It's exactly the same in Germany. In addition the state government of Bavaria in the south east does everything to keep wind power from being built in their state and worked against high voltage power lines to bring cheap and abundant energy from the north to his state.
To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES.
Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia.
Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the cost calculus that wind energy provides, it's best suited for underutilized offshore areas or desert climates.
Germany forcing wind power is basically a sorry excuse they have to compensate for their energy shortfall - wind and solar can be deployed relatively faster, but of course solar doesn't make sense in Germany, hence the government is trying to shove down wind.
Your comment really is a prime example of what is wrong with this discourse.
> which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem
Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg.
> and a mountainous terrain
Bavaria is more mountainous than northern Germany for sure, but not all of Bavaria is the alps.
> Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the cost calculus that wind energy provides, it's best suited for underutilized offshore areas or desert climates.
I often see this argued, often with people citing ground wins speeds to support their statement. However, at 100m public records to show sufficient wind speeds to justify the investment in many cases. Of course offshore wind is always going to have a lower LCoE than onshore wind, but in southern states like Bavaria transmission bottlenecks and redispatch are also a concern (by the way, both of witch are exasperated by the lack of investment in transmission networks).
> but of course solar doesn't make sense in Germany,
This is just a factually wrong statement. Solar does make sense ans the business case is just getting stronger with the falling panel and storage costs. I have a residential installation (the least cost and energy effective solution) and I cover most of my electricity needs from my roof in 10 out of 12 months. People love to reference the two months to demonstrate that it is useless, but that’s a bit like saying your house is useless because you’re not at home for 10 hours a day.
Honestly speaking, I don't know for sure but I also spend time thinking about it and figured it mostly comes down to the politics of the issue. Although I can only comment on the German part of the issue, the overall discourse is likely rather similar.
> And that too, specifically, Germany ?
The discourse around the energy market in Germany is mostly centered around the inequality of the German energy market. Germany is a single price zone. However, this price is only the bidding price on the electricity market. In addition to the energy price, there are taxes and network transfer fees (Netzentgelte) that make up the final electricity price that is paid by the consumer. In the northern states the network fees are pretty high because of the high amount of wind turbines being connected to the grid, so the consumers in the northern states pay comparatively expensive prices, especially considering the vast amount of cheap wind energy that is in available in their network regions [0].
In southern states like Bavaria the network fees are less of an issue, resulting in lower energy prices overall (which sometimes makes sense because Bavaria has a lot of solar power installed). The north (eastern) states are also economically relatively weak, so the impression is that these regions essentially subsidize the "cheap" electricity for the economically well off states in southern Germany, hindering the development of new industries in those states.
Beyond those issues there is also the ever increasing cost for redispatch which is placing an increasing burden on electricity consumers [1]
> Is it targeting green energy
In Germany it is certainly targeting the green energy by proxy and the green party in particular. German politics has been a pretty shitshow ever since I turned old enough the care, but the last 3 years were super bad.
> Is it targeting Germany ?
I think Germany in particular is targeted largely because of the decision to phase out nuclear power. This is a decision that is for some reason widely unpopular nowadays, even with people who celebrated the decision 10 years ago. The stuttering transformation in Germany probably also has some side effects in countries that we're (re-) importing from, namely raising the prices due to higher demand.
With the power of hindsight you can argue that exiting coal before nuclear would have been a smarter play, but here we are.
TL;DR: Energy grid transformation is a bit of a (political) shitshow
I saw this on a Reddit discussion on American healthcare. One of the responses about American politics, brought up German decision making, and their denuclearization. Which was new, I’ve seen all sorts of misinfo, talking points, traps etc. etc.
Yeah that already was a mess before 2022 and only turned worse since then. And remember, what I outlined is only the surface of the electricity generation debate. It gets even worse when you turn towards mobility and heating. Oh you will hear some wild takes there!
> Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg.
Brain fart moment, I guess you're right. But Bavaria still has plentiful forests for the argument to be valid.
> This is just a factually wrong statement. Solar does make sense ans the business case is just getting stronger with the falling panel and storage costs.
The business case is getting stronger because of a self-inflicted wound. You guys have ballooning energy costs in Germany by sole virtue of your own policies, even though you had the panacea to those issues earlier. It's like handling a toothache with clove oil and herbs when you should be getting a root canal, even though you're rich enough to afford that.
I for one would love to see German heavy industry run on solar power. Even the cost justification won't make sense and you know that.
You are free to believe what you want, but the Black Forest is not in Bavaria. Some other observations are not wrong per se, but heavily spin-doctored. For example, the average wind speed in Bavaria is 6.9 m/s, which is about 2m/s slower than average wind speed in Schleswig-Holstein but very much in the economical range of wind energy facilities of 3 to 12 m/s, or gas imports from Russia to Europe have fallen by ~70% from end of 2021 to end of 2023 which is still too much, but not exactly sucking a teat, and so on.
When I go to https://model.energy/ and run the optimization algorithm on Bayern using 2030 cost assumptions, it finds that using solar/wind/batteries/hydrogen to produce steady power output costs 77.8 euro/MWh. This is probably cheaper than new construction nuclear would be there.
Europe in general is one of the worst parts of the world for renewable energy, but this just means that in a post-fossil fuel, renewable powered world, Europe will be at a competitive disadvantage in energy intensive industries, and nuclear will not save them vs. industries in sunnier places.
