Merkel’s Green Shift (sic) Backfires as German Pollution Jumps

[Yo_Mama]

13. The German Greens are seriously making that claim because it is true

Here's an article which appeared in Spiegel not that long ago.
The original:
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/kohle-meiler-treiben-deutschen-co2-ausstoss-a-912724.html
Google Translate:
http://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwirtschaft%2Funternehmen%2Fkohle-meiler-treiben-deutschen-co2-ausstoss-a-912724.html

y.
Berlin - Despite the German energy transition increases greenhouse gas emissions. Reason, the coal-fired power plants that are in full swing, as shown by data from the Federal Association of German Energy (BDEW). In the first half of lignite and hard coal power plants would have produced 12.4 percent more power, according to documents available to the Reuters news agency.

The German regulatory bodies are forcing some coal plants to remain open, and this is to balance out swings. But the plants are running along, and when the output from wind/solar is high, the very cheap output is being exported. When the output from solar/wind drops, the energy is used domestically.

The Germans are increasing their carbon footprint.

The problem is not really that the German output of renewable energy isn't climbing. It is. But it is climbing in an exceedingly unbalanced manner, and this increases the need for stabilizing power while making conventional power plants often too expensive to run. So what is happening is that some of the worst offenders are able to run very cheaply, whereas the new, more efficient and less polluting plants are probably not going to be built.

The upshot is increased net CO2 emissions (as well as of other pollutants, because some of this is brown coal),

The situation has gotten so bad that utilities are applying for permission to shut conventional power plants down, and many of them are going to be denied under the new law. But under the new scheme, they will have to be paid to keep them open. A lot of this is explained here:
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=13691

This is a somewhat bizarre situation, but it was predictable. It remains to be seen what the eventual outcome will be.

Here is more about the law which has been passed to allow the Feds to force utilities to keep power plants up and running:
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=10571

The best near-term way to get out of this is a somewhat speculative proposal to establish an auction-delivered reserve supply market (Versorgungssicherheitsmarkt):
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=9178

Until they try this, they don't know how it will work. If you do a market-based approach like this, the cheaper coal plants that are increasingly being used now will still win out.

It's very possible that nuclear power plants will be shut down early by their operators, and if so, it appears that fossil-based energy outputs in Germany will continue to rise over the next 10 years.

Over the long run, the theory is that energy storage of peaks from wind supply, especially, should come online to help with the ever-growing grid stabilization problem. There are major cost issues, however, because of siting problems, transmission problems and cost problems. It is not clear that most of these units will be able to compete in such an auction-based system.