Separating Fact from Fiction In Accounts of Germany’s Renewables Revolution
Myth #2: Renewables undermine grid reliability
Another common misreportage theme is that renewables are degrading
the reliability of Germany’s power supply, driving industry abroad. The
president of Germany’s network agency has
confirmed this is not true. Hearsay anecdotes alleging renewable-caused power glitches are often traceable to
Der Spiegel, a frequent source of anti-renewable
stories, but evaporate on scrutiny. Charles Mann in
The Atlantic cites five references to bolster such claims, but his sources (cited in my
response) don’t support his case. One, from a
Koch-allied
anti-renewable front group (whose political arm, the American Energy
Alliance, lobbies for fossil fuels and against renewables), claims
renewables are “causing havoc” in the German grid, the other four
sources don’t, and
none of the five offers any evidence this is
happening, because it’s not—as I confirmed with German experts in May
2013, when I was co-keynoting the Chancellor’s electromobility
conference in Berlin.
But
Der Spiegel is not alone in such misreporting.
Die Zeit
and others have described local electricity problems caused by a failed
coal plant and by restricted Russian gas deliveries as if they proved
the unreliability of renewables, which had nothing to do with them.
Focus likewise
blamed a Munich power outage on renewables, then reported the actual, unrelated cause (a transformer blew up) without a correction.
To be sure, Germany’s grid, built for central stations, was scarcely
expanded as renewable generation soared from 3 percent to 23 percent in
20 years. Grid modernization and debottlenecking are therefore needed
and are vigorously underway—though the network agency recently
slashed plans for new transmission corridors by nearly half because many projects proved unnecessary, and grid investments apparently
needn’t rise.
But fear of what might happen if those future grid improvements weren’t
made doesn’t justify the lie that blackouts and brownouts are rife
today.
In fact, German power, like 22-percent-solar-and-windpowered Spanish
and 30-percent-windpowered Danish power (both for all of 2012), remains
far more
reliable
than U.S. power and is getting even more reliable. Germany ranks #1 in
European grid reliability, Denmark just behind, both about tenfold
better than the U.S. Likewise, as Spain’s solar and windpower soared in
the past few years, Spain’s reliability index
rose too. Across Europe, renewable expansion
correlates with
more reliable power. Now a German company has even
assembled
a 570-MW virtual power plant of dispatchable renewables, available
nationwide to firm (guarantee steady output from) the varying wind and
solar output. Dispatching variable resources is more complex, but the
grid’s skilled operators do it well.
The next round of misreporting will doubtless emerge from a new grid-operator
survey
showing that 7 percent of German firms surveyed (or 25 percent of those
that could in principle move production abroad) say they are
considering doing so “because of a (possible) worsening of grid
reliability.” However, no trend can be inferred because this question
was never previously asked; no comparison is possible because it wasn’t
asked in other countries; and, of course, reduced reliability is a
future hypothetical, not a present reality. The European standard
metric, to be sure, doesn’t include outages shorter than three minutes,
so vague claims that even briefer outages are rising in Germany can’t be
tested from the data—only cast in doubt by lack of specific anecdotal
examples
Myth #3: Renewables subsidies are cratering the Germany economy
Perhaps most confusing is Germany’s lively debate about the surcharge
that utility customers pay to finance the feed-in tariff (“FIT”)—a
fixed 20-year power purchase contract offered to anyone installing new
renewable generators, whether solar, wind, biomass-fueled, or other
kinds. (Since 2012, you can instead choose market-based payments, as
half of renewable producers and four-fifths of windpower operators
do, and since autumn 2012, new solar systems over 10 megawatts are
no longer eligible for FITs).
The FIT declines as renewables’ growth drives down their prices;
rooftop solar’s FIT is falling 1.8 percent every month. But partly
because prices are falling, solar sales are far outpacing forecasts,
raising the surcharge.
USA Today columnist Sumi Somaskanda recently
wrote:
“German consumers are waking up to the costs of going green: As of Jan.
1, they are paying 11 percent more for electricity than they did last
year thanks to government plans to replace nuclear plants with wind and
solar power that requires significant and constant public money to be
made cost effective.” But as I
wrote in April, the truth is quite different.
Germany’s renewables surcharge is artificially
inflated by hefty and rising industry
exemptions that place greater burdens on households—a policy now under legal
investigation
by the EU as a potential illegal subsidy—but it is not public money, is
not a subsidy (Germany hasn’t subsidized photovoltaics since 2004), and
is a
minute drop in the bucket
of German households’ energy costs. It works just like the way many
American households pay prices set by state regulators for approved
power plants, only it’s far more transparent—and in Germany you have the
option of earning back your payments, and far more, by investing as
little as
$600 in renewable energy yourself.
Citizens,
cooperatives, and communities own more than half of German renewable capacity,
vs. two percent in the U.S.
In 2013, the FIT surcharge raised households’ retail price of electricity 7 percent but renewables
lowered
big industries’ wholesale price 18 percent. As long-term contracts
expire, the past few years’ sharply lower wholesale prices could finally
reach retail customers and start sending households’ total electricity
prices back down. The latest
analysis suggests that this may even occur in 2014, sooner than expected.
Previous in Climate
