can also harvest energy crops, run biogas units from farm waste and energy crops, and have wind turbines installed on their land.

The category of funds & banks is a bit trickier. Obviously, banks finance a lot of the projects, but the figures above concern ownership – when banks keep projects in their own portfolio. On the other hand, funds are sold to individual investors, so some of this category will also include small businesses and individual citizens.

“Project firms” are generally developers who sell turnkey projects to other investors, but the figures above represent the projects that remain in the firm’s portfolio. The PDF mentions the examples of Enercon (Germany’s largest wind turbine manufacturer) and wpd, a well-known wind farm developer.

This brings us to the category of “industry.” The PDF explains that German term “Gewerbe” is used to mean production businesses from industry all the way down to tradespeople. We are currently updating the entire website with data for 2012, so this category label will be changed from “industry” to “commercial.” In my next post, I will discuss the apparent shift from private citizens to the commercial sector.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

Pumped-storage power station Rönkhausen in North Rhine-Westphalia as seen from above. (Photo by Dr.G.Schmitz, CC BY-SA 3.0)

On May 8, the prices for hour contracts on the Phelix exchange – the German and Austrian grid – for May 9 were roughly 1.5 cents lower per kilowatt-hour for peak power than for baseload power. The difference was even greater in Switzerland, with peak power costing two cents less than baseload power. This situation marks a complete reversal; until recently, power cost a lot more at times of peak demand – after all, rising demand usually brings up prices.

Base and Peak Prices for electrcity on the 9th of May 2013. (Source: http://www.eex.com/en/)

That same day, the old market situation was only still seen in France, where the price of peak power was still slightly above the price of baseload, but only by around 0.3 cents. But although a Thursday, May 9 was a holiday. On May 10, a normal workday, the price of peak power was roughly 3.3 cents higher than for baseload in the Phelix zone – but only 2.4 cents higher in Switzerland. Yet, only a few years ago, prices easily fluctuated on a daily basis by six cents or more.

At six cents per kilowatt-hour, pumped-storage facilities were quite profitable. Basically, they would pump water uphill when electricity was cheap (at night) and run it back down the hill through turbines to generate power when the prices were higher (during the day).

Under the new market conditions, however, there’s no money to be made on sunny days in May. German power consumption generally stretches from 40 gigawatts at night to as much as 70 gigawatts on summer workdays – a difference of roughly 30 gigawatts. But Germany now regularly gets more than 20 gigawatts of solar power on sunny summer afternoons, with more than 22 gigawatts having been added from 2010-2012.

As a result, pump-storage plants now only run on certain days of the year at much tighter margins. And the future is already clear as Germany continues to add solar in excess of the target corridor of 2.5-3.5 gigawatts per year; by the end of this decade, pumped-storage plants in Germany will have reversed operation in the summer to store power from the day for the night.

But first, we have to get through this interim period. Existing facilities are increasingly unprofitable. German weekly Die Zeit recently reported that Vattenfall may shut down the country’s oldest pumped-storage facility, with a capacity of 120 megawatts, and the firms behind a new proposal in the Black Forest currently see no profitability. In addition to the fast growth of solar, the article points out that forecasting has improved greatly, allowing coal plants to react more flexibly – thereby reducing the need for pumped storage.

What is the solution? One idea tossed about is a capacity market – payment by the kilowatt, not the kilowatt-hour. Some EU member states have already implemented such policies, but not everyone was happy. EU Energy Commissioner Oettinger also wants member states to start harmonizing their energy policies and does not like the idea of national capacity payments skewing the market.

Over the next few weeks, we will take a look at some of the ideas and concerns being discussed. There’s no rush – nothing is expected to be implemented in Germany before the elections in September.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

(Photo by az1172, CC BY-SA 2.0)

As for the costs, there are figures saying Germany will spend €100 billion on renewable energy subsidies. That does not seem negligible. Is this correct? How much will the Energiewende cost?

This amount is not an annual figure but for a time horizon of 20 years. Even if we would say the cost of the energy transition is 20 billion euro a year, we need to look at the figure relatively: Germany spends 90 billion euro per year on fossil energy! If you would add this up for the next 20 years we would have a real costs tsunami of trillions of euro. And the investments in the Energiewende are investments in the German economy, very different than costs for fossil fuels, money that is leaving the German economy. This investment goes into grids and the like that would have to be made anyway because the German grid is old, as are many power plants.

Is that cost 2.3% of household spending for electricity annually? And for how long? Is that really so little?

The mobility and heating costs of the average household are more than that. Really, it is a “pseudo-argument” that the opponents of the Energiewende want to make us believe. Many consumers do not even know how much they spend on electricity; this is the reason why over 80% of the people never change their electricity provider.

You obviously believe that the better arguments are those on behalf of the Energiewende. If so, why then aren’t they winning in the public debate?

The opponents arguments are put into circulation one after another and indeed now you see that popular support for the Energiewende is waning. It is a very effective PR strategy. When these myths are repeated again and again, they begin to sink in after a while. Not so long ago Germans were extremely concerned about climate change and the dangers of nuclear power. Now they’re scared of the Energiewende.

At the same time there aren’t enough politicians standing up and saying that this set of arguments is factually wrong. The Energiewende opponents are becoming increasingly vocal and there’s no one out there refuting them. No single party in Germany has proudly made the victories of the Energiewende part of their public campaigns.

Why have conservative political forces not come around more quickly when one considers the way that many of their constituencies have benefited immensely from the Energiewende?

That’s a good question. Some conservatives think that the vision they had, and obviously still have, is one of a better world. They think they’re right. They think that change can only happen through “green-thinking”. But that’s not true. All you have to do is look at the way nuclear power was introduced in the 1960s. It was heavily subsidized and now it’s here.

After all, many different sectors are benefiting from the investment that’s coming in from all over the world. We need more of this kind of investment into the grid, into capacity, into decentralized energy systems. Local economies have benefited enormously. Our economy needs this kind of push over a longer time. These conservatives claim the Energiewende hurts the economy, but the opposite is true. That’s another myth.

What about German industry itself?

It depends. Not all of industry is against the Energiewende. Many companies and sectors are profiting from it and some admit as much.

But not all are so forthright. There’s a huge discrepancy between what some of them say in public and how good the Energiewende has been to them. The chemical industry, for example, is largely reliant on gas. The price of gas depends on the world market, not German renewable energies. This has nothing to do with the Energiewende. But hearing it from the chemical industry you’d think the Energiewende was to blame. Moreover, the chemical industry is always ranked highly on worldwide sustainability indicators, which measure how sustainably a company produces and how sustainable its strategy is. Large chemical firms produce a lot of energy efficiency materials, like insulation for buildings, appliances, and mobility. These are key products for the Energiewende, and the replacement of oil. Industry is harmed by the high price of Russian gas, not the Energiewende, but they don’t say this.

The same goes for a company like Siemens. It earns incredibly well on an array of products associated with sustainability. But recently one top manager at Siemens called the Energiewende a mistake. I can’t understand why Siemens would say this when it benefits so much from producing sustainable products. Maybe Siemens says this because it has experienced losses on wind farms and solar projects, but the grounds for these losses lie in developments on the international market, namely the result of over-capacities and price reductions. But it’s trendy these days to blame the Energiewende rather than mistakes made by the company.

If there’s so little behind these arguments, should they eventually lose their clout? For example, two winters in a row now there have been no blackouts and Germany has exported electricity…

I wrote this book because I want to inform people that these claims, like this claim about blackouts, come from a “fear campaign.” In fact, we’re exporting more and more to our neighbors – too much for some of them. The Netherlands had to shut down their gas-fired plants because of the renewables from Germany.

This skewed and adversarial discourse is very unfortunate because there are in fact a lot of important maters to discuss and improve upon. But there’s no room in the current debate for rational discussion.

You talk about the adversaries of the Energiewende and their propaganda. What about the proponents, including the Greens? Do they speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

We see right now that election campaigns have started and that all parties, including the Greens, talk about “Strompreisbremsen” (electricity price cap) although they too know that the core of the problem is the wholesale price, the low coal price, and the low CO2 price. None of them are providing solutions to these problems. All of the proposals, including those of the Greens and other proponents to cut electricity prices, do not address the core problems. This is the dilemma of being in an election year.

What has this battle done to the debate about reforming the EEG?

The important issues, like EEG reform, aren’t being debated. This is part of the strategy to convince people that the Energiewende is too expensive, and that we need to stop it. This isn’t solving any problems.

If we want the Energiewende then we have to go the whole way. We can’t say after the first couple of kilometers, oh maybe we were wrong… We have to talk about how to bring both markets together, that of conventional fuels and of renewables. We need to think carefully how to do it, and there are options out there. But we’re not discussing the essence of the problems. Take the recent proposal of the environment ministry for capping the EEG and taxing clean energy producers. It doesn’t get at the root of the problem but simply blames clean energy for the total price increase.

Just a word about prices: You seem to think that the consumers should not be stuck with the whole bill. Who then should step up to pay? Part of the Altmaier plan is to make industry chip in on the costs.

Yes, this one aspect of the Altmaier plan is valuable. We have to broach the topic of the fair distribution of costs. It’s fair to exempt those companies with very high-energy costs and those on the international market. But this is really just a small number of companies. We have to look at different aspects, like for example that the wholesale prices are declining, whether taxes can be reduced, or the possibility of paying for the Energiewende from taxes, as we did with nuclear energy. Above all, we need a more honest and transparent debate.

If this uranium mine does not look French to you, it is because France does not have any. (Photo by Bidgee, CC BY 2.0)

In a recent article, I talked about how watts per m2, an expression of energy density, is seldom used in Germany. The concept of energy density is commonly used to discredit renewables, with proponents of nuclear often comparing the amount of land needed to produce enough renewable power to replace a single nuclear plant (which takes up relatively little space). The conclusion is that we simply don’t have enough land to do without nuclear. One infographic artist created a chart showing the large number of wind turbines required to replace a single nuclear plant. US utility Entergy has also compared nuclear favorably to both wind and solar in terms of space (PDF).

Apparently, like wind turbines, these nuclear plants take fuel right out of the air. You see, none of these comparisons ever take account of the land used for uranium mining. And that has a rather bizarre outcome: nuclear power is considered domestic even when practically all of a country’s uranium is imported.

Take France, for instance, which gets more than 75 percent of its power from nuclear. Judging from this list made by the World Nuclear Association (WNA), France has practically made no uranium since 2004 – less than 10 tons per year, whereas the country actually consumes closer to 10,000 tons annually. In fact, France discontinued uranium mining in 2001 (PDF). And the list clearly shows that the biggest EU country in terms of uranium production, the Czech Republic, covers less than one percent of global demand.

The nearly complete lack of domestic uranium production within the EU has not, however, prevented nuclear from being considered domestic. Take a look at this chart from the European Commission from this year, which shows that the EU makes seven percent of the world’s energy, 28 percent of that from nuclear. Yet, almost all of the fuel for that power is imported. This assessment is nothing new judging from this EU factsheet for 2004 (PDF).

It gets worse – even the highbrow French geography series Dessous des cartes believes that French “energy dependence” is practically nonexistent thanks to nuclear – see this screenshot for yourself. Never mind that France imports almost all of its oil – and its uranium.

And then consider the irony: Germany faces criticism for its imports of hard coal. What’s more, the next time I fill up my car at a gas station in Germany, I’ll be sure to consider that “domestic oil.”

By the way, where does France get its uranium from? Mainly from Canada and Niger. Now I know what you’re thinking – didn’t the French recently send troops down to Niger, Mali’s neighbor, to protect their uranium mines? No, that’s just a conspiracy theory – don’t believe the meme, especially when it comes from such sources of ill-repute as the BBC, Reuters, and Deutsche Welle.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

The neighborhood of Vauban in Freiburg is a good example for the pervasiveness of environmentalism in Germany. (Photo by s4tomorrow, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Back in 2004, when I was finishing up my German book Zukunftsenergien, a couple of (then) relatively unknown… well, environmentalists, wrote a paper entitled “The death of environmentalism.” They said a few interesting things, but also had little to say about Germany, which was emerging as a leader in renewables at the time. I thought their title was a good trick to get attention – but one that could divide a community that needs to stick together.

Germans would agree with Zehner that consumerism is a problem. By 2050, they aim to reduce total energy consumption by 40 percent – and even then, they will not be 100 percent renewable.

Less than a decade later, Ozzie Zehner is looking for “alternatives to alternative energy.” He has made the press not only in English (“Clean energy’s dirty secrets“), but also in French (“photovoltaics is not that fantastic”) and German (“the solar fairytale”). The media love that angle. He tells of a homebuilder who insisted that two wonderful oak trees be cut down so that his new solar roof would not be shaded. Zehner concludes from the experience that too many people are infatuated with solar.

A view of Freiburg’s Vauban neighborhood, known for its Plus Energy homes, with a decade-old tree on the right. When the neighborhood was developed in the 1990s, none of these historic trees was felled. In Germany, homeowners generally have to get permission from the city before cutting down a tree even in their yard – and the city can turn down the request if the reason is not good. Nonetheless, Germany is a leader in Passive House architecture and solar.

Here, Zehner takes an obviously silly exception in order to divide and conquer – and like the authors of “Death of environmentalism” (and proponents of insulation over photovoltaics), he rebuts claims Germans do not make. He says solar is not what it’s cracked up to be, but who’s doing the cracking? Not the Germans.

Zehner proposes other quite sensible things, such as more cycling and less consumption overall. Germans jibe with all three.

By playing off one thing against the other, you worsen the debate. Laypeople leave with the wrong impression: “see, solar / wind / biomass / whatever isn’t the solution after all.” Of course not – they’re a part of the solution. The solution is a mix of renewables with much lower consumption.

Germans may be leaders in photovoltaics, but they also invented the Passive House concept; nobody insulates better than the Germans (though the Swiss, Austrians, and others do it just as well). And Germany has roughly as much installed wind power capacity as it does solar.

Wanna talk consumerism? Germany is a leader in recycling and a net importer of waste. Cycling? Okay, we’re gonna give that one to the Netherlands and Denmark – but Germany is not far behind.

While some of the brightest young minds in the US boost their careers with headline-grabbing divisive claims, the German renewables community is united and thinks holistically. German wind power association BWE publishes a monthly magazine called “New Energy,” which focuses on whatever is needed, not just wind. Can you imagine AWEA or SEPA regularly writing about the benefits of biomass as the BWE does?

Founded in the 1970s, Germany’s oldest magazine for renewables has a title – Sonne, Wind & Wärme – that can be translated as “solar, wind & heat.” Can you name a single magazine in the US for all renewables? I can only think of British-born Renewable Energy World, which PennWell took over a few years ago. Germany has two, and those are just the big ones.

Germany also has two organizations that represent the renewables sector as a whole: the AEE and the BEE. Their offices are around the corner from each other in Berlin, and they are on friendly terms. Can you name a single nonprofit in the US for all renewables? Maybe it’s time for one – to end the divisiveness. We could start by building up the Renewables100 project.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.

Rainer Baake, director of Agora Energiewende. (Photo by Stephan Röhl, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Living in Germany, one might understandably have a skewed impression of what the rest of Europe thinks about Germany’s epic Energiewende, or clean energy transition. After all, all of the EU member states are committed to cutting carbon emissions and introducing renewables into their energy mixes. And Germany has taken the lead. So you’d think everybody’s watching the great Teutonic clean-energy pioneer in awe and wonderment, ready to jump on the bandwagon themselves, right?

Well, think again. As became clear very quickly at the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s two-day conference entitled “Energiewende – Think European!” in Berlin in April, there’s a lot of skepticism about and even deep-seated resentment toward Germany’s energy policies. Poles and the French, Czechs and Brits, in fact most of the EU27, are not on the same page as Germany and its small band of cohorts, including Austria and some Scandinavians. This fact has enormous implications for Germany’s policies, something that the Germans are in the process coming to grips with and incorporating into their modus operandi.

The conference was studded with energy experts from across the continent, both enthusiasts and detractors of the Energiewende. And the latter didn’t wait for long to take the gloves off. In France, argued Cécile Maisonneuve, Director of the Center for Energy of the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, there remains a sound consensus on the necessity of maintaining nuclear power, even if the Hollande government has pledged to reduce its dominance. There’s not a national debate on energy issues, she says, and the government’s election promises to modify France’s energy mix have so far gone nowhere. The French remain convinced that nuclear is the way to meet the EU’s carbon emissions targets and cut fossil fuels bills, even though they’re watching the Energiewende with curiosity and interest. French policymakers though, she said, resent the fact that Germany is “going it alone” rather than working together with its EU partners. “We have to cooperate in the EU context,” she said: “If it goes on like this there will be a total mess in Europe that will jeopardize your Energiewende and ours.”

This, though, was mild compared to what Olaf Osica of Warsaw’s Center for Eastern Studies had to say. Poland, the Czech Republic and most of the other Central Europeans see Germany’s energy policies as “very ideological” and “moralizing,” he said, and based on an overreaction to the Fukushima disaster in spring 2011. That is when Chancellor Merkel panicked and abruptly struck out on her own path, he said, which the Germans hadn’t begun to think through in terms of its implications for either Germany or for its neighbors. Osica underscored the “loop flows” of German renewable energy that swamp both Poland’s and the Czech Republic’s grids on sunny and windy days. This phenomenon (Germany electricity flows pass through both countries on their way from north to south) pushes their grids to the brink of collapse and costs Poland 50 million euros a year. “That’s our contribution to the German Energiewende,” he said sarcastically. Poland doesn’t share Germany’s angst about nuclear – it’s safe and clean, Osica said – and Poland is contemplating building its own reactors. (It presently has none.) It’s not that Poland isn’t ‘green,’ said Osica, but it’s going to do things its own way and maybe even pick up upon some of Germany’s best practices at a later point.

Even though there was plenty of German reaction to these charges (stressing, for example, the fact that the Energiewende has been underway at the very least since 2000), the Germans were on the defensive. This anti-Energiewende sentiment was an indication of what several panelists in the course of the conference referred to as a Europe-wide “backlash” against a pro-active, German-style push for a future based on non-nuclear renewables. If there had been any doubt that this was the case, the conference dispelled those doubts.

Much of the discussion that followed, both on the stage and during the breaks, was about the proper role of the EU in coordinating and guiding European energy policy. Of course, according to the Lisbon Treaty energy policy is a matter for the member states. But the EU does have a say about renewable energy, climate protection, the internal energy market, energy efficiency, and other issues that impact directly on national energy policies. There are EU-inspired national action plans, an energy road map for 2050, 20-20-20 targets for 2020, an EU emissions trading system (EU ETS), and other measures. Not to paint too black a picture, these initiatives and national policies have led to an increase in renewables across the EU 27.

But what about the future? Interestingly, it was the Energiewende-doubters who were in favor of greater EU coordination — in order to reign in Germany. Some of the Germans, on the other hand, expressed their wariness about common EU policies that might dilute their Energiewende. Rainer Baake of Agora Energiewende, for instance, said that as long as there are such divergent energy policies in the EU and no chance of coming to a common position, Germany is best off pursuing bilateral and trilateral deals with neighbor states, like Poland and the Czech Republic. Germany’s representative from the environment ministry struck a similar note, saying explicitly that Germany didn’t want to jeopardize the feed-in tariff or expansion of renewables by going for EU-level common policies. At the moment, he said, Germany would lose. Better to forge on with like-minded member states and show the rest that they are indeed on the right track. In time, the others will come around.

What everybody might possibly agree upon – the lowest common denominator – was the “no regrets” long-term 2030 policy framework meant to replace the current framework that expires in 2020. The “no regrets” option calls for smart and flexible infrastructure and increased energy efficiency, in addition to a substantially higher share of renewable energy in EU gross final energy consumption beyond 2020. There was more disagreement about whether or not the targets for 2030 should be binding and whether there should be any renewables target at all, or just carbon reduction targets that every country could pursue as it wished. There were also a few entirely justified snide remarks about the fact that it is Germany that is holding up the current efficiency legislation on the EU level (thanks to Mr. Rösler and the Economics Ministry) as well as improvements to make the ETS work, also undermined by the same faction.

Coal is relatively cheap only because environmental and health costs are externalized. (Photo by Elsdorf-blog.de, CC BY 3.0)

A few weeks ago, I mentioned some estimates of the health impacts of coal power from Canada, the US, and India. Since then, two German organizations – Greenpeace and the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) – have produced studies on the impact of coal power in Germany.

But before we get to the numbers, it is interesting to note that HEAL finds that China and the US now have stricter emissions standards than the EU. For instance, the EU limits on nitrous oxide emissions after 2016 is 200 milligrams per cubic meter, compared to 117 milligrams in China and 100 in the US.

HEAL puts the healthcare cost of coal emissions in Germany at 2.3 to 6.4 billion euros – a rather unfortunately wide range that is unlikely to convince the general public. Furthermore, the estimate for the US in my previous article was $345 billion annually.

Even taking account of the population difference (there are roughly 4 times as many Americans as Germans), adjusting for the difference in healthcare costs (Americans roughly pay twice as much for roughly the same quality of healthcare as Germans), and taking the greatest estimate for Germany, we still end up with coal emissions leading to healthcare costs in the US that are approximately 5 times greater per capita than in Germany – an outcome that does not make sense in light of the German study’s claim that standards on emissions are more lax in Germany than in the US. Take the lower estimate for Germany, and the healthcare costs in the US are even 15 times greater.

But HEAL’s estimate of the number of deaths in Germany directly attributable to coal power emissions is close to Greenpeace’s. In a study published in English (PDF) just two days before my blog post, Greenpeace found that some 3,100 Germans die prematurely each year because of coal plant emissions. HEAL puts the number at 2,700 in its report, which is only in German (PDF).

Of course, you can never compare different studies with different methodologies, so we have to be a bit tolerant of differences in findings. I draw two conclusions from the discussion. First, we talk about the impact of wind turbines on birds and bats as though wildlife were completely unaffected by coal plant emissions, which wind power offsets; in fact, we need to deduct the small number of birds and bats killed by wind turbines from the much larger number that die from coal plant emissions.

And second, there is a “distributed” (not concerted) campaign among various German organizations against coal power in Germany, probably for the upcoming parliamentary elections this fall. I’m not the only one calling for a coal phaseout.

Craig Morris (@PPchef) is the lead author of German Energy Transition. He directs Petite Planète and writes every workday for Renewables International.