Yes this experiment will be watched by the rest of the world. If it goes badly the effect could be the opposite of what was intended. Some of those negatives include power blackouts, building new coal fired power stations, increasing emissions, building transmission lines through pristine areas, hypocritically importing nuclear electricity from other European countries, taxpayer fatigue at cost overruns, dependence on Russian gas imports, loss of nuclear tax revenue and daft energy storage experiments that go wrong. There are early warning signs for several of these negatives.

Even if they can largely achieve their goals the cost may remove them from the top spot as the European economic power house. If so they won't be bailing out Greece five years from now. In contrast the UK is sceptical of renewable energy and is building new nuclear power stations to get back into the hunt. If Germany is forced to re-open its mothballed nukes it will not only be a major embarrassment but a pointer to the fact it can't be done with renewable energy alone.

Given the European financial crisis, what is the real chance of Germany spending $130bn on green energy? Considering that this will only generate enough power to cope with increased demand over the next decade, let alone shut a few nuclear power stations.

The most likely reality is that this is a postponement of a decision to 2015 after a new election when memories have faded, and the promise can quietly be ditched.

A very skeptical conclusion from the shadow minister of everything. Germany has been big on renewables, with their support for personal household solar. It is power for industry that needs cleaning up. A change to gas is better than burning coal. This will happen in victoria. Gas fired boilers need little to no manpower to operate, so costs will be stable. Solar farms are self running, Wind power and hydro are the way to go.

I'm in agreement with Taswegian and Shadow Minister, I am sure that Europe's industrial powerhouse would not shut down nuclear reactors without an alternative plan in mind. They simply cannot run their giant industrial complexes on solar and wind power as it is now.

While Germany will continue to be a leader in alternative energy, the reason for the annnouncement about shutting Nuclear power plants, could be that Merkel is basically stealing the Green Party's single most important issue and hoping to take much of their support.

I see the German strategy as a wonderful opportunity for the world to field test whether renewable energy really can run a major industrial country. If they succeed (as France did two decades ago to convert almost completely to nuclear power) it will be lauded as the future for other nations. If they fail, or more likely, are forced to postpone by several decades, it will be a warning to others (including Australia) about trying to move to 50+% renewables by 2050.

Storage will be the key. If Germany can develop cost-effective storage to lift wind and solar to 80+% capacity factor then we can say goodbye to using fossil fuels. Until then other countries like China and India will take the nuclear option as France did.

In fact, Merkel has basically opted to increase emissions. She has agreed to shut down an emissions free sector of the electricity industry that provided base load power. The closed reactors would have to be replaced with fossil fuel plants. My guess would be closed cycle gas turbines, rather than coal-fired, given the way that everyone is discovering gas these days. CCGTs are very clean these days, but still they will emit more than nuclear plants.

Although the amount being allocate for research and alternatives sounds impressive, its over five years, making $27 billion or so a year and its to underwrite projects. Although I'd have to look at the the details, I think that means that the development bank will lend the money, which means the private sector still has to arrange those projects and take the risk.

In any case, as noted, only a tiny fraction of installed wind energy (about 4-5 per cent in Aus) is counted when the energy authorities work out how much electricity capacity to keep on hand at any given time.. so it looks like the future is in gas turbines..

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is EXPLICIT.
You cannot get a NET return of energy from any technology related to incident solar radiation.
That is, you cannot convert low density energy sources into baseload energy sources at net gain over input costs associated with manufacture, installation, transport and maintenance of the infrastructure.

The fact that it is renewable energy is negated by upgrade costs of solr/wind technology as they all (occupying vast areas) tend to rapidly become rapidly obsolete.

In essence what this says is that coal and oil will be continually needed to back up any solar, wind or wave renewable energy option. Its the cost of maintaining super large collection areas often in dangerous & remote locations. In fact its just a continuing use of fossil fuels. And because the extra "renewable" step is being added its also extremely inefficient.

Only >400 Deg C Geothermal heat can achieve these renewable goals from within basic Thermodynamic rules.

If the Germans invested their renewable stash in Geothermal it would pay off. Otherwise its just a fraud. German scientists were instrumental in discovery of thermodynamic laws. They have no excuse for failing to observe them unless they have some whopper gimmick.

It can be done:

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20111020/hour-solar-plant-nowreality.htm

20MW solar power plant has opened in Spain, operating 24/7.

So they're getting there.

I think it's great to see Germany making this commitment. My question is what form will the funding come in? Loans? Matched grants? More information needed here.

Agree with Curm that closed cycle gas turbines (up to 50% efficient and much better than open cycle at about 35%) offer one solution but only an interim one. To minimise emissions it should also involve combined heat and power , which can deliver up to 80% efficiency and should be practicable in the industrial areas and cities adjacent to residential and commercial areas where the waste heat can be used for heating and cooling.

Big question for gas in the long term is how to produce renewable gas; one pathway is biomass - syngas - methanation, but a country like Germany could only grow enough biomass to supply a few percent of its energy needs. So there will have to be breakthroughs in commercializing solar storage and solar hydrogen / methane production.

The biggest contributor will be energy efficiency; reducing energy use by up to 50% is possible. This has to be driven by higher energy prices and government programs such as the excellent Energy Efficency Opportunities program we have in Australia.

Trash, Roses,

There is no doubt that it is possible to do, just that the cost of doing so is so prohibitive, that few governments are in the position to borrow heavily to replace existing generation with renewables. The $130bn is a relative drop in the bucket, and at the cost of the Spanish solar scheme would not replace one reactor, let alone a nuclear power plant.

Surely the most timid, self-defeating phrase in the English language is it can’t be done.
Sixty years ago is well within the memory of some of us. If in 1951 anyone had confidently predicted that within twenty years man would walk on the moon, they would have been told it can’t be done.
The Eagle landed eighteen years later.
Fast forward forty years to the 1991world of personal computers. IBM was upgrading their 286 to a 386. Many of us can remember marvelling at their power, and this was before the Pentium chip and the graphical user interface changed everything.
Had anyone predicted then that within twenty years a computer could be a palm-sized application platform that doubled as a telephone, they would have been told it can’t be done.
Apple launched the first iPhone sixteen years later.
Today it’s the turn of those predicting the emergence of renewable base-load power to be told it can’t be done.
A good response would be the title of the 80’s popular song, Another One Bites the Dust.
We will get there, to renewable base-load power, and it’s a timid bet to say it can’t be done.

Suckers!

There's one, er three, born every minute!

If there's money to be made in other people's stubborn ignorance then I'm gonna be very rich.

Yee Ha!

You puppies were warned.

KAEP.. logic doesn't matter these days. The world prefers feelgood ideas even though they contradict basic laws of physics. The supporters of alternative energy see any opposition as a conservative plot.

One day the weeds will be growing over the solar panels in the desert and the environmental lobby will blame its failure on some right wing conspiracy or other.

TrashcanMan

sorry but that plant you mentioned is not operating 24/7, and is not going to.. forget the green agitprop and look at the company information sheets. These say the plant recently managed to operate for a whole 24 hours and eventually may be able to operate continuously "on most summer nights", averaging about 20 hours a day..

Now look at the actual output, which is around 20MW.. coal-fired power stations are typically around 500MW

This is a very expensive pilot plant.. Its an advance but its not a solution.

Sounds like a direct action plan to me, and not one mention of the glorious emissions trading scheme. Julia had better get Combet, Kevin and Wayne over their advising them of the better practise... and how to legislate such in the face of overwhelming public rejection.

Trashy, I'll bet you like other attempts, it's not in commission in 18 months.

How long is it going to take to get the message across that wind power is a recipe for using more gas than the same power would require if the windmills were turned off? Why won't greenies read anything that doesn't agree with them?

Halduell, I expect that in 20 years time we will have efficient low emission power being supplied to the community, that is provided we can get greenies, academics & governments out of the way. Industry will find the way, provided they don't have a market bastardised by ridiculous subsidies using our money for favoured schemes.

I am equally sure it will not be from solar, as we currently know it, wind, wave power or biomass. Can you imagine the fuel required to collect enough grass from diverse paddocks to replace the thousands of tons of coal carried by one train. It would certainly exceed the power production of the bio so gathered.

Queensland built one at Rocky point. The cost & effort of gathering the biomass was provided by the adjacent sugar mill. It didn't work economically, & was sold off at a loss of many hundreds of millions of our dollars.

The greenies just may win, as real people are getting sick of shooting down, all the pies in the sky around here. I personally would no longer care, if it weren't for the fact that it's my grand kids future these fools want to destroy along with their own.

But the Spanish have already figured out how to run a solar plant 24/7 -- just use big arc lights running on normal-priced electricity and sell the 'solar' electricity produced from them back to the grid at a ridiculous taxpayer-sponsored premium.

Of course, that's when they run at all...

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081219/full/news.2008.1326.html

"...an ongoing investigation by Spanish authorities has so far unearthed nearly 4,200 photovoltaic installations that were falsely registered as being online by a 30 September deadline in order to receive higher levels of subsidy from power companies. According to the CNE report, however, none of the questionable installations, which are located in 1,447 or 13.3% of the country's solar parks, is actually producing any power."

The Spanish certainly have something, but I think 'a healthy disrespect for gullible politicians' probably sums it up better than 'ground-breaking solar technology'.

Here in Oz we have unending availability of power sourced below our earth - it is sustainable and non polluting. Yes the initial set up of drilling deep within the earth does cost money but once installed, it will continue to serve our power needs. why is there not more call for this type of power in Australia? Are we blinded by wind and sun?

Boy, we could have done something like that, that's if our government hadn't pissed it all away on failed project after failed project.

Curmudgeon: "Its an advance but its not a solution."

We don't stop looking for a cure for cancer because we're only making advances.

I agree with halduell, too many people so easily claim it can't be done.

why are all these foolish promises made far enough in the future that they can't and won't be held to account? How many countries achieved their Kyoto protocol promises? Any? And then we had CopenHagen.

Trashcanman

But you represented that plant as a cure, and I'm not suggesting we stop research. Instead, what is clear from a glance at that project is just how far the technology has to go, even after decades and billions of dollars. As we can now see more clearly the only emissions-less reliable power source likely to be available within our lifetimes is the existing nuclear (which Merkel is shutting down), and maybe geothermal.

Trash et al,

The only potentially viable source of renewable power presently is wind power, with an established technical base and the lowest cost producer (renewable) by far.

The rest are just toys so far. The cost of the Spanish solar generation is about 4x what nuclear would be, and the hot rocks geothermal has yet to produce a viable plant. (the SA plant is foundering).

The end result is that renewable power is still unreliable and hideously expensive, and unless this is replaced with reliable and relatively cheap alternatives (such as nuclear) the carbon tax will only increase prices with little real reduction.

Unfortunately the experience is that geothermal will not work in Oz. Our rocks are not being reheated quickly enough to keep the system working long enough to pay for the instillation costs. Don't forget that includes hundreds of kilometers of transmission lines, to get the power to the existing grid.

It is a pity that our global warming industry, & media have avoided telling the truth about recent experience, or we would all know that currently it only works in volcanic areas.

Perhaps those brilliant engineers, who can drill oil & gas wells horizontally, will come up with a way of spreading the heat harvesting area from a single drill hole, & make it viable in the distant future, but I'd sure rather that the AGW enthusiasts paid for the experiment, than we do with more tax money.

Sorry folks, that's one more pie shot down, just no report of where it crashed. Keeps the useful idiots on board, & paying doesn't it?

Yeah right, Aussy hot rocks are not reheating quickly!!

Where's the reference for that? Have you consulted a Geology Professor about that one?

First: Here's a list of Aussy Hot springs with incessant subterranean reaheating and thus hot rock @ depths < 2Km.

Second, Engadine, St Peters and the Euroka diatreme(volcanic crater) at Glenbrook are all SYDNEY locations within spitting distance of power grid networks. That means that @ 7Km depths you will get HOT ROCKS >800 Deg C. There are more in many areas within the Sydney Metropolis. 7Km is routine for oil drillers especially in the Gulf of Mexico. So there is no excuse for wasting money on solar and Wind when baseload Geothermal is so near.

Additionally EVERY capital city in Australia and thus some 90% of Australians have similar adjacent Geothermal reservoirs. In Fact Perth and Adelaide have better geology due to proximity to crustal faulting.

Many people KNOW these facts. The problem is the choke hold the OIL and Peabody Coal conglomerates have on media and world politics.

Presidents and PMs are paid 50 times less than CEOs. The REAL Occupy Wall Street heart-cry that is so elusive to enunciate is that there is no DEMOCRACY and thus no FREEDOM when CEOs can covertly bribe democratic leaders in matters so vital to the sustainability and future of the human race.

Thus, Fossil fuels are largely being sustained beyond their shelflife because they are on a CEO GRAVY TRAIN of easy money. Thus every drilling rig on the planet is unavailable for geothermal even if its in lay-off. And impossible Solar and its wind and wave derivitives are being scammed down our throats to offer false hope while these CEO morons lead us all into global wealth consolidation wars.

Get it?

If Occupy Wall Street people read this and begin the chant for:

*top world leaders to be paid the same as top CEOs and
*Oil companies to drill 1 out of 10 wells for GEOTHERMAL reservoirs

Here's the hot springs list for Australia

http://www.findseedo.com/spspas.html

Kaep,

Would you be so kind as to give a reference to a single commercially viable hot rocks power generator?

There is no question that there are huge amounts of energy available in nature, the questions are whether it can be harvested cheaply and reliably. So far the answers are no, although the huge focus globally over the past few decades is working towards reducing costs and increasing reliability, there is still a long way to go.

There's 10 billion $ up for grabs, for people with alt energy plans. Of course Toni has labelled it a slush fund, but that is expected. Register your project now.

I've got one involving hamster wheels.

Hey SM, I'm all for nuclear, especially in Australia, where the safety risk is so low with our low earthquake risk and high safety standards. I think nuclear should replace coal for the medium-term, say 50-100 years, while we work towards perfecting cleaner and safer alternatives. unless we also come up with safe long term storage or neutralization of waste from nuclear too. That would be great.

Unfortunately the debate has been dominated by the voice of the left on this one, which has been backed up by events such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. I just can't see the general public accepting it for some time.

We should be working towards improving technologies of alternates though. Whether you believe in AGW or not, it is still in the long term interests of Australia and the global community. My reference to the new solar plant in Spain was to point out that advances are being made, new ideas being developed and that we are getting closer to getting some real results. I'm not saying problem is solved. I'm saying the problem can be solved (I believe) and evidence is there that we are getting closer.

Negativity from the right doesn't aid in that process. Just as over-zealousness from the left is skewing reasonable debate on nuclear.

SM,

You've been watching too much "60-minutes".

Did you miss the bit in my post about fossil fuel industrial mischief gutting GEOTHERMAL initiatives by deadly-embracing them and locking them up.

Or do you still believe in Santa Claus and the benifience of fossil-CEOS who stand to lose $trillions if cheap GEOTHERMAL ENERGY came online in suburban backyards instead of from gargantuan Peabody mines.

Also I must have missed "60-minutes" because, let me tell you this:
There are NO huge amounts of (baseload) energy available in nature external to:

*fossil fuels,
*GEOTHERMAL and
*planet MERCURY ORBITAL SOLAR generators.

That's the PROBLEM. Thats why global economics are collapsing. You must be the only person on the planet to have missed the point.

I cannot STOP fossil fuel mischiefs but I can 'give-ya' the other two!

Trash,

I'm pleasantly surprised. I had taken you for an idealistic greenie.

I am a strong supporter of nuclear. My suggestion has been to replace the coal generation at Hazelwood with some nuclear reactors, as the water supply and reticulation is already in place, and the landscape with the mining is far from pristine.

Reprocessing the waste gets rid of most of the problems, but is probably not viable until there are 10+ reactors in the country.

John J, enlightening post. Spain is a basket case partly due to the switch over to 'alternative energy' sources.

See http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0