Tag: green energy

Germany’s Municipal Financial Crisis: The Green Transformation Backfires

For years, politicians managed to hide the damage caused by the green transformation. Now, deep cracks are appearing in municipal finances amid the severe economic crisis gripping the country. Cities like Stuttgart serve as showcases for the future of the republic.

For a long time, Stuttgart’s city treasurer was more than just a steward of solid numbers. He was regarded as the uncrowned king of fiscal policy in the region—and held a position envied by many colleagues. The robust foundation of the automotive industry and its extensive supplier network funneled generous tax revenues into the city’s coffers for years, particularly from trade taxes.

As recently as 2023, Stuttgart recorded a record 1.6 billion euros in trade tax revenue—a sum that gave the city extraordinary financial leeway. Social projects, infrastructure initiatives, municipal ambitions—the local government could spend freely.

Cracks in the Model Municipality

Then came 2024. Early cracks in Germany’s economic foundation, building up over years, began to appear in Stuttgart as well. By the end of the fiscal year, the city faced a deficit of 6.8 million euros—a first warning that things might be spiraling out of control.

In green-led Baden-Württemberg, officials explained the shortfall with one-off effects and general problems in the German economy—problems they firmly believed could be managed under the state’s green transformation.

Then 2025 arrived—and with it, shock. Trade tax revenues collapsed, expected to bring only around 850 million euros into the city’s coffers for the year. The supplementary budget shows Stuttgart now faces a deficit of 890 million euros—a fiscal hammer blow, reflecting the massive collapse of Germany’s core industries, including automotive, machinery, and chemicals.

The Moment of Truth

The picture is the same across the country. For 2025, the German County Association forecasts a cumulative municipal deficit of around 35 billion euros—a historic figure unseen since World War II, and notably, for Germany, once considered a model of fiscal prudence.

The moment of truth has arrived. Ideologues have run their course. What follows are retreating maneuvers, frantic repair attempts, and the reflex to stabilize past policies artificially with ever-larger debt programs. The house of cards is stacked higher before it inevitably collapses.

Recent experiences with Berlin’s debt policies allow a fairly precise prediction of what comes next. Parts of the so-called “special fund”—new federal debt taken on outside the regular budget—will likely be repackaged into municipal aid packages to plug ever-growing budget holes.

If municipal finances worsen, the next escalation stage is already prepared: a consolidation of debt across the states, accompanied by the issuance of so-called special bonds. Initially through the federal states, guaranteed by the federal government, possibly involving the KfW Bank, labeled as infrastructure investments. Political imagination knows almost no bounds—at least until the bond market puts its foot down and abruptly ends the spree.

Germany has become, as a result of prolonged, fatal political mismanagement, a fiscal parasite. The attempt to pull tomorrow’s purchasing power into the present through debt is fundamentally flawed. It generates growing mountains of debt, forces higher levies, and gradually erodes citizens’ purchasing power through rising inflation.

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The Hidden Subsidy for Renewable Energy

Renewable energy really means anti-establishment energy, or politically correct energy.  The energy is usually electricity that is distributed via the electric grid.  The source of energy has to be “natural.”

Solar and wind are the most popular types of renewable energy.  Hydroelectric energy derived from a big dam on a river might seem ideal, except that the promoters of renewable energy don’t like dams.  If you can figure out how to generate hydroelectricity without a dam, you can call it renewable.  Nuclear energy might seem like a good candidate except that nuclear energy is too scary and too good a fundraising tool to accept as renewable.

Solar energy costs about seven times as much as electricity from coal or natural gas.  Most of the cost is hidden in subsidies.  If that truth were not obscured by massive propaganda, hardly anyone would build solar energy or wind energy farms.

The renewable energy promoters are politically successful.  About half the U.S. states have renewable portfolio laws that mandate the amount of renewable electricity they use.  For example, California requires that 60% of its electricity be renewable by 2030.  That has increased and will increase the cost of electricity in California.  Many electric customers pay more than 50 cents per kilowatt-hour.

According to the promoters of renewable energy, it is well-suited for solving a multitude of imaginary problems.  The number-one imaginary problem is global warming, rechristened “climate change” when the globe failed to warm.

The Sierra Club is a leading promoter of renewable energy.  This is the pitch on one of their websites promoting renewable energy:

We are facing monumental threats to our planet’s future. We are fighting back with every tool at our disposal — but to face these challenges, we need your support. Make your gift today.

Even the New York Times has become critical of the Sierra Club, for reasons described in this video.

Solar and wind are erratically intermittent sources of electricity.  Solar quits at night and whenever a cloud obscures the sun.  Wind quits when the wind slows or stops.

When solar or wind electricity is introduced, it is supplementary to the existing electric infrastructure.  Solar or wind cannot replace existing generating plants because solar and wind  are intermittent sources of electricity.  The existing grid generating plants must be retained so they can supply electricity when solar or wind fails.  In order to compare the cost of solar and wind with the traditional fossil fuels, we need only to compare expenditure when the traditional plants are powering the grid with the expenditure when solar or wind is engaged.

When solar or wind is working backup, coal and gas plants are idling.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity not produced by a coal or gas plant reduces the cost of fuel by about $20.  Every megawatt-hour of electricity produced by a solar plant costs about $150, mostly amortization of the original cost of the plant.  The cost for wind is similar.  A spreadsheet showing a detailed calculation of the cost of solar energy can be downloaded here.

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Germany Has, for All Intents and Purposes, Committed Itself to An Economic Implosion Due to Its Failed Energiewende

Doug Sheridan analyzes the fall of Germany due to its Energiewende, European peer pressure and a nasty case of the green virtual signalling syndrome:

The FT writes, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is stuck in its fourth year of stagnation. Six months after Friedrich Merz took office, “the crisis in German engineering is gaining momentum at force”, says Dirk Pfitzer at Porsche Consulting. It’s “very clear” the slump is not cyclical and “won’t just disappear” in the next upswing.

Industrial production sits at the 2005 level even after a partial rebound in Sept. “Many of Germany’s economic core strengths have turned into vulnerabilities,” says Marcus Berret of Roland Berger. Those include a large industrial base that’s hard to decarbonise, a high dependence on exports, and a mighty auto industry having to write off 140 years of internal combustion engine expertise.

Meanwhile, Trump tariffs have hit German exporters hard. Over the first nine months of the year, their US exports plunged by 7.4%. But the prospects in China are if anything even bleaker, creatinga “China shock” that is now biting into the bottom lines of globally successful German companies.

In addition, for about two decades up to the pandemic, Chinese demand for German engineering goods and cars was seemingly insatiable, fueling the Merkel-era growth in corporate profits, employment and economic activity. Since the pandemic, however, China is “increasingly beating Germany at its own game”, says Spyros Andreopoulos of Thin Ice Macroeconomics.

Germany is now running a trade deficit in capital goods with China over a rolling 12-month period—a first since records began in 2008. Chinese machinery exports to Europe roughly doubled to around €40bn in over six years and may reach €50bn this year.

While German premium car brands like AUDI AG, Porsche AG and Mercedes-Benz AG were the first to feel the pain, capital goods makers have started to get similarly pounded. “As a country, the Chinese have been in the last years much better, more proactive, more consistent in going after the big technologies and conquering them,” said Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of Schaeffer.

Oliver Richtberg of VDMA is sceptical of improvement. “Do we really have other sectors that can pick up the slack?” he asks. Domestic politicians have not yet internalized just how bad things are, he adds. “There’s still a lingering public perception that we enjoy high margins and a strong competitive position. But we no longer have those margins.”

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Endgame For Germany’s Industrial Power Prices: Green Deal Failure Sparks Subsidy Spiral

On Thursday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted top executives from the German steel industry at a summit in the the Chancellery to discuss solutions to the deepening crisis. Since the peak year of 2018, German steel production has fallen by around 25 percent.

Germany’s economic crisis is accelerating. Sky-high energy costs, relentless competition from China and India, and the EU’s absurd push for “green steel”—a climate-neutral variant no one demands on the world market—are pushing companies either into insolvency or out of the country.

Thursday’s meeting will bring together industry representatives, unions, and policymakers to chart the next steps for a sector facing its most severe turbulence in decades.

This is just the latest in a string of crisis summits orchestrated by the federal government for media effect. Awareness is demonstrated—solutions? Not so much. For Germany’s economy, political “solutions” increasingly mean one standard instrument: more subsidies.

A One-Issue Summit

Aside from the expected push for protective tariffs, the summit can be reduced to a single dispute: the so-called industrial electricity price. While many energy-intensive companies already receive partial relief, it is far from enough to remain internationally competitive.

Industrial electricity prices have hovered around 16–17 ct/kWh for months. German industry still pays up to 70 percent more than U.S. or French competitors, who benefit from nuclear power as their energy base.

This is the cost of the green transition.

And with it come job losses, shrinking value creation, and, for the first time, sharply declining municipal tax revenues.

Unsurprisingly, the federal government is ready to approve this subsidy. We are deep in a spiral of interventionism.

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RFK Jr. Probes Health Dangers Of Offshore Wind Turbines

eset by soaring prices, an increasingly hostile regulatory climate, and growing public opposition in coastal communities, offshore wind faces a new challenge from a powerful public official and erstwhile booster of strict climate policies.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate wind projects’ effects on the health and safety of commercial fishermen, Bloomberg News reports. Specifically, Kennedy in late summer quietly instructed CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to prepare such research. The office of the U.S. Surgeon General is also involved in the assessment.

Originally, the research was to be wrapped up within a couple of months, but its completion has been delayed by the government shutdown. “Work on this report has been halted solely due to the Democrat-led shutdown,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Reuters.

Human Health Effects

To date, research on the human health effects of offshore wind turbines has been spotty, with a 2011 literature review finding “no peer-reviewed articles demonstrate a direct causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise they emit and resulting physiological health effects,” according to The Hill.

But a study released in January by the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. warned of potentially harmful levels of metals from turbine protection systems. “The materials used to protect wind turbines from corrosion leach into the surrounding water, which could pose risks to ecosystems, seafood safety, and human health,” the study found. “Offshore wind farms release thousands of [tons] of aluminum, zinc, and iridium each year.” 

Professor Gordon Watson of the university’s School of the Environment and Life Sciences supports wind farms because of their role in reducing carbon emissions but adds, “There is limited data on how these metals affect the environment near operational offshore wind farms, so it’s hard to assess the full risks.”

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The EU’s Green Ideology Is Crashing Europe’s Car Industry

The European Green Deal, launched in 2019, is an ecological pact that has been, unequivocally, an enemy of European taxpayers and innovation. Its declared goal is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 through a dense web of regulations that reach deep into every sector of the European economy. More than any other sector, the automotive industry is being put at risk of an irreversible crash.

Pressuring companies and citizens alike, the pact promotes the renunciation of capitalism, an inevitable sacrifice in the name of green policies. Such binding commitments will have severe economic consequences for a European Union increasingly weakened by its own laws and regulations.

At the heart of the Deal, by 2035, all new cars sold within the European Union are expected to be electric, imposing a total ban on combustion and engine vehicles. The problem is that this goal, far from being an environmental triumph, represents a deeply ideological political intrusion, an act of social engineering with an anti-capitalist character, disguised as green progress but detached from economic reality. The consequences are serious for the European automotive sector.

It is important to recall that this industry is one of the pillars of the European economy, representing over 7% of the EU’s GDP and around 13.8 million direct and indirect jobs.

Yet the sector now faces the prospect of mass layoffs, relocation of production, and a loss of global influence as a direct consequence of this heavy-handed Deal. Core EU countries such as Germany and Italy have already voiced resistance, warning of the economic and social consequences of a forced transition that ignores the continent’s technological and energy realities.

CEO of Mercedes-Benz, Ola Källenius, stated that the EU’s plan to eliminate combustion engines by 2035 would drive the sector “full speed into a wall.” His words, though strong, capture the growing sense of unease among Europe’s leading manufacturers.

The pressure is twofold. Internally, profit margins are shrinking as companies divert billions into forced electrification. Externally, they face fierce competition from China, with brands such as BYD and NIO, backed by an aggressive industrial policy, consolidated supply chains, and technological dominance in batteries. This combination allows Chinese manufacturers to produce at lower costs and scale faster.

Meanwhile, European brands struggle to survive between the high costs of transition and Asian price dumping, which has already led Brussels to impose additional tariffs of 30–40% on Chinese electric vehicles. 

The interventionist posture of Brussels remains unchanged, failing to understand that regulation only breeds more regulation, and inevitably creates market distortions that harm both businesses and consumers.

Europe is imposing a single path on manufacturers—electric cars—while the automotive sector itself argues that it is possible to meet environmental goals through multiple technological solutions. Brands such as Mercedes, Porsche, Ferrari, and Stellantis maintain that the transition can and should be technologically neutral, allowing electric, hybrid, e-fuel, and hydrogen vehicles to compete on equal terms. The goal, they say, must be to reduce emissions, not to eliminate technologies for ideological reasons. Instead of encouraging innovation, Brussels dictates by decree what may exist and what must disappear, ignoring the knowledge and experience of those who actually build the industry.

Synthetic fuels, produced from green hydrogen and captured CO₂, are the clearest example of a more appealing alternative: they drastically reduce emissions without leading to the destruction of engines, factories, and jobs, demonstrating that true innovation arises from freedom of choice, not political imposition.

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Europe’s Solar Surge Exposes Cracks In Aging Power Grid: Analysts

Europe’s solar power boom is putting huge pressure on electricity grids that were never built to handle this much renewable energy, say analysts.

As a record number of new solar panels are being installed every year, the old grid system is struggling to keep up.

Solar generation capacity in the European Union continues to increase and reached an estimated 338 GW by 2024, according to SolarPower Europe.

To curb its dependence on Russian energy and accelerate its green transition, the EU set a goal in 2022 to install at least 700 gigawatts of solar power by 2030, enough to supply electricity to hundreds of millions of homes.

But the rapid expansion has exposed cracks in Europe’s energy system, threatening to slow the transition unless grids catch up.

Europe’s power grids faced a surge in voltage problems last year, with 8,645 over-voltage incidents reported in 2024—nearly 10 times more than in 2023, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

Aging distribution infrastructure complicates the issue. Industry group Eurelectric estimates that nearly half of Europe’s distribution networks will be more than 40 years old by 2030.

Energy analyst and project lead at the Helmholtz Center Berlin, Susanne Nies, told The Epoch Times that Europe’s power system is under heavy strain because it was designed for a time when electricity made up only a small share of total energy use.

“When you go to the countryside and countries like France or even Germany, those grids have been built in the 50s. They are really nearly 70 years old,” she said.

Europe’s electricity system was initially designed for one-way flows—from large power plants to homes and businesses, Nies explained, adding that now it must handle power flowing in both directions, as millions of solar panels feed energy back into the grid.

She said today’s grid needs to combine large regional “super grids” with smaller, local systems that can operate independently during emergencies.

Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the challenge is not only that Europe’s grid is aging but that it must be vastly expanded to connect power sources that are far more scattered than in the past.

“Just the physical amount of additional cabling that you have to add to the grid, to connect, that is a big challenge, just in itself,” he said.

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America’s Power Bill Crisis Rages In Democrat-Run States

The epicenter of America’s power bill inflation crisis stretches across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where far-left state and city leaders have swallowed the globalist “climate crisis” pill, which even Bill Gates admitted last week that the climate crisis narrative was fake news.

The result of these leftist extremist “green” policies has been the systematic degradation of regional power grids in Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, as reliable fossil-fuel generation was prematurely retired in favor of unreliable, intermittent solar and wind. These nation-destroying green policies have gutted spare grid capacity (read here) just as demand surges from data centers, onshoring, and the broader electrification push (read here), culminating in today’s power bill crisis. 

A recent Goldman Sachs report by analyst Carly Davenport found that “higher power bill inflation has been the most pronounced in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and California in the past three years.”

It’s no secret that the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and California are governed primarily by Democratic leaders who have pushed at least a decade of climate crisis hoax narratives to justify massive “green” funding, some of which was funneled into NGOs, and to advance the progressive utopia narrative that solar and wind power would deliver clean skies and save, most importantly, planet Earth from immient climate catastrophe. Yet this fantasy was far from reality. There was never going to be a green utopia, only what millions of Americans across these states are now realizing: unaccountable Democrats have left them with a power bill crisis.

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California’s Retirement Fund Lost 71% Of $468M Investment In Clean Energy And Won’t Say How

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) lost roughly 71% of its $468 million investment in a clean-energy and technology private equity fund – and won’t explain how. The losses highlight growing concerns about the pension giant’s private equity strategy, which relies heavily on opaque, illiquid investments and leaves taxpayers ultimately on the hook.

According to state records analyzed by the Center Square, the CalPERS Clean Energy & Technology Fund (CETF), launched in 2007, has seen its value fall from a total commitment of $468.4 million to $138 million as of March 31, 2025. That represents a loss of more than $330 million, even after paying $22 million in fees and costs to private equity managers.

CalPERS’ overall returns for fiscal 2024–2025 were 11.6%, with public equities returning 16.8% and private equity 14.3%. The similar performance between the two asset classes has raised questions about whether the complexity and cost of private equity are worth it.

“If you can get these kinds of returns on the public markets, why bother with all the complexities and the illiquidity involved in private equity?” said Marc Joffe, a public finance expert and visiting fellow at the California Policy Center, in an interview with The Center Square.

Joffe said the CETF losses underscore “the combined dangers of private equity and ESG investment,” describing it as an opaque strategy that appears driven by “green credentials” rather than returns. “CalPERS would be better off focusing on a diverse portfolio of publicly traded equities to get better long-term returns,” he said.

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Shock New Report Lays Out The Full Scale Of Environmental Damage Caused by Onshore Wind Turbines

Fresh insights into the ecological devastation caused by onshore wind turbines around the world are contained in a shocking new paper published last month by a group of ecologists in Nature. The paper is paywalled and has attracted little mainstream media interest, but it highlights research that illustrates that the effect of utility-scale wind energy production “can be far reaching and sometimes have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity”.

An annual figure of around one million bats are killed in the countries with the highest number of turbines, but harmful effects are seen in many other parts of the ecosystem. The number of top predators such as jaguars, jungle cats and golden jackals can be changed by turbines in tropical forest gaps leading to the “possibility for cascading effects” along similar latitudinal levels. 

In short, the science team notes that turbines can kill birds, bats and insects, change animal behaviour, physiology and demography and alter ecosystems. The installation of wind turbines invariably results in habitat degradation, but it is regions rich in biodiversity with minimal existing infrastructure that suffer the most.

The authors state that wind facilities “are recognised as an important driver for losses and degradation of irreplaceable habitats that are important for conservation.” Such areas, of course, can be found in the windy highlands of Scotland. For City-dwelling eco zealots, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind. Net Zero is all about money and power – bats and eagles have neither.

The Nature paper is a wake-up call about the increasing damage that is being inflicted on natural habitats by wind turbines that are steadily increasing in size and destructive potential. It is a summary of the latest findings about the effect of turbines and it is not sanguine about the future.

“Perhaps the greatest unknown in predicting future effects of wind power on biodiversity lies in the scope of the potential expansion of the technology and the cumulative consequences of this expansion for species and ecosystems”. A 2021 USA report on the potential pathways to Net Zero emissions is noted and this suggests using up to 13% of the land area for wind farms. The new Trump Administration is likely to put a stop to this madness which the scientists observe could have “dramatic consequences for biodiversity”.

The BP Deepwater Horizon accident is generally considered the worse US offshore oil spill. Estimates vary but it is thought to have led to the deaths of around 600,000 sea birds and the incident led to widespread condemnation by environmentalists that continues to this day. Slightly less publicity is given to the 500,000 bats killed onshore in the US by wind turbines every single year. In the UK, 30,000 is the estimated annual kill number, with Canada at 50,000 and 200,000 in Germany.

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