Yet, tragically, even Merz’s conservatives-in-power still profess faith in 100% renewables “eventually” & nuclear “never” … despite deindustrialization.
The title above says it all. I pointed out that Germany produced about half its electricity from renewables in 2025 such as wind and solar.
However, more renewables have only caused prices to soar, and helped to drive German deindustrialization.. Much of the rest of the EU has similar problems from over-installation of renewables (Note: I coined the term “Renewables Fundamentalism” to describe this), as a Green panacea for both climate change mitigation and supposed energy independence.
Aside from the high complexity of integrating ever more renewables that are highly-distributed (spread out over large land masses) and hard to integrate (requiring complete rebuilds and extensions of grids), while the problems of their unreliability (variability, depends on wind speed and amount of sunshine), is their Achilles Heel.
As I told Al Jazeera in this brief interview, once a country has over about 25% dependence on renewables, it requires a complete and highly expensive total rebuild of their grids, and a system of alternative-to-renewable generation in periods of low wind and solar, which the Germans call Dunkelflaute.
The original founders and gurus of all-renewable energy systems, about 50 years ago, saw this problem clearly and asserted or promised that R&D would deliver some way to store “surplus” renewable electricity, to use in times when the weather produced too little. However, it has been at least 45 years now, and intensive and, at times quite creative R&D has produced no ULTGSS tech. That is, no “Universal, Long-Term, Grid-Scale Storage” tech, as I have termed it. We do have batteries. However, anyone who understands this tech knows that, although they have gotten much cheaper, they are good for only a few hours, at most – more likely an hour. This will not serve during protracted times of low wind and sun, and occasional times of virtually no sun and solar radiation that can last days or weeks, especially in winter.
So, THE SOLUTION, that I indicated the German government has adopted is the installation of 35 GW of new natural gas electrical generation that can be used in counter-sync with variable renewables. So, what we have here is a plan for two complete systems, each capable of running the entire country, and each running probably something like 50% of the time. In the end, financing and maintaining (and syncing!) two, full separate systems is enormous. No one in Germany (I am using Germany as an example here) predicts that the price of electricity will come down, not for decades.
So, the scramble for more LNG and pipeline natural gas is on in Germany, the land of the promised Green Renewable Panacea.
What a mess.
So, NO, I do not predict that the Hormuz crisis will boost renewables in a big way. People today have much more experience with renewables than they did in the 1973 and 1979 energy crises. In fact, many EU countries, especially in the EU’s east, and in the USA and elsewhere, are turning to nuclear energy, as the French did in the crises of the 1970s and are still reaping the benefits with low-cost, reliable energy during the present crisis as they did also during and after the crisis imposed by Putin and Russia on the European Union in 2021-22, when Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off almost 40% of the EU’s imported gas to try to force Europe to abandon solidarity with Ukraine.
However, this Russian energy war didn’t work, because the USA massively send LNG to replace the Russian gas.
The problem in Europe is that many, including the German government, and German parties of both the Left and Right, still embrace the feasibility of “Renewables Fundamentalism.” That is, of a 100% renewables energy system. Even as they scramble for natural gas, they have convinced themselves that this will only be needed temporarily, as more renewables are constantly installed. But, this is a wrong analysis.
No amount of renewables makes then produce electricity when the wind does now blow and the sun does not shine, sometimes for a couple weeks or more at a time in Germany and many other EU states. Alas.
Enjoy my blog? Then think about contacting me a talk and/or consult for your business, civil-society group, school, state ministry, political party or etc. via twod(at)umich.edu
Best, Dr. Tom O’Donnell, American energy and geo-security strategist, in Berlin.
The Global Barrel 