Germany is in the grip of an unprecedented energy crisis, one that is largely "of its own making".
Lack of electricity and lack of warmth in winter
Germany belongs to the climate of the transition from the western Ocean to the mainland, and the winters are cold and humid, and the heating pressure is very high. Not only that, as the largest manufacturing country in the European Union, Germany has a huge high-energy-consuming industry such as steel, aluminum, cement, and chemical industry, and these energy-intensive enterprises are related to the employment of thousands of Germans, as well as The economic prosperity, people's livelihood and social stability of Germany. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the winter in Germany in 2021 is particularly "cold", and energy security has naturally become unusually important.
However, in this exceptionally "cold" winter, Germany has an energy crisis that has never been seen since World War II: on the eve of the Christmas holiday, The German electricity price soared to 431 MWh, at the same time, Germany's energy consumption has rebounded due to the sharp decline in economic activity due to the epidemic, due to the needs of household electricity, heating and other daily needs (according to a report jointly released by the energy market research organization AGEB and the energy industry lobbying association BEDEW on December 21, Total energy consumption in Germany will rise by 2.6% year-on-year in 2021 and is expected to continue to rise in 2022 from a 2021 basis). In 2022, the German baseload electricity (European benchmark) price has reached a record high contract price of 278.50 euros, up 10% month-on-month, and the price has more than doubled in one year.
In the face of energy shortages and soaring electricity prices, the usual response is to put energy strategic reserves on the market, and Germany's most important energy source for power supply and heating is natural gas, which means that the German government should release the natural gas strategic reserves as soon as possible – but this is almost impossible: at the beginning of the last 10 days of December, Germany's strategic gas storage capacity ratio has fallen to an unprecedented low of 57%, of course, this is better than some neighbors such as the Netherlands (41%) Austria (37%), However, as a populous country and manufacturing kingdom, such natural gas storage capacity is very dangerous, because usually such a low value will appear in late January due to the start of businesses, and the december production trough will appear such a value, which means that once the start of construction rebounds, the energy crisis will be worse (the ratio of Strategic Natural Gas storage capacity in Germany in the same period of 2019 is as high as 78%).
What's worse is that it is also impossible to fill these energy gaps: France, the EU's most energy-rich NEIGHBOR, the government temporarily "shut down" two nuclear power plants to meet its self-proclaimed "green energy standards" (nuclear power accounts for no more than 50%), which has a limited impact on France's power supply and heating, but cut off the way out of "cross-border borrowing" in neighboring countries such as Germany; natural gas supply is mainly dependent on Russia, but it is intended to reduce the variable number of transit nodes and double the supply capacity of "Nord Stream-2" (Nord Stream 2) The future of gas pipelines is uncertain, the situation in Ukraine is uncertain, and other gas suppliers and ubiquitous financial levers are taking advantage of the fire, making LNG in the international market a strange commodity.
All this is enough to make the Olaf Scholz and the SPD-LDP-Green Party coalition government, who has just come to power after the "Angela Merkel era", have a headache, even if they barely survive the difficulties of the past few years, they have to fall into the dilemma of "ensuring electricity or industrial production" after the holiday – in fact, Germany's industrial blackout has begun, and the electricity used for life and heating is also hanging high, and it is precarious.
"Do" it yourself
However, all this was "done" by Germany itself. As the Wall Street Journal editorial put it on December 22, "Few countries are trying to make their energy security more and more fragile as Germany is today."
At the critical moment of the energy crisis, Germany announced the closure of only 3 of its 6 nuclear power plants (Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf), which means that it will reduce its reliable, all-weather, zero-carbon energy production capacity by 4 GW, while 10 years ago Germany had as many as 17 nuclear power plants, second only to France in nuclear power research and development and production capacity in the European Union.
This makes Bill. Bill Gates was stunned, even by the "reducer" leader, NASA scientist Jim Gates, who was the first to warn the U.S. government that "the world is warming and endangers human security." Jim Hansen has also called for "prudent" decisions, not even the whole of "controversial decisions": the German government has clearly announced that it will close all three remaining nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, thus achieving a "dynamic clearance" of nuclear power.
It all stems from the reluctance of the former Merkel government, but spurred by a surging "green storm" in Germany to launch a "green energy" replacement plan: coal power generation will be reduced by 16% in 2024, coal power will be phased out in 2038, and nuclear power will be phased out in 2050. The left-wing coalition government, which has just come to power, has been pushed by the Government's Green Party, which is known for its "radical environmentalism", to increase this "green strategy" layer by layer, that is, to phase out nuclear energy in 2022, ban any fuel-fired heating system in new residential buildings in 2026, and eliminate coal power in 2030.
Merkel originally did not approve of the cancellation of nuclear power, hoping that Germany, like France, will list nuclear power as the main variety of "green carbon-free energy", but in the face of the fierce "green wave" she had to compromise, but still "resisted", first hoping that several newer nuclear power plants (two of the three nuclear power plants closed at the end of this year were put into use in 1984, one was put into use in 1986, and could have worked safely until about 2045 "natural elimination") to "stand on the last shift" and win valuable time for the maturity of "green energy". Then try to promote the construction of the "Nord Stream-2" pipeline and introduce imported natural gas for "hedging".
However, all this was shattered by the "three axes" after the left coalition government came to power: the new government not only "put coal power and nuclear power on the spot" in advance, but even natural gas was "killed" – according to the new government's plan, Germany should completely "quit" natural gas by 2040 and achieve "complete energy greening". The new government aims to reduce Germany's carbon emissions by 65 percent by 2030 and increase the share of "renewables" to 80 percent, when a total of 40 GW of nuclear and coal power will be "forcibly phased out" and replaced by wind and solar.
Even many "moderately fanatical" environmentalists think such a step is too hasty: this means that the Scholz government will install 30 wind turbines per week over the next 10 years (the rate in 2021 is only 8 per week), while adding 15 GW of solar photovoltaic capacity per year (bearing in mind that Germany will only add 5.8 GW in 2021), which is no different from "putting satellites".
What's more, both wind and photovoltaic, at least in terms of existing technical capabilities, are far from "all-weather": according to the aforementioned joint AGEB/BDEW report, in 2021, Due to "abnormal wind direction", German wind power generation decreased by about 10% year-on-year, which led to the share of "renewable energy" in single-use energy consumption, from 16.5% in 2020 to 16.1%, and the total share in electricity production fell from about 44% in 2020 to 41%. In contrast, coal power, which is "worthy of death", increased by about 18% year-on-year.
The unusually cold winter of 2021 is bound to lead to a continued increase in energy demand, while energy markets and European Emissions Trading System (ETS) prices have also skyrocketed during the same period, which has undoubtedly exacerbated the "lethality" of the German energy crisis. In this context, the "feat" of the German left-wing coalition government undoubtedly played a role in adding fuel to the fire.
Continue to "do"
However, there is no indication that the Scholz government will change course, on the contrary, they seem to intend to continue to "do" so.
Although many analysts point out that hastily cutting down nuclear and coal power before the maturity of new energy sources, and betting on the replacement magic weapon on nord stream-2 natural gas, is a "hand in hand" and gives Russia and Vladimir Putin the opportunity to hoard goods and "take" Germany, the Scholz government continues to slash and adapt.
Not only that, but recently a number of key members of the coalition government, such as the new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, have spoken out more frequently, threatening to block the "Nord Stream-2" project from being put into use, and if this is the case, Germany will not even be able to "back up" the buffer energy needed, and if there is a continuous rain (which will affect photovoltaic power generation) or wind anomalies (which will affect wind power generation), the consequences will be even more unimaginable – and for Germany, the above climatic phenomena are already commonplace.
In fact, the two major parties of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Democratic Party in the three-party coalition government, as well as the vast majority of members of the Scholz government, are not so extreme, but the Green Party with the smallest "weight" in the cabinet and the lowest number of seats in the parliament is a typical example of both opposing nuclear power, coal power, and more anti-natural gas and electricity. The little scales can unscrupulously "make the small big" and threaten the Scholz government, which is afraid of collapse, only the Greens are the leader of the Greens (the foreign minister Bell Burke, who fiercely opposed "Nord Stream-2", mentioned earlier, is from the Greens).
In this regard, many cold-eyed European analysts, such as Thierry Bros, a former energy security adviser to the French government, pointed out that the current tolerance of Europeans for winter power outages and heating outages is "even lower than that of epidemic prevention restrictions", and once the double impact of power outages and epidemic prevention restrictions is killed at the same time, "it is difficult to imagine what kind of chain reaction it will trigger in a tired and irritable population", if such a thing unfortunately happens, "it is not visible that any European government can survive the storm".