Dr. Conca reports that Germany’s carbon emissions are not declining much, despite renewables increasing to almost 30% of the country’s power mix this year (see figure below), and over 50% of its installed capacity. Unfortunately, coal has also increased to about 30% and, along with power purchases from France and other countries in Europe, is used to load-follow (base-load), or buffer, the intermittency of the renewables. Germany’s carbon emissions per person actually rose slightly in 2013 and 2015. The country produces much more electricity than it needs and is not addressing oil in the transportation sector. As Peter Rez at Arizona State University discusses, renewables will not make much of a dent in their total carbon emissions.
The problem is that even when renewables produce enough energy to supply all of the country’s electricity, the variability of the renewables means Germany has to keep the coal plants running, over half of which use the dirtiest of all coal, lignite. In fact, in 2016, 7 out of 10 of Europe’s biggest polluters were German lignite (brown coal) power plants. But Germany’s emissions decreases are relatively minor, which is confusing given that Germany has dramatically increased renewables with its Energiewende policy and that total energy use has decreased in that country. It is not yet obvious that Germany’s experiment with high renewable penetration will meet their ambitious climate goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40% over 1990 values by 2020, despite spending almost $800 billion on green energy subsidies. Even the Berlin energiewende-based think-tank Agora Energiewende projected that it won’t be a near miss - but a booming failure.
Those who understand both energy and climate know that we need to bring up all low-carbon energy sources - renewables, nuclear and hydroelectric - as quickly as possible to meet our climate goals in time to make any difference.
Original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent-renewables-decreasing-germanys-carbon-emissions/#769f3feb68e1
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