Desire and will are powerful things. With luck, hard work, and good timing ... really wanting something enough can be the key to making things you desire come to pass.
Little warning though ... wanting something by itself is not enough. It has to match with reality.
Few things are more real than being cold, being able to produce products at market prices, and to be in control of the energy you need to be a modern nation.
Germany is about to see if desire - to be a "green superpower" fully dedicated to the carbon-neutral pagan god - is enough.
Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region’s history.
The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country’s nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise.
Don't laugh, this is a serious matter. This is our largest NATO partner in Continental Europe. What happens to her economy ... and her strategic vulnerabilities ... impacts the USA directly.
Energy vulnerability for ourselves and our cornerstone allies is a national security problem.
“From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants have reached the end of their lifetime,” said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. “It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions.”
They let their least critical thinkers make their policy ... and everyone in the West is in greater danger because of it. Transnational green-leftism is a pox on us all.
...and that gas will be coming from where? Russia?
Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It’s one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.
This is one hell of a graph.
It is helpful to note that the whole project to get Germany hooked on Russian gas - in its final form as Nord Stream 2 - was led by the previous SPD Chancellor of Germany and this friend the former East German Stasi spy. If you don't know that, look it up.
Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038, with the lignite power-plant fleet reduced almost 16% by 2024. By that year, high carbon prices and an expansion of renewable power will have cut Germany’s coal production “strongly,” according to the International Energy Agency.
"Renewables." Anyone who has been to Germany knows they will never be a solar powerhouse and wind is iffy. Without nuclear & coal to fill in on quiet, cloudy days - absent a technological breakthrough unknown today - the only option is natural gas.
Russian gas.
Almost by design? Anyone familiar with the Cold War history of the Greens and large segments of the SDP can connect the dots from there.
Feel good fools ... but the gods of the copybook headings will work their magic when Germany can no longer get by on the excess capital accrued by prior, more responsible German leadership.
There is still time for the German people to do something else, but elections have consequences - and they just voted for this.
They are going to get it good and hard.
Bundle up my German friends ... and save your Euros.
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