Germany Tried It First. It's Not Going Well

I Went looking for a Green Energy Success Story I Found Coal

TJ Thorne 

 

 

You hear it a lot, don’t you? “Germany is leading the way on green energy.” Politicians say it. Journalists say it. People on the television say it with that particular tone of voice, the one that suggests if you disagree, you probably haven’t read enough. Germany, we’re told, is the model. The gold standard. The country that had the courage to go first, and the rest of us should be grateful and follow along.

Well, I decided to have a proper look at how that’s actually going. I’ve written before about the costs being loaded onto ordinary people in this country, the net zero taxes nobody voted for, the deindustrialisation, what’s happening to British farming. But I kept hearing about Germany as though it were proof that all of this works. So I thought, right, let me see. Let me look at what happens when a country actually does what we’re being told to do.

And I’ll be honest with you. I went in sceptical, yes. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But even I was surprised by how bad it actually is.

The Grand Promise

Germany’s energy transformation has a name. They call it the Energiewende, which translates roughly, I understand, as “energy turnaround.” It began in earnest after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, when Angela Merkel announced that Germany would shut down all of its nuclear power stations and pivot to renewables. Wind. Solar. The future.

The promise was enormous. Clean energy. Lower costs in the long run. Energy independence. A modern, green economy that would be the envy of the world. Germany would show everyone how it was done, and the rest of us would follow.

It sounded wonderful. I suppose most things do when you’re only listening to the promises.

What Actually Happened

So here’s what I found when I started looking at the numbers, and this is where it gets uncomfortable for the people who keep pointing at Germany and saying “look, it works.”

German households now pay among the highest electricity prices in Europe. In actual fact, they pay roughly twice what Americans pay, not as much as us in the UK, but significantly more than the European average. The average German family is paying somewhere around 40 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s not a small difference. That’s the difference between heating their homes comfortably and thinking twice about putting the kettle on.

And it’s not as though these costs crept up without anyone noticing. They were built into the system from the start. German consumers pay a renewable energy surcharge on their bills, a direct levy to fund the subsidies for wind and solar. At its peak, this surcharge accounted for roughly a quarter of a household’s electricity bill. A quarter. Just for the privilege of funding the transition.

Now, the German government did eventually scrap that specific surcharge in 2022, but don’t get too excited. They moved the cost into general taxation instead. So they’re still paying for it. They’re just paying for it somewhere else. There we go.

The impact on industry has been brutal, too. Energy intensive manufacturers, the sort of companies that actually make things, have been leaving Germany or scaling back. BASF, one of the largest chemical companies in the world, announced it was permanently downsizing its operations in Germany. Their reason? Energy costs. When your electricity costs twice what your competitors pay, you don’t need a management consultant to tell you what happens next.

I wrote about deindustrialisation in this country a few weeks ago. Well, Germany is further down that same road, and the view isn’t pretty.

The Quiet Return to Coal

This is the part that really surprised me. I mean, really surprised me.

Germany, the poster child for green energy, the country that was supposed to show us all how to leave fossil fuels behind, has been burning more coal. Not less. More.

When they shut down their nuclear power stations, they created a gap. Renewables couldn’t fill it, not reliably, not when the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun wasn’t shining. So they turned back to coal. And not just any coal. Lignite, which is brown coal, the dirtiest form of coal there is. Germany is the largest lignite producer in Europe.

 

 

Let me just say that again, because I had to read it twice myself. The country held up as the world leader in clean energy is the largest producer of the dirtiest coal in Europe.

You couldn’t make it up. You really couldn’t.

And here’s what I find telling. This didn’t happen with a great fanfare. There was no press conference. Nobody stood up and said, “well, that didn’t work, we’re going back to coal.” It happened, shall we say, without much enthusiasm for publicity. The narrative carried on as before. Germany is leading the way. Germany is the model. Meanwhile, the coal plants kept burning.

I suppose you could call it an inconvenient truth, but I think it’s simpler than that. I think it’s just dishonesty. There we go, I’ve said it.

The Gap Between the Story and the Reality

What strikes me most is the distance between what we’re told about Germany and what’s actually happening on the ground. In the newspapers, in the political speeches, in all those confident references to “Germany leading the way,” you’d think the Energiewende was a triumph. A difficult but noble journey that’s paying off.

The reality is rising costs, grid instability, industrial decline, and a quiet return to the very fuel they were supposed to be abandoning. The reality is that Germany’s carbon emissions didn’t fall nearly as fast as promised, in large part because shutting down nuclear (which produces virtually no carbon) and replacing it partly with coal is, well, nonsense. There’s no polite way to put it.

And yet the story persists. I find that fascinating. Fascinating and a bit worrying, actually, because we’re not just observers here. We’re following them.

So What Does This Mean for Us?

This is the bit that really matters, I think. Because the UK is being told, repeatedly and with great confidence, to follow Germany’s example. Net zero by 2050. Phase out fossil fuels. Rely on renewables. Trust the plan.

But the plan, in the one country that’s been held up as proof that it works, isn’t working. German households are paying through the nose. German industry is leaving. German coal plants are running. And German citizens, much like British ones, were never meaningfully asked whether they were willing to bear these costs.

I’ve written about the net zero tax nobody voted for. I’ve written about what’s happening to British farming and British industry. This Germany piece is, in a way, the view from further down the road. It’s what it looks like when you’ve been walking this path for fifteen years. And I have to say, having looked at it properly, it’s not a view that fills you with confidence.

I’m not saying there’s nothing to be done about the environment. I’ve said before, I’m not against clean air or looking after the countryside. What I am against is dishonesty. I’m against loading enormous costs onto ordinary people and pretending it’s all going swimmingly when it plainly isn’t. I’m against pointing at Germany and saying “look how well it’s working” when a few hours of honest research tells you a very different story.

The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

Here’s what I keep coming back to. If Germany tried it first, and this is the result, why are we being told to do the same thing? Why is nobody in a position of authority standing up and saying, “hold on, let’s look at what actually happened over there before we commit to this”?

I suppose the answer is that it’s easier to keep telling the story than to admit the story isn’t true. It’s easier to talk about the future than to look honestly at the present. And it’s certainly easier to load the costs onto ordinary people’s bills than to stand up in Parliament and say, “this is going to be very expensive, and we’d like your permission.”

Nobody asked the German public whether they fancied paying twice the going rate for electricity. Nobody is asking us, either.

I went looking for the evidence that Germany’s green energy revolution was the success we keep being told it is. I didn’t find it. What I found was rising bills, struggling industry, dirty coal, and a very large gap between the narrative and the reality.

Perhaps we should indeed follow Germany’s lead. Perhaps we should look very carefully at where that lead actually goes, and ask ourselves whether we really want to end up in the same place.

That’s about that.