Lists

[polarbear]

LOL Very convincing arguement.

You could make a fortune if You contact any of these Institutions:
Developmental disability and Mental Retardation Research - Matsuishi Laboratory-
Has it not even dawned on You, that You keep quoting the very same equations which are being used to prove what a crock of shit man made GW is?
Except that You pick a web site for Your quotes that chopped all the text off and who wrote these equations.

Well at least You keep this forum alive, because You make the whole thing extremely amusing almost as good as the old comedy shows where it was still Okay to laugh about retards

Since then too many changed their name, organized into lobby groups, and we have nothing to laugh about it any more.

Except You

Where did the other guy go, he was on Your science team...?

He changed his avatar and I never see him around here any more

 

[polarbear]

Electricity rates "will skyrocket"...............-Barak Obama



Now......skyrocketing electricity rates dont matter to social invalids who live in the middle of nowhere in fcukking Bumfook and make laughable mortgage payments. To a majority of Americans, they get fcukked in a green economy. Make no mistake here..........this is not at all about "science".......its about Obama picking winners and losers.

See I wrote that here, You don`t need a crystal ball to know what he is doing next...That f...ing ex Communist whore from Soviet Germany Merkel has finally pulled the wool over this idiot`s head!

The Expensive Dream of Clean Energy: Will High Costs Kill Merkel's Green Revolution? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Silence on True Cost of Energy Plan

It will mark the end of an energy system that has been based almost exclusively on fossil fuels -- coal, oil and gas -- for the last two centuries. The steam engine, the light bulb and the automobile have immeasurably improved the lives of billions of people. But the collateral damage has been high. The polar icecaps are melting and the share of greenhouse gases in the air is increasing because humans each year burn energy supplies that took millions of years to create. Renewable energy offers the only way to lead the world into a green future. That is why Merkel keeps on emphasizing the scale of the revolution Germany faces. But she is keeping quiet about the huge cost this will entail.

She has done that already and now Germany is fucked! You can`t even use natural Gas anymore for Your hot water tank and to heat Your house.
And $ per Kilowatt hr are SKYROCKETING:
Germans pay second highest electricity prices in EU - The Local

Germans pay second highest electricity prices in EU
Germans pay the second highest rates for electricity in Europe, right behind Denmark, new statistics showed on Friday.

Now that it becomes apparent that the communist bitch`s hairbrained power grid scheme is not working, because the new "Green Energy" simply can`t deliver, she is writing legislation which will punish You with SEVERE FINES if at any time Your household registers over a 2kilowatt power demand...since these can cause her "Energy Net" to brown out

So once Obama has his way, You better tell Your wife to unplug the coffee-maker just in case Your new electric hot water tank call for power at the same time she is trying to make coffee.

Switzerland is following suit:...they have too, `cause they import a lot of hydro:
2,000 watt society: Swiss plan to reduce energy consumption | OurWorld 2.0

2,000 watt society
Scientists in Switzerland, a country that imports 80% of its energy, have come up with a cohesive strategy to tackle today’s persistent energy squandering — the “2,000 Watt Society”.

And it`s being done by the same "scientists" that tell You Your SUV will flood New York

And here they are again:
Worldchanging: Bright Green: The 2000 Watt Society

Worldchanging.com
The 2000 Watt Society
Jamais Cascio, 2 Jun 05

2000watt.jpgThe "2000 Watt Society" is a radical model of efficient, high-quality living being pushed by the Swiss Council of the Federal Institute of Technology. Worldwide average energy consumption per capita is about 17,500 kilowatt hours, working out to a continuous consumption of 2000 watts.

So, the sky rocketing costs are just the tip of this entire swindle, soon You have to learn to live in the dark, save for a few LED lights and without air-conditioning as well!

Where the hell is America going with this President...how is this differnet from "central planning" and all these Agri-/green plans" in the ex Soviet Union?
http://ingrimayne.com/econ/IndividualGroup/CentralPlanning.html

Central Planning

Those who designed the Soviet economic system began with a belief that "the problem with capitalism is that it produces for profit instead of for people's needs," and they set out to build a system that produced directly for people's needs and not at all for profit. "There was a period early in Soviet life when it was argued that the Soviet worker and manager would work because of their enthusiasm for the revolution and their ideological fervor. That phase passed rather quickly."1 Because use of markets violated Marxist ideology, there was only one system of coordination possible. A system of central planning evolved; a system in which all decisions about what people needed were decided from the top.

THERE WILL BE NO DIFFERENCE...except he will call it some other name

 

[skookerasbil]

Electricity rates "will skyrocket"...............-Barak Obama


YouTube - Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket


Now......skyrocketing electricity rates dont matter to social invalids who live in the middle of nowhere in fcukking Bumfook and make laughable mortgage payments. To a majority of Americans, they get fcukked in a green economy. Make no mistake here..........this is not at all about "science".......its about Obama picking winners and losers.

All energy costs are going to skyrocket, along with food prices, whether we do something or do nothing.

Indeed.........but like most things in life, it comes down to "suck" vs "suckier" s0n...........your way is the suckier and much more expensive. What? Do we electrify Union Pacific, Burlington Northern/Santa Fe and CSX? Laugh my balls off.

Like a typical liberal.......dont give a rats ass about job loss. If it gets in the way of the ideology? Its "FCUKK YOU......NO JOB!!!"

 

[polarbear]

I am much less than satisfied with either Old Rocks or Polar Bear's links. CO2 blocks 15um completely at the surface, evaporation takes the heat upwards with water vapour, cloud precipitation and the diminished air pressure release the latent heat, and CO2 slows the escape of 15um radiation above the water vapour. My questions involve the cloud cycle, what form does the latent heat take when it is released, and how much effect does the CO2 have on it and by which mechanisms.

while CO2 is what many are interested in, it is certainly obvious that H2O does almost all the heavy lifting. if our understanding of clouds if off by a small margin it is more than enough to obliterate the effect of CO2. and our understanding is weak. climate models put generalized inputs in for clouds and assume a positive feedback, even though there is not enough information to make those assumptions. again, a small miscalculation for clouds throws the whole model out of whack. water is the dollars, CO2 is the cents. $100~103.90~100.390. penny wise, pound foolish. our focus may very easily be in the wrong place.

If the climate should change, then clouds would also change, altering all of the effects listed above. What is important is the sum of all these separate effects, the net radiative cooling or warming effect of all clouds on Earth. For example, if Earth's climate should warm due to the greenhouse effect , the weather patterns and the associated clouds would change; but it is not known whether the resulting cloud changes would diminish the warming (a negative feedback) or enhance the warming (a positive feedback). Moreover, it is not known whether these cloud changes would involve increased or decreased precipitation and water supplies in particular regions. Improving our understanding of the role of clouds in climate is crucial to understanding the effects of global warming.

Atmospheric scientists have learned a great deal in the past many decades about how clouds form and move in Earth's atmospheric circulation. Investigators now realize that traditional computer models of global climate have taken a rather simple view of clouds and their effects , partly because detailed global descriptions of clouds have been lacking, and partly because in the past the focus has been on short-term regional weather prediction rather than on long-term global climate prediction. To address today's concerns, we need to accumulate and analyze more and better data to improve our understanding of cloud processes and to increase the accuracy of our weather and climate models.

that is from GISS. Cloud Climatology

how often do you hear the modelers talk about how uncertain their models are?

OK first off this statement here is totally false:

CO2 blocks 15um completely at the surface,

How many more time do I have to show here how much 356 ppm CO2 "block" at this wavelength...???
IT HAS BEEN MEASURED,...

(9.79*10-4 cm^(-1) - 1.11*10-4 cm^(-1) / 0.5171 cm^(-1) = 0.17 %

Come on IanC...how is 0.17 % "completely blocking"..????

Or do You prefer to go by what "climatologsts" who don`t know one end of a IR Stecrophotometer from the other


And once again, the enthalpy of Water, maybe I`ll try the pictures with You this time instead of the number..it`s just when I showed these there were a lot of retards who could not figure that out either "I knew who were dealing with, just as soon as he showed us pictures of a cloud"

Okay here is another picture, that shows You like I did with "the pictures of a cloud" that were Infrared Sat-Pictures...they clearly show what happens to the heat of condensation, once the water vapor gets up there:

And this Satellite that took that Infrared Image picture of the condensing water vapor emitting all this IR energy back out to space operated at

The scanning was in the range 10.3-12.5 µm (IR4 and IR5 channels).

Okay, so where does CO2 the "Greenhousegas" that is "blocking all this IR" and will flood New York absorb INFRARED....?

14.25µm = 702wnm to 14.75µm = 678wnm 15µm = 667 15.25µm=656wnm 15.7µm5= 635wnm
GOES, GMS-5, Meteosat-7, and FY-2 all use the SAME ISO 20473 scheme wavelength designations

Mid Infrared MIR 3 - 50 µm
Far Infrared FIR 50 - 1000 µm

When they make "pictures of clouds"...the idiots here laughed at when I showed them in my first posts, ...hoping to show what happens to the heat energy absorbed by water, which is evaporated , rises 10`s of thousands of feet up , re-condenses and radiates the condensation enthalpy energy UNHINDERED back out into space

I am beginning to suspect that even now it is still not clear that Heinz Hug`s 0.17% is the IR energy which is absorbed between 14 and 15.7µm !
All the other IR raduiation outside that band goes right past CO2...

That is a fraction so miniscule You can discard it like the mass increase a gnat sitting on an elephant represents...how much more explanation does that need?
That`s why I was always saying "how much rain can a wire block"...and "The wire" was the 14 to ~16 µm tiny little frequency band
Don`t tell me now You want to go back to the numbers again!
If You want to, get Yourself the color scale calibration and then You have no problem to get the ∫ e/t values
I`ve done it, but see no reason why it should be my job to do it for others and drop everything I am doing

 

[polarbear]

Now that I hope it is CLEAR, that what happened with all this Solar IR heat radiation that had hit the planet surface and had evaporated these MASSIVE amounts of Water that supply the MASSIVE amount of rivers that run back into the Ocean with MASSIVE FLOWRATES ...
and what happened to the latent heat which DOES NOT travel as Infrared through the air upwards...and "is absorbed" by SUV greenhouse gas.....It goes up there as WATERVAPOR not as IR....then the Water vapor condenses at high altitude and radiates IR at a wavelength the any CO2 beteween this height and Space could not POSSIBLY absorb...

1.) the frequency is ALL WRONG...
2.) the partial pressure of CO2 at these altitudes are so miniscule that You have to divide the
Heinz Hug number by (0.17 %) 3...because at the cloud tops the atmospheric pressure is ~ 1/3rd as down at ground level, and as You should all know it`s not just the Oxygen You want to breathe that thins out
for fucks sake a child would have understood all that by now
Next thing some body will ask if CO2 can prevent moist air from climbing to high altitude...!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Great post Mr.polarbear. So co2 is very tiny effects with only .17 percent blocking of IR from going to space. Keep up the good work...Another thing to think about is in a warmer world wouldn't there be more stratus clouds that would reflect even more energy back into space. This would stop any warming too..Natural cycle.

Would you explain how the green house on Venus works?

 

[Old Rocks]

It's actually more like the water is the millions of dollars and the CO2 is the cents, as regards relative numbers.

A better anology would be a servo valve. The CO2 is the little valve that controls the big valve, water vapor.

That's certainly what you boys are trying to make us beleive, problem is once again no empirical data supports you. It does the opposite in point of fact.

So you say while the real scientists are stateing otherwise.

 

[Old Rocks]

Great post Mr.polarbear. So co2 is very tiny effects with only .17 percent blocking of IR from going to space. Keep up the good work...Another thing to think about is in a warmer world wouldn't there be more stratus clouds that would reflect even more energy back into space. This would stop any warming too..Natural cycle.

Would you explain how the green house on Venus works?

From my point of view. Well.

 

[westwall]

A better anology would be a servo valve. The CO2 is the little valve that controls the big valve, water vapor.

That's certainly what you boys are trying to make us beleive, problem is once again no empirical data supports you. It does the opposite in point of fact.

So you say while the real scientists are stateing otherwise.

"Scientists" who are forced to falsify data to support their political activism aren't.

 

[polarbear]

Great post Mr.polarbear. So co2 is very tiny effects with only .17 percent blocking of IR from going to space. Keep up the good work...Another thing to think about is in a warmer world wouldn't there be more stratus clouds that would reflect even more energy back into space. This would stop any warming too..Natural cycle.

Would you explain how the green house on Venus works?

From my point of view. Well.

So where did all the Ocean water disappear to in Your cloud-less world?
I thought You said New York will be the next sunken city "Antlantis"...did it sink in bullshit or in water?
The last time I heard Venus atmosphere was 97% Carbon-dioxide and no one has told me anything about that they have discovered Oceans of water on Venus...
Now You want to point out with Your Venus doomsday analogy that everything Physics said what 0,035 % CO2 could possibly do compared with 97 % CO2.... that asses like You know more about Physics?

 

[polarbear]

So co2 is very tiny effects with only .17 percent blocking of IR from going to space.

Would you explain how the green house on Venus works?

A voice of sanity!....thank You!
Well except for Stratus clouds to vanish all our water would have to vanish too.
Nimbo- Alto- and Cirrostratus do from just as soon as moist air rises.
After that it only depends how high the R.H. was and how high that air with a given Relative Humidity has to climb before it hits the dew point altitude.
But to put that 0.17% IR absorbed into proper perspective You might wanna do the math...
use Max Planck`s equation,...the one OLdRocks kept waving around here and calculate just how small the energy is INSIDE that the frequency band between 14.25 and 15.7µm (in Wattsecs)...and then remember that the CO2 in our air only absorbs 0.17% of that!

 

[Old Rocks]

Hmmm..... 97% CO2, and 800 degrees C on the surface. I thought that after a certain point, CO2 couldn't heat the atmosphere any more. Isn't that what you have been stateing? So why 800 degrees on Venus?
Evolution Of Venus: First Too Fast, Then Too Slow

In the early stages of the Solar System, Venus seems to have evolved very rapidly compared to the Earth. Data from Venus Express supports the theory that the Earth’s twin once had significant volume of water covering the surface but it appears that these oceans were lost in a very short geological timescale.

As a result of the loss of water, the geological evolution of the surface of Venus slowed right down because it was unable to develop plate tectonics like the Earth. Biological evolution was prevented altogether. Thus, in terms of Venus being another Earth in climate and habitability terms, it evolved too quickly at first, then too slowly.

Of course, these are just scientists speaking. Much better to listen to bloviating blowhards like BiPolar.:eusa__whistle:

 

[Old Rocks]

That's certainly what you boys are trying to make us beleive, problem is once again no empirical data supports you. It does the opposite in point of fact.

So you say while the real scientists are stateing otherwise.

"Scientists" who are forced to falsify data to support their political activism aren't.

And all these scientists that are in organizations such as the AGU, GSA, and the Royal Society are all falsifying their data.

What a peice of work you are, Walleyes. 97% of the scientists in the world, according to you, are unethical, immoral frauds.

 

[Old Rocks]

So co2 is very tiny effects with only .17 percent blocking of IR from going to space.

Would you explain how the green house on Venus works?

A voice of sanity!....thank You!
Well except for Stratus clouds to vanish all our water would have to vanish too.
Nimbo- Alto- and Cirrostratus do from just as soon as moist air rises.
After that it only depends how high the R.H. was and how high that air with a given Relative Humidity has to climb before it hits the dew point altitude.
But to put that 0.17% IR absorbed into proper perspective You might wanna do the math...
use Max Planck`s equation,...the one OLdRocks kept waving around here and calculate just how small the energy is INSIDE that the frequency band between 14.25 and 15.7µm (in Watts)...and then remember that the CO2 in our air only absorbs 0.17% of that!

And just because almost every scientist in the world that studies these things disagrees with you, only shows how fucking brilliant you are, BiPolar. LOL

Look at the lists in the OP. Now why should this be so? Because all the scientists are telling us lies?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Hmmm..... 97% CO2, and 800 degrees C on the surface. I thought that after a certain point, CO2 couldn't heat the atmosphere any more. Isn't that what you have been stateing? So why 800 degrees on Venus?
Evolution Of Venus: First Too Fast, Then Too Slow

In the early stages of the Solar System, Venus seems to have evolved very rapidly compared to the Earth. Data from Venus Express supports the theory that the Earth’s twin once had significant volume of water covering the surface but it appears that these oceans were lost in a very short geological timescale.

As a result of the loss of water, the geological evolution of the surface of Venus slowed right down because it was unable to develop plate tectonics like the Earth. Biological evolution was prevented altogether. Thus, in terms of Venus being another Earth in climate and habitability terms, it evolved too quickly at first, then too slowly.

Of course, these are just scientists speaking. Much better to listen to bloviating blowhards like BiPolar.:eusa__whistle:

Venus being earths twin in radius and mass should of had near the same temperature within its inners to have plate tectonics. I understand mars cooing fast and not being able to hold onto a Atmosphere, but Venus? It is understandable in the same for mars to have cooled to the point not the have plate tectonics. There could of been massive oceans, but over time as the sun became bright it could of burned them off and the planet through volcanoes replaced the Atmosphere it once had with one of co2.

There is a huge difference between .0035% of something and 97 percent of something. I believe that co2 to block the wave length that the bear is talking about needs to be within a environment of minimum water vapor, so it doesn't get over rided by the water vapor. Within the wave length that bear is speaking of 14.25 and 15.7µm only .17 percent is the forcing of the co2. Can you point out why you disagree with this? If it is not right then show the data to disprove bears case.

That is a tiny number...

 

[westwall]

so you say while the real scientists are stateing otherwise.

"scientists" who are forced to falsify data to support their political activism aren't.

and all these scientists that are in organizations such as the agu, gsa, and the royal society are all falsifying their data.

What a peice of work you are, walleyes. 97% of the scientists in the world, according to you, are unethical, immoral frauds.

niwa

 

[polarbear]

Hmmm..... 97% CO2, and 800 degrees C on the surface. I thought that after a certain point, CO2 couldn't heat the atmosphere any more. Isn't that what you have been stateing? So why 800 degrees on Venus?
Evolution Of Venus: First Too Fast, Then Too Slow

In the early stages of the Solar System, Venus seems to have evolved very rapidly compared to the Earth. Data from Venus Express supports the theory that the Earth’s twin once had significant volume of water covering the surface but it appears that these oceans were lost in a very short geological timescale.

As a result of the loss of water, the geological evolution of the surface of Venus slowed right down because it was unable to develop plate tectonics like the Earth. Biological evolution was prevented altogether. Thus, in terms of Venus being another Earth in climate and habitability terms, it evolved too quickly at first, then too slowly.

Of course, these are just scientists speaking. Much better to listen to bloviating blowhards like BiPolar.:eusa__whistle:

Here he comes with his "science" again
You should invent a new religion instead,....that might be a lot easier:

Venus was once full of inhabitants, then they invented cars. Then the planet overheated. The "chosen Israelites" of Venus aliens then traveled to earth and syphoned off the Venus oceans. But the problem was earth was Jurassic Park and the T-rexes ate all the Venus aliens.
The last few hid secret scrolls warning about the error of their ways. They vanished as T-Rex turds, except a few, called Adam and Eve. Then the T-rexes got wiped out after that only the oceans from Venus remained on earth.
One of these Oceans was parted by Moses, a direct descendant of the chosen people of Venus who got on the space ship to earth...he shook a stick and cleared the path for all of us.
So we could escape from the Oil Lobby Arabs who were trying to enslave or kill us
Here we are despite being told by the select and privileged readers of the secret scrolls pointing at our ex home planet Venus, 97% CO2 and 800 degrees hot and yet we have again chariots with over 200 horse power instead of one.
and so on and on...
You might be surprised how many lunatic followers that would draw in no time, this time You could be the high priest:
But act fast, before Al Gore gets the jump on You

 

[polarbear]

@OldRock

Despite of what You are asking what America should do for You (to paraphrase one of Obama`s predecessors, also a Democrat)

It would not be hard to produce compelling evidence supporting Your religion,...and what happened to the skeptics who did not listen then:

They all drowned in a polar melt down!

And again they ignore the chosen prophet who has a direct line to God

Again only a chosen few worthy specimen of each species will be allowed to board the Ark:

To go forth and found a newer better and more hardonmentally friendly world:

After the SUV smog cleared and Captain OldRock`s doves have sighted land

Shit why not go for it, You are almost there:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Jojrgx8eM&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Jojrgx8eM&feature=related[/ame]

And this is what You`ll be left with after he is done:

http://www.thegwpf.org/energy-news/2348-germanys-coming-civil-energy-war.html

Germany’s Coming Civil Energy War
Tuesday, 01 February 2011 09:17 Stefan Nicola, European Energy Review
E-mail Print PDF

Germany’s Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen calls the new German energy strategy a ‘civil revolution’, but he could just as well have described it as the making of a future civil energy war. The extremely ambitious strategy is pitting the coddled renewable energy sector against the neglected gas sector. It requires the building of large new power grids, which are being sharply opposed by the public. And it is setting up Germany’s four major utility companies, which demand an EU-wide renewable energy policy, against the German Environment Ministry, which wants to create renewable energy jobs – in Germany.

The new German energy strategy is nothing short of a ‘civil revolution’, Germany’s Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen said in mid-January at the Handelsblatt Energy Conference in Berlin, a three-day meeting of around 1,000 high-level officials from politics, science and industry in Germany. His colleague, Rainer Brüderle, Germany’s Economy Minister, who was also there, called the strategy, quite correctly, ‘unique in the world’.

Over the past months, the highly ambitious strategy, which was unveiled in September, has sparked a heated debate over its pros and cons. Initially, most of the debate was focused on the controversial decision by the Merkel government to extend the running times of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors by an average of 12 years – a major issue in anti-nuclear Germany. Lately, the nuclear question has subsided somewhat and other elements of the strategy have come to the fore. Analysts and stakeholders have taken stock of what is in store for them – and taken up positions.

Euphoria

To begin with, the renewable energy sector is largely happy, and has every reason to be. The strategy contains plans to boost the share of renewables to no less than 80% of the power consumption by 2050 (up from around 16% now), and promises major funding for offshore wind farms.

The solar energy industry, Germany’s green problem child, has been careful not too applaud too loudly. Germany’s system of uncapped feed-in-tariffs for renewables has led to an unprecedented boom of green power installations – mainly solar panels. But the cost of this boom is now beginning to come home to ordinary Germans, who fund the feed-in-tariffs via their electricity bills. After at least 7 GW of solar power capacity was added to the German grid in 2010, the so-called eco-tax jumped from 1.5 cents to 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour at the start of this year. As subsidies are guaranteed for 20 years, Germany faces billions of euros in costs for decades to come. This year alone, German consumers subsidize renewables with €13 billion, most of it for solar panels, Brüderle said at the conference.

Well aware that ballooning costs could dampen the euphoria for the green energy transformation, the German solar power industry earlier this month approached the government to talk about voluntary
‘Germany is pretty much alone in Europe with this strategy to exclude gas and it actually counteracts the European Union’s targets of creating a European-wide gas market’
subsidy cuts. Citing the cost explosion because of the ongoing boom in solar panel installations, Röttgen on January 20 announced the final deal – a reduction of the solar feed-in-tariff by up to 15% to take effect on July 1, 2011, six months earlier than planned.



The fossil-fuel based industry has long attacked the government for what it sees as too vigorous support of renewables. The massive funding schemes not only distort markets but also render the de-carbonisation of the energy mix unnecessarily expensive, Johannes Teyssen, CEO of Eon, Germany’s largest utility, said at the Handelsblatt conference. His colleague Tuoma Hatakka, CEO of Vattenfall Europe, warned that a renewable energy-based mix would be more volatile than the current one.

Alone

The gas industry is especially unhappy. 2010 has been a difficult year for the European gas industry. The aftereffects of the economic crisis, new shale gas finds in the United States and more LNG from the Middle East have reduced prices, with the European market currently oversupplied. So what does the German energy strategy have to say about the position of gas in the energy mix of the future? In one word – nothing. The strategy aims to boost renewables, lends a lifeline to nuclear power and even supports coal by supporting carbon capture and storage (CCS). It doesn’t even mention gas.

That the German energy strategy ‘lacks a perspective for gas is very disappointing’, Jens Schuhmann, head of Gasunie Germany, said at the conference. ‘Germany is pretty much alone in Europe with this strategy (to exclude gas), and it actually counteracts the European Union’s targets of creating a European-wide gas market’, he said.

Torsten Indebro, head of the International Gas Union (IGU), an industry association of up- and

‘A clear yes or no is better than years
of insecurity’
downstream companies, said gas could play a key role in a low-carbon energy mix as it’s the cleanest fossil fuel and perfectly suited to balance out the fluctuating renewables. That Berlin hasn’t realised the potential of gas as a clean and cheap alternative to coal and oil ‘is a problem we need to address and solve’, Indebro said.

Yes or no

Meanwhile, the German government has its own problem to solve. Whether its renewable energy targets can be realised depends largely on whether Germany succeeds in modernising the country’s aging power grid.

Renewables aren’t just intermittent energy sources, they are also often producing power far away from big consumption centers (think of offshore wind farms). At the same time, many smaller, decentralised biomass or photovoltaic plants need to be integrated efficiently into the grid.

To do this, Germany needs up to 3,600 kilometres of new high-voltage power lines, the German energy agency Dena said in a major study released late last year. This would not only require billions of euros in investments, but also lots of planning stamina. Many grid modernisation projects have been undermined by opposition from the affected local communities, and have been delayed by years or even decades. Only 80 kilometres of new power lines were built in 2010. ‘We hardly have time left to realise all the necessary modernisations’, Hattaka, of Vattenfall Europe, said at the conference.

Knowing about those difficulties, Berlin has identified grid modernisation as the key issue to tackle during the coming years. Brüderle said he regretted the lengthy planning times for grid modernisation and vowed to introduce incentives and policies to speed thing up. Brüderle said the German government by the end of this year aims to

* institutionalise a platform that keeps up a dialogue with state and power grid officials to reduce potential friction during the planning process of grid installations
* create incentives to facilitate the construction of new energy storage facilities
* launch an information campaign to communicate to ordinary Germans that modernising the grid is vital to green the power mix
* strike an agreement with the relevant network operators over a binding ten-year plan to modernise the network

If decisions over large infrastructure aren’t taken by the local and regional authorities within four years, then ‘I’m in favour of letting the people decide,’ in the form of referenda, he said. ‘A clear yes or no is better than years of insecurity.’

Conflicting policies

Germany’s four main utilities – Eon, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe – have by and large reacted low-key to the new energy strategy. The companies apparently do not yet see it as a threat to their business model – or at least they don’t say so openly. They are above all happy that they managed to keep nuclear in the mix until at least the mid-2030s, a major negotiation success.

Still, this does not mean that the energy companies are without serious concerns. Teyssen, of Eon, lauded the German energy strategy in general as a basis for dialogue, but added he didn’t believe that the government’s clean energy targets are realistic.

What German policymakers and opinion-leaders do not sufficiently appreciate, is that the big German
‘Europe should completely abolish, by the end of this decade, its different national energy policies’
energy companies do not think primarily in national strategies. They think bigger – in terms of international and European markets. Teyssen made the important point that the sometimes conflicting national policies are hurting the European energy industry’s competitiveness, preventing technology advancements and slowing a necessary modernisation of the continent’s energy grid.



‘Europe should completely abolish, by the end of this decade, its different national energy policies’, Teyssen said at the conference. ‘I don’t see any other way to reach our ambitious targets in Europe without overburdening its economies.’

A truly European energy strategy and an integrated market, he added, would create much-needed investment security and could even be ‘the basis for a succesful Europe’. Teyssen said he expected EU leaders to re-evaluate the EU’s current energy strategy and to push for more European integration at the February 4 energy summit in Brussels.

Chilly Germany

The energy companies have good reasons to promote European integration. A continent-wide framework for renewable energy subsidies would put them at an advantage over the many smaller renewable energy companies that don’t have the resources to operate at a European scale. The likes of Eon and RWE have the capital and the know-how to operate internationally. That’s why they are in favour of ‘Europeanising’ the funding of renewables, as proposed by EU Energy Commissioner Günther Öttinger.

Because of the solar power cost explosion, politicians are now more likely to support a move towards a European-wide clean energy funding scheme. Brüderle is supportive of such a move, and so is Chancellor Angela Merkel, her spokesman suggested earlier this month. For the utilities, it would mean they have continent-wide investment security and the chance to roll out large projects their smaller rivals are incapable of handling.

The German renewable industry opposes this development. They are aware that a European-wide renewable energy support scheme would move solar power installations away from chilly Germany and into southern Europe. They are backed by Environment Minister Röttgen, one of the key authors of the
'A European-wide clean energy funding scheme would undermine and derail everything the German Environmnet Ministry has planned for until 2050'
energy strategy, and a fervent supporter of the German renewable energy industry. A European-wide clean energy funding scheme, he said, would undermine and derail everything his Ministry has planned for until 2050. The German energy strategy, he told German radio WDR earlier this month, is aimed at greening Germany’s energy mix and at the same time facilitate the creation of new technologies, markets and jobs – in Germany. ‘If it were to happen that German money will develop markets in southern Italy and Spain and we end up importing our energy, then the whole transformation wouldn’t make sense and it would lose its backing in Germany,’ he said.

European Energy Review, January 2011

 

[Old Rocks]

Mindless derision, the refuge of those totally losing a debate.

 

[westwall]

Mindless derision, the refuge of those totally losing a debate.

Wrong again Tojo, as usual you are far far out of your depth.