Germany's Energiewende Vs. U.S. "Green" Gas Hooey

A little break this morning from the usual focus on war and mayhem. While sitting through the telecast of the drubbing that the Seahawks took in San Diego, I read an excellent article by the Gray Lady's climate change reporter, Justin Gillis. In "Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind," Gillis explains the tremendous strides Germany has made in converting its economy to renewable energy and how this commitment to green power -- solar and wind -- has helped bring down the price of the technology globally -- so much so that utilities are complaining and beginning to organize to block state-mandated incentives for renewables:

Germans will soon be getting 30 percent of their power from renewable energy sources. Many smaller countries are beating that, but Germany is by far the largest industrial power to reach that level in the modern era. It is more than twice the percentage in the United States.

Germany’s relentless push into renewable energy has implications far beyond its shores. By creating huge demand for wind turbines and especially for solar panels, it has helped lure big Chinese manufacturers into the market, and that combination is driving down costs faster than almost anyone thought possible just a few years ago. 

Electric utility executives all over the world are watching nervously as technologies they once dismissed as irrelevant begin to threaten their long-established business plans. Fights are erupting across the United States over the future rules for renewable power. Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset. 

A reckoning is at hand, and nowhere is that clearer than in Germany. Even as the country sets records nearly every month for renewable power production, the changes have devastated its utility companies, whose profits from power generation have collapsed. 

A similar pattern may well play out in other countries that are pursuing ambitious plans for renewable energy. Some American states, impatient with legislative gridlock in Washington, have set aggressive goals of their own, aiming for 20 or 30 percent renewable energy as soon as 2020. 

The word the Germans use for their plan is starting to make its way into conversations elsewhere: energiewende, the energy transition. Worldwide, Germany is being held up as a model, cited by environmental activists as proof that a transformation of the global energy system is possible.

As utilities in Germany bring their political influence to bear to slow energiewende, German voters are pushing back:

In fact, the problems with the energiewende (pronounced in-ur-GEE-vend-uh) have multiplied so rapidly in the past couple of years that the government is now trying to slow down the transition. “I think we need a little bit of time,” said Jochen Flasbarth, a deputy minister of the environment.

But the German public is not taking that well. Marching down a Berlin street with thousands of other protesters one recent day, Reinhard Christiansen, the head of a small company focused on renewable energy in the town of Ellhöft, said, “We are afraid they are trying to put the brakes on the energy transformation.” 

The chanting demonstrators demanded that the government, far from slowing the transition, find a way to speed it up.

I was impressed with German voters when, after Fukushima, they put pressure on the politicians to phase out nuclear power; now they are showing the world that one of the largest. most sophisticated economies can rapidly convert to renewable energy. A triumph of rationality!

Compare that to the United States. While there are some notable successes at the state level, foremost of which being California's push to install tens of thousands of solar rooftop panels with the goal of achieving 33 percent renewable power by 2020, for the most part America's drive for "energy independence" has been hitched to fracking and the increased production of natural gas.

Back in July TomDispatch posted an excellent critique of natural gas as a "green" energy source by science historian Naomi Oreskes. The bottom line of "Wishful Thinking About Natural Gas: Why Fossil Fuels Can’t Solve the Problems Created by Fossil Fuels" is that natural gas is no greener than dirtier fossil fuels like oil and coal because of methane leakage:

How Gas (CH4) Heats the Atmosphere Much More than CO2

Isn’t gas still better than oil for heating homes? Perhaps, but oil doesn’t leak into the atmosphere, which brings us to a crucial point: natural gas is methane (CH4), which is a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2. 

As a result, gas leaks are a cause for enormous concern, because any methane that reaches the atmosphere unburned contributes to global warming more than the same amount of CO2. How much more? This is a question that has caused considerable angst in the climate science community, because it depends on how you calculate it. Scientists have developed the concept of “Global Warming Potential” (GWP) to try to answer this question. 

The argument is complicated because while CH4 warms the planet far more than CO2, it stays in the atmosphere for much less time. A typical molecule of CO2 remains in the atmosphere about 10 times longer than a molecule of CH4. In their Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the GWP for methane is 34 times that of CO2 over the span of 100 years. However, when the time frame is changed to 20 years, the GWP increases to 86! 

Most calculations of the impact of methane leakage use the 100-year time frame, which makes sense if you are worried about the cumulative impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the world as a whole, but not -- many scientists have started to argue -- if you are worried about currently unfolding impacts on the biosphere. After all, many species may go extinct well before we reach that 100-year mark. It also does not make sense if you are worried that we are quickly approaching irreversible tipping points in the climate system, including rapid ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. 

It gets worse. CH4 and CO2 are not the only components of air pollution that can alter the climate. Dust particles from pollution or volcanoes have the capacity to cool the climate. As it happens, burning coal produces a lot of dust, leading some scientists to conclude that replacing coal with natural gas may actually increase global warming. If they are right, then not only is natural gas not a bridge to a clean energy future, it’s a bridge to potential disaster.

As is to be expected, the American effort to transition to a renewable energy future is based on bunkum and boosterism, with well-established players, the oil and gas industry, positioned to reap the rewards; in other words, more of the same old irrationality produced by a political system in the grips of plutocratic capture and a democracy deficit.