S*******i
发帖数: 2018 | 1 挺有意思的文章。德国这装逼的代价很高啊。德国的电价是美国的三倍。
http://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-green-energy-revoltgermanys-green-energy-revolt-1510848988
American climate-change activists point to Europe, and especially Germany,
as the paragon of green energy virtue. But they ought to look closer at
Angela Merkel’s political struggles as she tries to form a new government
in Berlin amid the economic fallout from the Chancellor’s failing energy
revolution.
Berlin last month conceded it will miss its 2020 carbon emissions-reduction
goal, having cut emissions by just under 30% compared with 1990 instead of
the 40% that Mrs. Merkel promised. The goal of 55% by 2030 is almost surely
out of reach.
Mrs. Merkel’s failure comes despite astronomical costs. By one estimate,
businesses and households paid an extra 25 billion in increased
electricity bills between 2000 and 2015 to subsidize renewables, on top of
billions more in other handouts. Germans join Danes in paying the highest
household electricity rates in Europe, and German companies pay near the top
among industrial users. This is a big reason Mrs. Merkel underperformed in
September’s election.
Berlin has heavily subsidized renewable energy since 2000, primarily via
feed-in tariffs requiring utilities to buy electricity from renewable
generators at above-market rates. Mrs. Merkel put that effort into overdrive
in 2010 when she introduced the Energiewende, or energy revolution.
The centerpiece is the escalating emissions-reductions targets Germany now
is missing, which surpass the 20% reduction by 2020 to which the rest of the
European Union has committed. The policy is also supposed to reduce total
energy consumption to 50% of the 2008 level by 2050, with a 25% reduction in
electricity use. That was a tall enough order for an industrial economy.
Then Mrs. Merkel made it even harder in 2011, with a hasty promise after
Japan’s Fukushima disaster to phase out nuclear power by 2022.
Energiewende enthusiasts say the policy is racking up successes despite the
problems. That’s true only in the sense that if you throw enough money at
something, some of the cash has to stick. In electric generating capacity,
for instance, renewables are now running almost even with traditional fuel
sources.
Yet much of that capacity is wasted—only one-third of Germany’s
electricity is actually generated by renewables. Berlin has invested heavily
in wind and solar power that is easiest to generate in parts of Germany
that need the power the least, especially the north. Berlin will need to
spend another huge sum building transmission lines to the industrial south.
The other costs relate to providing electricity when the wind doesn’t blow
and the sun doesn’t shine, which is often in Germany. The traditional
plants needed to fill in the gaps are overwhelmingly fired by coal, on which
Germany still relies for roughly 40% of its power.
Natural gas would be cleaner and is easy to switch on and off. But gas is
more expensive than coal, and the peak daytime consumption hours when gas
could recoup that investment are also the times utilities are more likely to
be required to buy overpriced solar power.
As a result, natural gas accounts for only 9.4% of Germany’s electricity,
down from a little over 14% in 2010. Gas accounts for some 30% of U.S.
electricity generation, and the shift to gas from coal explains a majority
of the reductions in carbon emissions in U.S. generation since 2005,
according to a report last month by the U.S. Energy Information
Administration. German households pay nearly 36 U.S. cents a kilowatt-hour
of electricity, versus an average of 13 cents in America.
No wonder voters are in revolt. Surveys say that in theory Germans like
being green, but polls about household energy costs say otherwise. The right
-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a surprising 13% vote share in part
on a promise to end the Energiewende immediately. A new study from the RWI
Leibniz Institute for Economic Research finds that 61% of Germans wouldn’t
want to pay even one eurocent more per kilowatt-hour of electricity to fund
more renewables.
This is casting Mrs. Merkel’s coalition talks into disarray. Her
prospective Green Party partners want to double down on Energiewende
distortions by banning coal, starting with the 20 most-polluting plants. Mrs
. Merkel’s center-right Christian-Democratic parties and the free-market
Free Democrats are willing to close 10 plants at most, in recognition that
more would strangle the economy of energy absent nuclear power after 2022.
Whatever agreement she works out, it’s clear that German voters want more
honesty about the cash-and-carbon costs of Mrs. Merkel’s green ambitions.
If instead she recommits to soaring energy costs and dirty-coal electricity,
expect another voter rebellion in 2021. |
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