View from London: Net zero and the myth of German efficiency

Losing one energy source may be misfortune. Losing two is carelessness. And losing three is alarming if you’re the world’s third biggest industrial nation. But to endanger your fourth energy source, the one that’s supposed to replace the first three, seems akin to a death wish. Amazingly, this is where Germany is now heading with its bungled energy transformation, or Energiewende, which some Germans still bizarrely insist is a model for the world, ‘The Spectator’ writes.

The first energy source to be axed was Germany’s nuclear fleet, which used to supply over 30 per cent of the nation’s electricity. The last nuclear plant closed in 2023, following decades of anti-nuclear campaigning and legislation by the Greens. The closedown timetable was first slowed under Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel and then abruptly speeded up after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The second source getting the chop are coal-fired power plants. Many are already shuttered or have reduced operations and the last coal plant will close no later than 2038.

Production of Germany’s third, potentially major, energy source, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of natural gas, has been mostly banned under a 2017 Merkel-era law. Nobody really knows how much fracking gas Germany could produce, because it’s not worth doing the geological research, but it’s estimated up to 20 years of total, current annual gas needs might be supplied from domestic fracking. Others say fracking could supply a quarter of long-term annual gas demand.

Now, the fourth energy source, the white knight of renewables that was supposed to replace all of this, is lurching into crisis as feed-in payments for green electricity plummet, costs skyrocket and crucial power lines and battery storage aren’t built.

“Up to two-thirds of all renewables projects currently being planned in Germany may never be built,” said the chief financial officer of the company, whom I cannot name due to compliance reasons.

He has an interest in making things look bad to get us to accept less money, but my lawyer confirms Germany’s renewables crisis. “Everybody is being hit by demands to renegotiate contracts,” says Potsdam-based Ulrich Böcker.

Along with sinking electricity feed-in payments, renewables are suffering from a rise of at least 20 per cent in the cost of wind turbines, along with far higher interest rates than a few years ago. Many wind energy projects in Germany are 100 per cent debt-financed.

The German renewables transformation is also failing to build urgently-needed power lines from the wind-rich north to the energy-hungry south of the country. And talk about deregulating planning for crucial battery storage plants remains mainly talk. Nothing has happened on two battery projects I signed up for last year.

You might think that given all this the German government would consider reversing past energy decisions. But you would be wrong.

Christian Democrat Chancellor Friedrich Merz admits that closing nuclear power stations was a mistake but he rejects reversing the decision, even though it’s technically possible to restart some of the shuttered nuclear stations.

What about fracking for gas? Merz’s answer is a stern “nein.”

Regarding coal-fired power plants, the most Merz will say is that the 2038 shutdown deadline is “unrealistic.”

If these plants operate longer, where might coal come from? Not from Germany. Brown coal strip mines, such as the huge Hambach field in North Rhine-Westphalia, are being flooded. The stated goal is to create a lake. The unstated goal is to make it physically impossible to mine coal in the future.

The tragedy of Chancellor Merz is that while he may be a reformer at heart, his Christian Democratic bloc won the 2025 election with a lousy 28.6 per cent and is now trailing the number-one placed nationalist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in opinion polls.

Merz has no electoral mandate for big energy or economic reforms, and these are rejected by his struggling Social Democratic coalition partner and even by the wets in his own CDU and Bavarian CSU branch.

The tragedy of Germany is that its allies are noticing how deeply unreliable a partner it is. Berlin has made massive policy blunders over past decades – based on a desire to be morally clean – that are utterly devoid of strategic logic.

But it’s the energy transformation debacle that wins the prize. It relied on cheap Russian gas – now gone; the closing down and banning of nuclear- gas- and coal-based domestic energy production; making net-zero the Holy Grail of country that grew rich on cheap, plentiful energy; and a belief that covering the nation with windmills and solar parks can power Europe’s biggest economy.

In the mad rush for net-zero by 2045, nobody gave much thought to back-up conventional power plants needed for German winters when there’s no wind or sun, the so-called Dunkelflaute. Germany needs base load continuous electricity on demand that wind and solar can’t always provide. Gas power plant tenders are only being invited this year.

Germany may have produced 57 per cent of its power from renewables last year – but at massive cost to its economy. Weaning itself off the last 43 per cent of coal, natural gas and oil will come at a devastating price. Some estimates show the energy transformation costing 5 trillion euros (£4.3 trillion) by 2045.

With just 19 years until Berlin’s binding net-zero deadline, one is reminded of the German remonstrance for measures that are carried out correctly from a technical standpoint – but have catastrophic consequences: Operation gelungen, Patient tot – Operation successful, patient dead.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs