Electricity prices have been spiking across Europe, with Germany seeing a record high of €936 per megawatt hour, reports Bild. The culprit? “Dark doldrums” or weather where there is no wind plus no sun due to stratus clouds, meaning wind and solar power plants and collectors produce no electricity.
Unfortunately, Germany shut down lignite and coal-fired power plants this past spring that produced more than 4 gigawatts of power.
Municipal utilities, electricity traders, and industrial companies now have to order megawatt hours at short notice on the energy exchange’s spot market at shock prices, forcing some companies to reduce production. One steel plant in Riesa owned by the Saxon company Feralpi has completely stopped production.
Managing director Tobias Wesselow of Anke GmbH, a metalworking company operating in Essen since 1896, says he lets the furnaces cool down during price peaks.
“The current electricity prices are unbearably high and have in some cases reached a factor of 10 compared to normal prices on an hourly basis. Such days are financially ‘blood red’ for us,” Wesselow told Bild.
“Many companies that purchase their electricity on the exchange are also restricting their production,” he added, calling it “catastrophic” for the economy.
Wolfgang Große Entrup, CEO of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI), told the newspaper: “It’s enough to make us despair. Our companies and our country cannot afford fair-weather production. We urgently need power plants that can reliably step in.”
Electricity has also become extremely expensive for private individuals on flexible tariff plans, some 1 million German households. The electricity supplier Tibber has even warned its customers that prices could jump as much as 400 percent.
“With over 500 kg of CO2 emissions per megawatt hour, Germany is once again at the bottom of the electricity carbon footprint in Europe (along with Poland, the Czech Republic and Ireland) because we mainly use gas and coal to generate electricity,” reports Bild.
In total, some 60 percent of energy was produced domestically from fossil fuels, while the country has also had to turn to other countries, relying on imports for nearly a quarter of demand.
Energy economist Prof. Manuel Frondel warned, “The current situation is a foretaste of what will happen if we continue to shut down energy sources but do not create replacements.”
Poland’s Business Insider is also reporting that both German and Danish energy prices reached a record high of €936 per megawatt-hour between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Dec. 12. The Dutch faced prices of €873 and the Austrians, €850.
Green energy production in Germany, the portal says, fell from 72 percent to 12 percent in under three weeks, mainly due to the lack of wind. Germany was forced to use emergency hard coal-fired power plants, which now provide 13 percent of its electricity; combined with brown coal-fired power plants, this share increases to 37 percent. Gas-fired power plants have been responsible for 33 percent in the last two days.
In Germany, Poland’s main trading partner, industrial orders have dropped by 5.9 percent and 20,000 companies are expected to go bankrupt.https://t.co/im1JaKHBJb
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 18, 2024“While France, Poland, and the Nordic countries are able to maintain stable prices thanks to an energy mix based on nuclear, coal and water, Germany is becoming hostage to its ‘green transformation’ and the policy of Green Stupidity,” said former PSL MP Janusz Piechociński.
“The narrative of climate neutrality, when confronted with reality, shows that the lack of a balanced approach to energy policy brings catastrophic consequences — for the economy, citizens and the entire industrial sector,” he added.
