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Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Energy 99, Germany's FDP questioning or ditching Energiewende

I like this man, head of German liberals Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Lindner. The man mainly responsible for the FDP resurgence in the German Bundestag elections last September 24.

"The project of the century Energiewende [transition to green energies] has failed. None of the agreed targets will be reached. Climate protection is stalled, energy prices are rising and they are burdening us as electricity consumers, just as they are the industry and middle class. And not least of all it is becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee a secure power supply during the winter months.” -- Christian Lindner.



Merkel's CDU/CSU needs an ally to retain the majority. Almost impossible to ally with 3rd place AfD, 2nd place SPD already broke up with them. Merkel definitely needs 4th place FDP and very likely 5th place Greens but the FDP and Greens are now poles apart in energy policy. The latter wants Germany's expensive, unstable energy to become even more expensive, even more unstable because of their kill-coal, subsidize-endlessly-wind+solar policies.

Here's a possible opposition Watermelon (green outside, red inside) coalition:  SPD + Greens + Linke. All of them have the same hatred of fossil fuels, they just differ on the degree of their hatred, and all of them are users of fossil fuels -- in electricity, cars/inland mobility, planes and long distance trips.

I think Mr. Lindner is now asserting the liberal position of market competition, less government intervention. In particular, energy competition. Focus on price and power stability, a very important factor for industrial Germany producing world-class cars, robots, monster machines, etc. Energiewende is killing energy competition. Only wind + solar + biomass, hydro, others should be prioritized by govt energy central planning. The rest -- coal, nuke, gas -- decimate if not kill them. FDP now under Lindner is reasserting the classical liberal, freedom-oriented public policies.

FDP leadership is right and correct in moving into energy realism and competition and away from watermelon movement and energy leftism-cronyism.

A German friend noted that "there are contractual and legal obligations to be honored and rule of law in place. Dismantling the energy turnaround can only be a step by step process if the government wants to avoid massive amounts of litigation, much of which will be successful. this is the most problematical aspect of the turnaround: its partial irreversibility."

Good points, and its good that the FDP will try to stop these economic and energy lunacy of glorifying expensive, intermittent, unstable energy sources in an energy-intensive industralized econ like Germany.

Also the reason why Trump is leaving the Paris agreement, to help avoid possible multi trillion $ lawsuits from crony renewables, crony Tesla and related industries and firms.

Other related recent papers from NTZ:


3 October 2017
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