One of the major drawbacks of this blog has been that it does not focus on a single audience. A lot of what I write is for people interested in renewable energy, but I also write some personal stuff that might interest friends and relatives (but probably not the energy folks) -- and then there are my comments about the differences between Germany and the United States, and I'm not sure who wants to read that.
Anyway, effect more or less immediately, I will be devoting most of my writing about energy matters to a new blog that is going to go up the English version of a prominent German website, which will be going live on June 1. Because we will have to have a lot of texts on the website when it goes live, I will be saving most of my future posts on energy for that website.
This blog will probably continue to provide some interesting reading for anyone interested in my general ramblings. I do intend to continue to focus on translation and intercultural matters here.
The identity of the new website is still embargoed, but I will announce where my new energy blog will be when the time comes -- sometime in the next few weeks.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Germany installed 3.8 GW of solar in 2009
The official statistics were released by Germany's Network Agency (Netzagentur) on Friday. To put this figure into perspective, it is the largest amount of photovoltaics ever installed in any one country in a single year. When the Spanish market installed 2.5 GW in 2008, the government reacted by putting a 0.5 GW annual ceiling on the market.
As readers of this blog know, Germany has also responded to the boom last year by reviewing its solar policy, but the government is basically shooting itself in the foot right now. The announcements of a one-off reduction in feed-in tariffs for solar has ramped up the market considerably as everyone rushes to get installed before the lower rates take effect. To make matters worse for the government, which intends to devote less money to photovoltaics, the governing coalition has postponed the rate reductions and may postpone them even further, all of which will merely extend the current boom, which is likely to completely overshadow the performance of 2009.
Germany now has some 9.8 GW of solar. To put that into perspective, Germany has more than 120 GW of generating capacity, but peak demand generally comes in at just less than half of that -- roughly about 55 GW. At current growth rates, solar is likely to make up a very large chunk of that generating capacity 10 years from now, especially since the current governing coalition's target is an additional annual installed capacity of three GW, which would put us at around 40 GW by 2020 already.
Around noon time on sunny days in the summer, pretty much all of that generating capacity will be running full blast, which means we will probably have to be shutting down nuclear and coal plants, which serve the baseload, for several hours a day. And we have not even accounted for wind turbines, of which there is already around 23 GW installed. That source of energy, however, generally complements solar; the wind generally blows less when the sun is shining.
Clearly, the German grid has its work cut out for it over the next few years.
As readers of this blog know, Germany has also responded to the boom last year by reviewing its solar policy, but the government is basically shooting itself in the foot right now. The announcements of a one-off reduction in feed-in tariffs for solar has ramped up the market considerably as everyone rushes to get installed before the lower rates take effect. To make matters worse for the government, which intends to devote less money to photovoltaics, the governing coalition has postponed the rate reductions and may postpone them even further, all of which will merely extend the current boom, which is likely to completely overshadow the performance of 2009.
Germany now has some 9.8 GW of solar. To put that into perspective, Germany has more than 120 GW of generating capacity, but peak demand generally comes in at just less than half of that -- roughly about 55 GW. At current growth rates, solar is likely to make up a very large chunk of that generating capacity 10 years from now, especially since the current governing coalition's target is an additional annual installed capacity of three GW, which would put us at around 40 GW by 2020 already.
Around noon time on sunny days in the summer, pretty much all of that generating capacity will be running full blast, which means we will probably have to be shutting down nuclear and coal plants, which serve the baseload, for several hours a day. And we have not even accounted for wind turbines, of which there is already around 23 GW installed. That source of energy, however, generally complements solar; the wind generally blows less when the sun is shining.
Clearly, the German grid has its work cut out for it over the next few years.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
EU becomes Mitteleuropa?
Germany is coming under fire now from all sides for -- I kid you not -- being "too competitive." At first, I thought that the claims that Germany needed to raise its wages so that countries like Spain and Greece could compete were just left-wing radicalism, but at least one French official recently made the same claim, and the idea resonated throughout the German press, with a mixed response. Some Germans support the idea, while others think that Germany's friends in the EU should buckle up and get back to work.
Here's an interesting claim from a website I do not know otherwise:
The website charges -- somewhat unfairly, I would argue -- that Germany is now (finally) conquering Europe, this time economically rather than militarily. (Still haven't gotten over history, eh? ) It seems to me that Germany often simply focuses on products the world will obviously need and tries to build things that work. Other countries that more or less do the same (the Netherlands, Austria, etc.) are also not doing all that poorly right now, whereas countries like Spain and the UK simply get too much of their GDP from superfluous things like real estate and tourism (in the case of Spain) or pop culture and the banking sector (in the case of the UK). When the money runs out in places like the Netherlands and Germany, all of those sectors suffer because they are based on "play money" -- money left over after the necessities have been bought.
The investments of that Germany has made in renewables certainly do not hurt.
Here's an interesting claim from a website I do not know otherwise:
European states are borrowing money (mostly from Germany) in order to purchase imported goods (mostly from Germany) because their own workers cannot compete on price (mostly because of Germany).
The website charges -- somewhat unfairly, I would argue -- that Germany is now (finally) conquering Europe, this time economically rather than militarily. (Still haven't gotten over history, eh? ) It seems to me that Germany often simply focuses on products the world will obviously need and tries to build things that work. Other countries that more or less do the same (the Netherlands, Austria, etc.) are also not doing all that poorly right now, whereas countries like Spain and the UK simply get too much of their GDP from superfluous things like real estate and tourism (in the case of Spain) or pop culture and the banking sector (in the case of the UK). When the money runs out in places like the Netherlands and Germany, all of those sectors suffer because they are based on "play money" -- money left over after the necessities have been bought.
The investments of that Germany has made in renewables certainly do not hurt.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The campaign against bottled water
Here is an interesting video about why bottled water is a scam.
And if you think things are bad in the US, you should see how Germans refuse to realize that tap water in the EU is fantastic - and how bottled water is often basically just tap water that costs 1,000 times more. Why, Germans may not even serve you tap water in restaurants if you offer to pay.
And if you think things are bad in the US, you should see how Germans refuse to realize that tap water in the EU is fantastic - and how bottled water is often basically just tap water that costs 1,000 times more. Why, Germans may not even serve you tap water in restaurants if you offer to pay.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
What we knew
On March 20, 2003 -- seven years and eight days ago -- the US and its small retinue of allies invaded Iraq. At the time, I was communicating with a fellow translator based in Israel about some Excel macro I was trying to explain to him. After a brief break in communication, he wrote back again, explaining he was having to perform military service now.
He had been mentioning his concern about possible attacks from Iraq on Israel, and I remember telling him he needn't worry -- because Iraq could not reach Israel. Recently, I came across that e-mail when erasing my private data on an old computer. Here's the German, written seven years ago today:
Which could be translated into English as:
I know that a lot of people say they felt misled into believing that Iraq had weapons of mass distraction, but I never bought it, and it seems to me that there was enough evidence publicly available all along to draw that conclusion. I'm afraid, however, that I never published my doubt that we would find WMD. Basically, I was sure that we would plant something. What surprised me was not that we did not find WMD, but that we admitted not finding anything.
And according to a review in the New Yorker of a book recently published by a speechwriter from the Bush administration, we are no closer to the truth today:
He had been mentioning his concern about possible attacks from Iraq on Israel, and I remember telling him he needn't worry -- because Iraq could not reach Israel. Recently, I came across that e-mail when erasing my private data on an old computer. Here's the German, written seven years ago today:
Ich wollte dir sowieso irgendwann sagen, daß der Irak meines Wissens Israel nicht erreichen kann. Ich bin natürlich kein Spion mit Insiderwissen, aber - um ein Beispiel zu nennen - Tatsache ist, daß die Scudraketen, von denen in den Medien häufig die Rede ist, bereits Anfang der 90er abgebaut wurden - die Rakaten, die der Irak jetzt abfeuert, sind keine Scuds. Es wird eben heutzutage durch die Bank gelogen - Bush & Co. stehen Hussein in nichts nach - und ich kann's kaum mehr aushalten.
Which could be translated into English as:
I've been meaning to tell you that I don't believe that Iraq can reach Israel. Naturally, I am not a spy with any insider knowledge, but -- to take just one example -- it is a fact that the SCUD missiles currently being talked about in the media so much were actually dismantled at the beginning of the 90s. The missiles that Iraq is now shooting off are not SCUDs. It seems like there's a lot of lying going on these days, and Bush & Co. are hardly closer to the truth than Hussein. It's all driving me nuts.
I know that a lot of people say they felt misled into believing that Iraq had weapons of mass distraction, but I never bought it, and it seems to me that there was enough evidence publicly available all along to draw that conclusion. I'm afraid, however, that I never published my doubt that we would find WMD. Basically, I was sure that we would plant something. What surprised me was not that we did not find WMD, but that we admitted not finding anything.
And according to a review in the New Yorker of a book recently published by a speechwriter from the Bush administration, we are no closer to the truth today:
In order to make the case that America was blind to the threat of Al Qaeda in the days before 9/11, Thiessen skips over the scandalous amount of intelligence that reached the Bush White House before the attacks. In February, 2001, the C.I.A.’s director, George Tenet, called Al Qaeda “the most immediate and serious threat” to the country. Richard Clarke, then the country’s counterterrorism chief, tried without success to get Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national-security adviser, to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on Al Qaeda. Thomas Pickard, then the F.B.I.’s acting director, has testified that Attorney General John Ashcroft told him that he wanted to hear no more about Al Qaeda. On August 6, 2001, Bush did nothing in response to a briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.” As Tenet later put it, “The system was blinking red...”
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Bundesrat opposes proposal to cut solar by 16%
It seems that the Bundesrat, a chamber of German Parliament that represents the states, has criticized the Bundestag (more or less the Parliament as commonly understood) for proposing to cut rates by up to 16% for solar this year.
Will that change anything? If you read photovoltaik, you would think the whole thing may be thrown out. They fail to mention what Reuters explains above:
Overall, Reuters has been the best source of info about this issue of all. German websites seem infested with party politics, which has made it difficult for me to know what is worth writing about and what is just wishful thinking.
So we will have to wait and see whether the Bundesrat's opposition to the 16% prooposal makes any difference at all. There is also talk of postponing the cuts (scheduled for Juli) to October 1 - but talk is cheap.
Will that change anything? If you read photovoltaik, you would think the whole thing may be thrown out. They fail to mention what Reuters explains above:
The Bundesrat... has no real power to stop or slow down the law.
Overall, Reuters has been the best source of info about this issue of all. German websites seem infested with party politics, which has made it difficult for me to know what is worth writing about and what is just wishful thinking.
So we will have to wait and see whether the Bundesrat's opposition to the 16% prooposal makes any difference at all. There is also talk of postponing the cuts (scheduled for Juli) to October 1 - but talk is cheap.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Interesting data from the Guardian
Since the Guardian posted some (misleading) criticism of feed-in tariffs a few weeks ago, I have been monitoring the website more closely. Today, the British paper published an interesting review of a Pew report, which found that, as the paper stresses, China has overtaken US in terms of investments in "clean tech."
But the figures used actually show how uninformed the Guardian is. For instance, the data on "clean tech" investments is linked in a table entitled "Renewable energy investment by country." But clean tech is not the same as renewable energy. Investments in carbon capture and storage, for instance, are generally also included as clean tech, as are innovative insulation systems, to name just two examples that are clearly not renewable energy. (I have not yet read the Pew report, so I do not know exactly what the study defines as clean tech.)
The Guardian then conflates "energy" with "power" when it gives us, in the same table,
We see that Brazil has made quite a lot of investments in renewables -- nearly twice as much as Germany -- but only has a third of Germany's "renewable power." Why is that? Perhaps it is because Brazil has invested so much in ethanol, which it produces from sugarcane, for use as motive fuel. In other words, Brazil produces renewable fuel more than renewable electricity. But the folks at the Guardian do not seem to understand the issue well enough to present the data accurately.
The paper then writes, "Pew have kindly shared the data with us - what can you do with it?" Answer: I would completely throw away the report in the Guardian and have to start over with the Pew data from scratch.
Also, I would have to point out something that I have said at conferences on renewables before (and it really angers people). When we count generating capacity for wind turbines and solar and compare the figure to the generating capacity from nuclear, natural gas, and coal plants, we inflate the figures for renewables. For instance, Pew reports that 36 percent of Germany's electricity generation capacity is already renewable, but the country actually gets far less than half of that percentage from renewables.
(Update: the exact figure for the share of renewable electricity was 16.1 percent in 2009 in Germany. And while the Guardian/Pew puts the figure for investments in renewables in Germany at 4.3 billion, my German source has the figure at 17.7 billion in 2009.)
The reason is quite simple -- while coal and nuclear plants run at 60-70% and 90-95% capacity, with gas turbines being switched on and off more often, wind turbines hardly ever generate more than 30 percent of their rated capacity on the average and actually come in below 20 percent in Germany. The figure is similar for photovoltaics.
Proponents of renewables get really upset when I say this, but I don't see why -- it's a simple fact. If we are going to convince the few remaining doubters, we need to speak the truth. And the truth is that wind and solar allow us to make use of a resource we lose every day - the wind and solar energy we get today. If we don't use it, we lose it.
Coal, nuclear, and gas plants are different. They run on resources we would not otherwise lose. We only lose them when we use them.
But you won't hear that from the Guardian, where the understanding of energy matters seems to be quite shallow.
But the figures used actually show how uninformed the Guardian is. For instance, the data on "clean tech" investments is linked in a table entitled "Renewable energy investment by country." But clean tech is not the same as renewable energy. Investments in carbon capture and storage, for instance, are generally also included as clean tech, as are innovative insulation systems, to name just two examples that are clearly not renewable energy. (I have not yet read the Pew report, so I do not know exactly what the study defines as clean tech.)
The Guardian then conflates "energy" with "power" when it gives us, in the same table,
- Renewable Energy Capacity, GigaWatts
- Percentage total power, %
We see that Brazil has made quite a lot of investments in renewables -- nearly twice as much as Germany -- but only has a third of Germany's "renewable power." Why is that? Perhaps it is because Brazil has invested so much in ethanol, which it produces from sugarcane, for use as motive fuel. In other words, Brazil produces renewable fuel more than renewable electricity. But the folks at the Guardian do not seem to understand the issue well enough to present the data accurately.
The paper then writes, "Pew have kindly shared the data with us - what can you do with it?" Answer: I would completely throw away the report in the Guardian and have to start over with the Pew data from scratch.
Also, I would have to point out something that I have said at conferences on renewables before (and it really angers people). When we count generating capacity for wind turbines and solar and compare the figure to the generating capacity from nuclear, natural gas, and coal plants, we inflate the figures for renewables. For instance, Pew reports that 36 percent of Germany's electricity generation capacity is already renewable, but the country actually gets far less than half of that percentage from renewables.
(Update: the exact figure for the share of renewable electricity was 16.1 percent in 2009 in Germany. And while the Guardian/Pew puts the figure for investments in renewables in Germany at 4.3 billion, my German source has the figure at 17.7 billion in 2009.)
The reason is quite simple -- while coal and nuclear plants run at 60-70% and 90-95% capacity, with gas turbines being switched on and off more often, wind turbines hardly ever generate more than 30 percent of their rated capacity on the average and actually come in below 20 percent in Germany. The figure is similar for photovoltaics.
Proponents of renewables get really upset when I say this, but I don't see why -- it's a simple fact. If we are going to convince the few remaining doubters, we need to speak the truth. And the truth is that wind and solar allow us to make use of a resource we lose every day - the wind and solar energy we get today. If we don't use it, we lose it.
Coal, nuclear, and gas plants are different. They run on resources we would not otherwise lose. We only lose them when we use them.
But you won't hear that from the Guardian, where the understanding of energy matters seems to be quite shallow.
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