We have right to roam in nature here, which is quite rare across the world (and even compared to the few other countries that have something similar, the Swedish variant is stronger). I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Ummm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
At least according to the list, Americans work ten weeks more a year than their German counterpart.
I would bet everything that life, at least right now, is comfy. But I don't see it as remotely sustainable.
The discussion about fossil fuels vs renewables is a bit different within countries which produce fossil fuels than within those that don't.
Just because it was the right decision doesn't mean there are not downsides.
Edit: there was never any chance of Germany invading Ukraine then/joining Russia on any invasion.
Politics often are about the unintended consequences. Often they are also unforeseen.
There are consequences for it that though.
However it is still correct. If Germany had joined Russia (and got away with it!), there is every reason to think the pipeline would still be flowing.
Of course if they had done that other countries would likely object and so we can go on and on with what could have been (for starters the propaganda would be all different). There are no easy answers and we can never know what would have happened.
However we can still discuss what would have happened if they did.
During that time Nord Stream was blown up.
The point is moot, since Putin has offered multiple times to open the remaining intact pipe:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-urges-germany-...
And the broken pipes can be repaired, as was determined in the LLoyds lawsuit recently.
I'm not saying that reopening would be reliable, but it would be one diversification away from US and Qatar dependencies. The US just cut the EU off from Qatar gas.
This was spun as a Russian decision, but western countries were clearly trying to force Germany's hand.
The gas was never cheap, either; apart from the money spent now to restrain the military buildup and invasion it financed, even at the height of supplies it was much higher price than China is paying, a price sustained by Russia using military force and more to restrain other (Asian) countries from supplying to Europe.
(This was obvious to everyone, right? A single majority supplier nation state charging a cheap price out of the kindness of their heart? No, of course not; neither cheap nor kind. It was a monopoly, built on blood.)
it's a little rich to accuse them of playing games with gas after the stunt Canada pulled and most especially after a western partner subsequently blew up the pipeline and blamed it on Russia.
Clearly certain western allies decided that Germany couldnt be trusted to make its own decisions about where Germany gets its energy.
If you want to see their approach to maintenance while prices and needs are high, watch them put oil refineries back in operation days after drone hits.
Why aside? Germany had to burn gas and coal to compensate for the nuclear reactors they shut down, (and to import electricity from France which didn't shut down the reactors). Germany could've weathered the transition much better, and suffered without Russian gas much less had they not shut down their reactors.
Something is wrong with Germany. Go to Our World InData's Electricity Production per Capita page and have a look at Germany, Vietnam, and say Israel.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge...
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/industrial-production-m...
Of course, stable is probably bad here. But it's not declining.
Onshore wind and solar is about £40-50
Offshore wind about £60
Gas about £120
That’s generation cost, before subsidies and levees
But we still haven’t put in an emergency legislation to make it easier to build cheaper energy.
But those headlines are about the step where you find out who won these auctions because that's when that magic price number is known, wind power for £68.35 per MWh or whatever.
Going from the fun headline to actual contract signing in which there's a legal promise to actually try to make electricity and get paid, takes several months. After they've signed they begin the actual work, which still includes planning not just the mechanical aspects.
Just building a solar farm might take 12 months, and wind farms are often slower.
AR6 took place in 2024, you'd have read headlines back then about some excellent solar farms, getting paid about £50 per MWh. First, those are 2012 prices, for comparison reasons they choose a base year and then calculate inflation adjusted pricing in reality but I bet that £50 figure was what you saw in a headline, of course the solar farm didn't exist in 2012, so £50 per MWh was never the real price.
More importantly though, those solar farms weren't built in 2024. The plan when the bids went in, said 2026/27 for some and 2027/28 for the majority. A few of those AR6 solar farms (by no means the majority) were live in time for the July sunshine, in 2026. But you've already read headlines about AR7, and like I said maybe even AR8.
A big boost in practice is home install. A big business can take six years to do contract paperwork, get something signed off, build it and then commission it. A home owner is angry after six weeks without work done. Where are my fucking panels? You were going to install solar panels, make it happen! So lots of individuals and small businesses which own a building with a roof installed a few panels, they might add up to only 5kW each but if a million people do that it's 5GW of nameplate electricity generation, a sizeable fraction of UK usage for several hours per day.
The main reason Germany was so hooked on gas wasn't because Hans Müller needed to run his Bosch washer-dryer and heat his home to a comfortable 24°C.
It was because natural gas is an great source of hydrogen, which in turn serves as feedstock for the production of all kinds of chemicals used in industry.
That was the engine of Germany's industry, not just energy. Energy has a whole spectrum of solutions - not the case with hydrogen.
Oh my, where ever else will we be able to find hydrogen, the (checks notes) tenth most common element on our planet ?
No, there's actually plenty of hydrogen, what people who say they "need" methane to make hydrogen actually mean is that they don't want to pay what this really costs.
For the remainder, the wage costs - more specifically - the overhead costs are the true killer. If you want to pay someone 80k a year in Germany, the actual costs are closer to 100k a year in purely salary overhead costs, not to mention the other bureaucratic overhead in Germany
Every First World country seems to be following the path from industrialisation, through deindustrialisation (which, when I was at school, was still called ‘structural change’), to a service-based society. It seems to be the price we pay for economic prosperity and cheap goods - and it is not the first time in Germany this happens.
Robots are the answer to reindustrialize the developed world, but that necessarily keeps industry smaller than services.
Factory work isn't generally physically demanding, more tedious & repetitive than anything.
It's air conditioned, generally pays a lot more than minimum wage and has benefits.
It's a political choice by our own politicians.
How? China is actively moving up the value chain, into EVs, batteries, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, etc. China is not abandoning industry.
> It's a political choice by our own politicians.
No, it's mostly how our economic system, how capitalism works. Production goes where production is cheap. You’ll never be able to produce goods in Germany at such low costs as in China or other third-world countries without eroding workers’ rights and thereby creating a new lower class.
But that would turn off the spigot of cheap goods.....
Are you sure? Jobs are no longer in industrial companies, and that isn't where the growth is. However when I look at the numbers I see heavy industry output is still growing.