Antinuclear

Germany’s electricity sector delivers 21 per cent of its power from renewable sources, such as the wind and the sun. Just 8.5 per cent of Australian power is provided by these sources, despite the fact that our continent has them in spades compared to the Germans…..

Anxiety over the potential of the Eurozone crisis to wreak havoc around the globe is undoubtedly driving the softness in the Australian economy.

But what of Germany, which finds itself at the epicenter of the EU debt maelstrom?

How is it possible that a nation shouldering the lion’s share of bailing out Europe’s basket-case economies has its finances in the best shape ever in two decades?

The yearly German unemployment rate keeps falling and at 6.7 per cent  in January was the lowest since reunification. The Berlin based BGA Exporters and Wholesalers group estimated total German exports hit a record $US1.3 trillion last year.

This is hardly a picture of an economy that has been struggling under the impost of a carbon cost and renewable energy subsidies.

Energy production using fossil and nuclear fuels is penalised in Germany by virtue of the Renewable Energy Act, which guarantees higher prices for generators of electricity sourced from wind and solar through feed-in-tariffs.

The legislation has encouraged a phenomenal uptake of solar roof panels for a nation that hardly boasts sunny weather. Today Germany has over 150 million solar panels installed or 25,000MW, more than Australia’s entire baseload capacity.

Compare that with a mere 1,250MW of photovoltaic panels in the sunburnt country and the irony is scorching.

Critics who claim that pricing carbon using feed-in-tariffs, taxes or emissions trading is somehow linked to an underperforming economy and high jobless rates ought to be silenced by Germany’s success in bursting that myth.

And if the proof in the pudding is not enough for the naysayers, they could look to volumes of published material demonstrating that the early costs of encouraging renewable energy benefit an economy in a matter of years.
Respected energy experts Dr Wolfram Krewitt and Dr Joachim Nitsch’s published research while at the German Aerospace Centre that is regularly cited to drive home this point.

In a peer reviewed paper they wrote: “While the success of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act in supporting the use of renewable energy sources for electricity generation is widely acknowledged, it is partly criticised for imposing unjustified extra costs on society.

“[This] paper makes an attempt to estimate the external costs avoided in the German energy system due to the use of renewable energies for electricity generation, and to compare them against the compensation to be paid by grid operators for electricity from renewable energies according to the Renewable Energy Sources Act.

“… [R]esults clearly indicate that the reduced environmental impacts and related economic benefits do outweigh the additional costs for the compensation of electricity from renewable energies,” Krewitt and Nitsch concluded.

Another misleading argument renewable energy doubters like to peddle is that the rise in renewable energy use and the reduction in coal use is only possible in economies that also have a nuclear sector, to supply supposedly ‘reliable’ electricity when ‘the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow’.

Germany also recently burst this myth…..http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2012/02/09/3426757.htm