Germany energy policy

German nuclear energy/shutterstock

By the end of 2022 Germany will have no nuclear power plants remaining. To put the numbers in perspective I will estimate how much solar power will need to be added to replace the lost production due to each reactor being closed early.[read more]

German energy subsidies

Could a German subsidy on energy storage replicate the German solar miracle for batteries instead? The launch and terms of a long-threatened energy storage subsidy are due to be introduced on May 1.[read more]

EU energy targets

The newest European Union statistics show its member nations are on track to meet their renewables targets but will need a new policy boost to keep up the pace.[read more]

a losing proposition?

The electricity from Germany’s solar panels and new coal plants could have been attained by building gas plants, at much lower cost and carbon emissions.[read more]

Wind Turbine via Shutterstock

The capacity factors and useful service lives of industrial wind turbines are important determinants of levelized wind energy costs. Some recent studies have brought to light the capacity factors are less and useful service lives are shorter than typically used in spreadsheet-based analysis by IWT promoters to obtain bank financing and...[read more]

German Solar via Shutterstock

Each year, since 1997, a meeting is held by the parties to the U.N.’s 1992 Treaty on Climate Change. The first meeting, COP-1, was in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. COP-18 in Doha, Qatar, in 2012, drew at least 10,000 attendees from around the world, for a 2-week period of conferences, at a total cost of about $250 million. As Qatar is...[read more]

Electric utilities and policymakers in Japan and Germany have been scrambling for months to find ways to compensate for nuclear power plants shut down in the aftermath of Fukushima.In both instances, fossil fuels are part of the stopgap solution to offset the declines in nuclear generation in the short term, but longer-term energy...[read more]

Carbon-pricing advocates regularly point to European nations for examples of appropriate and effective clean energy deployment policies. Surging growth rates for solar and wind, coupled with regional declines in carbon emissions, are cited as clear vindications of Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the carbon-trading program that...[read more]