The confusion between political objectives and environmental choices can lead to create illusions and mistakes in the energy transition domain. The crisis Germany is going through today is revealing of this situation. The adopted strategy, regarding power production, , which would grow in the future with electric mobilities and the reduction of the fossil fuels utilization for domestic tasks, was based on the progressive retreat of nuclear, confirmed after the Fukushima catastrophe, and the massive development of renewables, essentially wind turbines.
Behind these decisions, apparently conform with the commitments in favor of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, was hidden, in reality, very political reasons and they have been efficient because the coalition which put Angela Merkel in power has allowed her to remaining as chancellor 16 years. Fukushima was a pretext to obtain the vote of the electors tempted by the ideas of the German ecologists. The tsunami was the main if not the only cause of the thousands of deaths. The power plant operator had omitted to give to the reactor cooling system a second electric source, located in a safe place. It is this mistake which provoked the accident and heavy radio-actives emissions. But the region inhabitants who did not die drowned, had since a long time left the area.
Renewables being by nature intermittent, in order to offset the reduction of the nuclear power production, it must be necessary to keep and even to increase the capacity of the thermal power plants. That has allowed to preserving the activity of many coal and brown coal mines and to giving a sure electoral advantage to the chancellor political party, the CDU in the concerned landers. Russia was then chosen as the main natural gas supplier and two pipe lines, North Stream 1 and 2 were built. It is the former social-democrat Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to whom Angela Merkel has succeed, who first, had announced the retreat of the nuclear to the profit of the Russian natural gas. After having left his functions, Moscow has so given him major responsibilities in the companies which were going to supply Berlin. At last, the industrial motivations have never been absent. The European power Reactor (EPR), had been designed by a cooperation between Siemens and Framatome, in the Nineties, the German group having a minority participation. Bur a few years later, Siemens decided to sale its shares and to retreat itself from this sector. The group then, invested in the production of wind turbines and took in 2017 the control of its Spanish competitor Gamesa.
So the energy crisis which started with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, has affected in the first position Germany. The huge natural gas price increase and the uncertainness of the supply this winter are making more fragile the power suppliers with at the top position Uniper. The company had committed itself to deliver clients natural gas at a price defined before the Ukrainian crisis. It has now, to respect its engagements, to buy it on the market at current prices, which has generated during the 1st half of the year a near 10 billion euros loss and which will oblige the State to intervene to avoid bankruptcy.
In its energy transition policy, Germany has committed two mistakes. The first one has been to underestimate the consequences of the renewable intermittency. It is not possible to develop them without in the same time having at its disposal power production plants able to substitute themselves to these sources when they are not able to produce. That first mistake has been aggravated by the decision to close nuclear power plants. So the only alternative was to increase the share of the thermal power plants, which was in contradiction with the objective of the emissions of the greenhouse gas reduction.
The second mistake, and the country is today paying the price, was to did not have at its disposal a set of fossil fuels suppliers, diversified enough to guarantee the safety of its supply. The Germany choice to give to Russia the majority of its natural gas imports, was exposing itself to an heavy dependance whose it pays today the consequences with the risk of interruptions of the production of essential industries this winter and prices increases which will weight on the competitiveness of its enterprises and on the purchasing power of household, that the project of a reduction of the VAT rate, brought back from 19 to 9% will only slightly soften.
Atop of that, the arguments in favor of renewables lay on two statistical imprecisions. Governments in order to hail their efforts in favor of environment use the realized investments with capacities figures (GW) and compare them to the traditional power sources. But due to the intermittence, we must compare real production figures (GWh). With the same capacity, wind turbines produce twice less electricity and solar panels six times less.
The second one concerns their supposed competitiveness. But it is forgotten to take into account the cost of their intermittence, i.e. the realization of the investments to do and the maintenance of the power capacities which will have to function when renewables are not able to produce. The main benefit of these new sources, it is that they reduce the recourse to fossil fuels in the country which have no nuclear plants. But the simultaneous abandon of the nuclear make, by large, that advantage disappearing.
A solution, to cope with these weaknesses has, during a long period, been put forward and has been at the origin of research programs and public subventions, the power stocking. Nobody can say today when and at which cost that solution can be put into place with enough capacity to answer to this essential requirement, the power supply safety.
The renewable term is also disputable. Wind turbines and solar panels are traditional industrial products about which it is difficult to pretend that their making has no impact on the environment and that their recycling, at the end of their operating life, will be assured in conditions, which will not, their too, damage environment. It would be much more appropriate because transparent to talk about intermittent energies. It is not more certain that these sources respect the biodiversity. Is it possible to imagine that the birds migratory flux will not be affected by the huge blades of the wind turbines when they turn? The same observation can be done regarding fishes life around undersea turbines.
At last, the implantation of the renewables fields needs a deep adaptation of the power and distribution networks which has a cost which must be taken into account. These implantations, where they are near inhabited zones or touristic sites can provoke a fall of the value of the properties. They maybe can be partly compensated after the consultations organized to get the necessary authorizations. But there are strong chances that regarding the concerned real estate assets become unsellable in the future, for instance in the case of an inheritance. Who will buy a house which has an unobstructed view on wind turbines?
The de-carbonation of the economies and the safety of the power supply constitute two unavoidable exigences. Even if maintenance problems can occur as it is the case now in France, nuclear power is the only source which satisfies to these two exigences. China, the United Kingdom and India notably, and we must hope France tomorrow have understood it and that is not an illusion.