Hernieuwbare energieprojecten sneuvelen aan de lopende band

Er zijn de laatste tijd veel hernieuwbare energieprojecten ter ziele gegaan. Ze bleken alles behalve duurzaam.

Onder de titel, 'Siemens Exits Tidal Power Industry Blaming Slow Development', rapporteerde Louise Downing voor Bloomberg:

Siemens AG (SIE) has decided to sell its tidal power business, Marine Current Turbines Ltd., marking another blow for the struggling ocean-energy industry.

Siemens is looking to exit marine energy, saying the development of the market and the supply chain has taken longer to grow than it expected. The divestment will likely take “several months” to complete and affect 45 employees, it said in an e-mailed statement today. ...

While a tidal power industry of “critical size” will develop in the future, due to the “limited resources” it would be too much of a niche market for Siemens, it said in the statement. If buyers aren’t found it will consult with the affected employees, and if restructuring occurs then redeployment within the company will be prioritized, according to the statement....

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Eenzelfde lot trof de ontwikkeling van golfenergie in het Pelamis–project in Schotland. Onder de titel, 'Jobs threat as cash troubles sink wave firm', schreef Victoria Weldon voor de Herald Scotland':

A word–leading renewables firm that has received more than £15 million of funding from the Scottish Government has entered administration, placing 56 jobs at risk.

Edinburgh-based Pelamis Wave Power announced the move yesterday, with directors saying they have been unable to secure much-needed additional finance.

The firm, recognised as a key player in the wave renewable sector, was the first company in the world to export electricity from an offshore wave energy converter to an onshore grid network.

Hailed for its innovation by Alex Salmond when he was First Minister, the firm also supplied and commissioned the world's first multiple machine wave farm.

Scottish Enterprise has given £12.9m to Pelamis since 1998 in the form of grants, equity and loans, while the company has also received £2.47m from the Government's Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund.

A statement from the firm said: "The directors of Pelamis regret to announce they have been unable to secure the additional funding required for further development of the company's market leading wave energy technology. ..

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Enige tijd geleden besloot ook het groenbevlogen Google zich op de ontwikkeling van hernieuwbare energie te werpen. Maar de betrokken technici hebben de handdoek onlangs in de ring gegooid. Zij zagen er geen brood meer in.

Onder de titel, 'Renewable Energy: So Useless That Even Greenie Google Gave up on it', schreef
James Delingpole:

Some people call it "renewable energy" but I prefer to call it "alternative energy" because that's what it really is: an alternative to energy that actually works (eg nuclear and anything made from wonderful, energy-rich fossil fuel.)

Now a pair of top boffins from uber-green Google's research department have reached the same conclusion.

Ross Konigstein and David Fork, both Stanford PhDs (aerospace engineering; applied physics) were employed on a Google research project which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. But after four years, the project was closed down. In this post at IEEE Spectrum they tell us why.

We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

Why is renewable energy such a total fail? Because, as Lewis Page explains here, it's so ludicrously inefficient and impossibly expensive that if ever we were so foolish as to try rolling it out on a scale beyond its current boutique levels, it would necessitate bankrupting the global economy.

In a nutshell, renewable energy is rubbish because so much equipment is needed to make it work – steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage – that it very likely uses up more energy than it actually produces.

Yet our political class remains committed to the fantasy that the emperor's green clothes are perfectly magnificent. Earlier this week, for example, the British government chucked £720 million of taxpayers' money into a cesspit labelled the Green Climate Fund.

In theory this UN-driven initiative is supposed to help Third World countries cope with the effects of climate change. In reality, all it will do is force on their struggling economies more of the costly, intermittent renewable technologies (wind turbines; solar; etc) which have proved such a disaster for the advanced Western economies.

If we really want to throw money at the developing world so it can combat climate change, then what we should really be doing is insist that it is spent on adaptation projects – not, heaven forfend, ones to do with "decarbonisation." .

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In Duitsland sluit Daimler de enige fabriek voor accu's voor elektrische auto 's. Onder de titel, 'Elektroautos: Daimler schließt Deutschlands einzige Batteriezellen-Fabrik' bericht 'Der Spiegel':

Die Zukunft der E-Auto-Batterie liegt nicht in Deutschland. Die einzige Fabrik, die entsprechende Zellen herstellt, schließt nach SPIEGEL-Informationen bald. Die Regierung will trotzdem bis 2020 eine Million Elektroautos auf die Straße bringen.

Die einzige deutsche Fabrik, die Batteriezellen für Elektroautos produziert, wird geschlossen. Nur noch gut ein Jahr wird die Firma Li-Tec im sächsischen Kamenz Akkuzellen herstellen. Das Unternehmen ist ein Tochterunternehmen des Daimler-Konzerns. ...

"Unsere Zellen sind zwar sehr gut, aber bei den derzeitigen Produktionszahlen viel zu teuer", begründet der Daimler-Manager Harald Kröger die Schließung im Gespräch mit dem SPIEGEL. Vergangene Woche hatte Daimler den 250 Mitarbeitern intern das Ende der Fabrik verkündet, mehr als die Hälfte soll im Konzern bleiben können.

Erst die Massenproduktion macht solche Fabriken rentabel. Deshalb war es Teil des Daimler-Kalküls, dass sich auch andere Autokonzerne beteiligen und in Kamenz Zellen für ihre E-Mobile produzieren lassen würden. Doch die Partner blieben aus.

Nun ändert der Konzern seine Strategie. "Wir haben die Erkenntnis gewonnen, dass ein Autohersteller die Zellen nicht selber produzieren muss", sagt Kröger.

Für die Elektromobilität in Deutschland ist es ein weiterer Rückschlag. Die Bundesregierung will bis 2020 eine Million E-Autos auf die Straße bringen. Der Ausbau der Elektromobilität ist auch Teil ihrer Strategie, den CO2-Ausstoß bis 2020 um 40 Prozent zu reduzieren.

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Voorts staat Juwi AG, een projectontwikkelaar voor wind– en zonne–energie in Duitsland, aan de rand van de afgrond. Onder de titel, 'Juwi AG: Müssen die Gründer aufgeben?', rapporteert 'na.presseportal':

Grünes Vorzeigeunternehmen steckt in Existenzkrise.

Die Krise der Juwi AG, lange Zeit Deutschlands Vorzeigeunternehmen Nummer eins in Sachen erneuerbarer Energie, ist tiefer als erwartet. Wie das Hamburger Wirtschaftsmagazin BILANZ in seiner am Freitag erscheinenden Ausgabe berichtet, sucht der Insolvenzfachmann Kolja von Bismarck (55) von der Wirtschaftskanzlei Linklaters in letzter Minute Geldgeber, die sich an dem abgestürzten Projektentwickler beteiligen, dessen Umsatz 2013 um fast ein Drittel auf 700 Millionen Euro eingebrochen war.

Die Verluste, rund 100 Millionen Euro Verlust seit Anfang vergangenen Jahres, haben den größten Teil des Eigenkapitals aufgezehrt. Die Eigenkapitalquote der Juwi AG lag schon Ende 2012 bei bescheidenen 17 Prozent. Nun müssen die Gründer und Eigentümer von Juwi, Fred Jung (43) und Matthias Willenbacher (45), fürchten, dass sie ihre Anteile am Unternehmen verlieren. Die beiden waren 2009 noch als "Entrepreneure des Jahres" ausgezeichnet worden. Aber auch ein Bankenkonsortium unter Führung der Deutschen Bank hat viel zu verlieren: Sie haben einen Juwi-Kredit über 250 Millionen Euro in den Büchern stehen.

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Maar dat is allemaal klein bier vergeleken met de ellende van de Energiewende, die bedoeld was om middels decarbonsering van de Duitse economie het klimaat te 'redden' (zoals de Duitsers dat plegen te noemen). Maar om de lichten aan te houden en de Energiewende te redden is nu een verhoogde inzet van steenkool en bruinkool nodig.

Onder de titel, 'Europe winds back the clock on windmills', rapporteerde Danny Fortson in 'The Sunday Times':

Lured by subsidies, the power companies went green. But to keep the lights on they have to burn coal.

A chilly wind of change is blowingh through energy policies in Europe.

Sixty miles northeast of Düsseldorf, outside the town of Hamm in northwest Germany, workers are giving a final tune-up to a glittering new power station. Germany is the biggest proponent of the green electricity revolution, but this plant won’t be powered by the sun, wind or woodchips — it will burn dirty old coal.

Built by German energy giant RWE at a cost of €2bn (£1.6bn), the plant is no aberration. This year the company, which owns Npower in Britain, and its rivals have poured billions of euros into a fleet of new coal-fired plants, the most polluting form of power generation. When finished they will be capable of supplying more than 8m households.

The boom runs entirely counter to the European Union’s mission, led by Germany and Britain, to replace the old fossil fuel-based energy system with a cleaner alternative. Indeed, the Germans source a quarter of their power from solar, wind and other renewables. Yet last year, carbon dioxide emissions actually rose 1.2%, partly due to the resurgence of coal. This is just one of the surprising and unintended consequences of Europe’s troubled effort to lead the world into the low-carbon era. And the fallout is set to become even more extreme. Governments from Berlin to Madrid — and London — are dramatically scaling back the huge subsidy programmes introduced over the past decade to underwrite the revolution. All are struggling to come to grips with an industry transformed by America’s shale gas boom. In July, Germany — Europe’s biggest power market — passed a new renewable energy act that slashed taxpayer support by a quarter for solar and wind energy.

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Hoe zou het toch komen dat de Europese economie maar blijft stagneren?

Zoals Pogo reeds zei:

Voor mijn eerdere DDS–bijdragen zie hier.