Germany has spent a ton of money. The result? Its previously robust electricity grid is now broken.

Anyone who still thinks green/renewable energy is the answer is invited to click over to a web page that monitors Germany’s celebrated Energy Transition. The most recent six-month update has just been published. Despite a multi-billion-euro price tag, Germany’s attempts to ditch fossil fuels isn’t going well. At all.

Only six of the transition’s 14 goals (43%) appear achievable by 2020. Here are the two absolutely critical data points:

#1 – Germany’s CO2 emissions reduction targets won’t be met.

#2 – Its previously robust electricity grid is now vulnerable and insecure.

The story of Germany’s energy transition boils down to this: Something that used to work well has been deliberately broken, undermined, degraded, and crippled. A ton of money has been spent. To make things worse.

Over at Forbes, Michael Shellenberger discusses how this latest report card is being covered in the German press. In his words:

One of Germany’s largest newspapers, Die Welt, summarized the findings of the McKinsey report in a single word: “disastrous.”

…German electricity prices are 45% above the European average…Green taxes account for 54% of household electricity prices.

Here in Canada, the media is tripping all over itself to publicize the fact that a Swedish 16-year-old will march against climate change in Montreal later this month (see here, here, here, and here). Those news reports don’t bother to inform the public that Greta Thunberg is from an extraordinarily dysfunctional family in which children tell adults they aren’t permitted to use the toilet.

Nor do they mention that the only way to achieve a zero-carbon lifestyle is to shut down human civilization. No more heating. Or cooking. Or water sanitation. Or quality-controlled medicine. Or refrigeration. Or surgery. Nor more daily transportation to work or school. No more shipping of food from places where it’s abundant to places where it’s scarce. No more visiting relatives in the hospital, the next town, the next country, or on the next continent.

These news reports don’t bother to mention that Germany is the textbook example of what happens when a nation tries to fight climate change by substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels. Lots of pain, murderous prices, unachievable goals, and increased risk, worry, fear, and misery.

Journalists have no excuse. There’s no conceivable reason for them to be unaware of these issues. Which means they’re either unforgivably lazy – or they’re deliberately withholding relevant information from the public.

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LINKS:

• Michael Shellenberger, Renewables Threaten German Economy & Energy Supply, McKinsey Warns In New Report
• Paulina Neuding, Self-Harm Versus the Greater Good: Greta Thunberg and Child Activism
• Over 300,000 poverty-hit German homes have power cut off each year
• Germany’s Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good
• Energy poverty in Germany is increasing dramatically
• my previous commentary: Street Preacher Greta Thunberg
• The Climate Curse: Reprogramming Our Moral Compass
• The Unromantic Green Energy Reading List