Gigawatts is POWER, not ENERGY. Power is energy per time, just like speed is distance per time. Germany's plants were making 22 gigawatts of power at any given INSTANT. The total amount of energy they made, if they held that rate for a whole day would be:22GW * 24 hours or 528 gigawatt hours of ENERGY.

Ron Swenson said "humanity now understands that fossil fuels and nuclear power are finite."..... Ummmmm....  I agree with most of your post but nuclear power is not finite.......  It may not be the safest, we may still need to understand the best way to control it, etc.  But the power of the "atom" and "nuclear reaction" are as "finite" as the Sun -- which is one big "nuclear reaction"

Imagine similar solar-panels as those working in germany today would have been installed near the equator, in the desserts, in Lybia, Tunesia, Egypt, Somalia, Jemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Mongolia and those many other places, where the sun is shining much more strongly as in germany and where the people is (partly extremly) poor.

!!! Imagine such panels would be installed some 10 meter over ground to enable the preparation of water by accumulating the vapours of the morning dew at their downside !!!

An easy achievable side-effect of producing electricity in aboundance would be the re-covering of the desserts with plants and grass.
No more famine in Africa!

I magine such transfer of technology would be financed (for example by the IMF) as a kind of recompensation for since today perpretated colonial injustices ... .

Similar as the ‘marshall plan’ at the end of WW2 ‘ effectivly helped to re-establish industrial production in western Europe such investment in green and clean energy-production in the desserts would have a globally beneficiant impact on all economies.

Humanity could easily abandon nuclear industries.
J ust imagine politicians promoting such kind of effectively helpful investments instead continuing to divide ethnies and religions apart.

I hired a German engineering intern in the summer of 1996. He had grown up in East Germany, and in his early teens the Berlin Wall fell. He was old enough at the time to have a very clear impression of Soviet incompetence and malevolence.

To this day Europe's largest imports of fossil fuels come from Russia. So it was no surprise to me that the German Bundestag determined to take their energy policy into their own hands over 10 years ago. You think the sun and the wind are capricious? What if a certain Mr. Putin gets up on the wrong side of bed tomorrow morning?

We are at a turning point. Thanks to the intelligence and courage of King Hubbert, Dennis Meadows, Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrere and others, humanity now understands that fossil fuels and nuclear power are finite. Every penny spent on expanding their use is plainly "good money after bad." Hunting down new "sources" of oil in the arctic or yellowcake in the outback is just that: hunting and gathering in the age of agriculture.

Once again humanity must learn to harvest energy rather than exhaust a patch of land and then move on.

So you say solar power (sun/wind/hydro/...) is intermittent. No argument. There are two ways to deal with that: wring your hands or roll up your sleeves.

Than kfully the Germans have set an example for the rest of us by rolling up their sleeves.

Germany’s solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of energy on Friday, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants. The country is already a world-leader in solar power and hopes to be free of nuclear energy by 2022.

This figures are straight from the solar energy spin department.

They refer to peak nameplate power - generated by new cells, perfect sunshine and weather etc etc.

The actual percentage of solar power in the German grid is around 2-3%. And: this was bought for around 100 billion euros of subsidies which created a bloated, non-competitive 'solar industry' which is going belly up company by company as we speak.

th e German government's absurd "energy turnaround" was fueled by a completely overblown representation of the Fukushima accident in the German media, and nodded off by an "ethics commission" which had two bishops on board, but not a single energy expert.

R esult: 8 German nuclear plants taken offline prematurely, and the German grid importing French and Czech nuclear power over red-hot transmission lines - so much for the effect wrt reducing nuclear energy production. In Germany: yes. In all of Europe: no, it's just shifted. And: a German power company even booked an already mothballed Austrian oil-fuelled power plant last winter as reserve capacity because of lack of reserves.

All this translates into exploding cost of electrical power, and increased instability of the power grid - read as: milking of ratepayers, de-industrialization , and industries sensitive to brownouts moving offshore. Or straight bankruptcy, like Aluminum melter Voerdal this week, half of its total cost being electrical power.

Th e only positive effect so far: the "green conscience feeling satisfied".

Whoever thinks this reckless political blundering with core infrastructure of an industrial nation is a role model should see a doctor.

- Michael

I think we are being left behind in this country. We have our feet planted so solidly in the 19th century as is evidenced by some of the comments on this blog, if we dont shift gears soon it will be to late.  This articles goes to show that most of the rehtoric we see in this country about alternative energy is silly...Nuclear power is a dead end. It is expensive dangerous and produces waste that cannot be used, recycled or even stored safely ..Until there is a major breakthrough in technology that allows it ...solar and wind and etc etc is the way

Pearse Hillock (unregistered) wrote in #1
Yea and when it all hits the fans, Germany will be the strongest country because they will be the only substainable country. Damn, why don't other countries use more renewable resources. Germany always has money to spend because they don't spend much on military unlike those other countries.   In vestigate how rich the Clintons and Blairs have become by deregulating and bankrupting the global economy in 2008 ........and you will have your answer.
Until the CIA and other secret services are purged of the Zionist thugs and criminals who use these agencies to rob us and deny us freedom and democracy NOTHING will change......because modern weapons and surveillance techniques and the Internet make Rothschild and his oligarchy of crooks in the "markets" the most powerful dictators in the history of mankind....as old friends of the Blairs and Clintons......like Gadaffi and Sadam Hussein and Milosevic ....discovered!
V ote your way out of that post 1984 totalitarian disaster!

Yea and when it all hits the fans, Germany will be the strongest country because they will be the only substainable country. Damn, why don't other countries use more renewable resources. Germany always has money to spend because they don't spend much on military unlike those other countries.  

As always Germany a leading nation on environmental technological field the question remain what if Germany won the Second World War our planet was probably more cleaner and technologically advanced and a better place to leave. Well it’s just make you think we will never know, for now let enjoy the peace and prosperity provided by the wining nations of the war.

Ancient Briton, I commend you for daring to mention the "too many people issue". The 'Fishtank' analogy is undeniable.  Part of the 'global agenda' strategy for decades has been bombing certain country's infrastructure's so their societies can't evolve and therefore consume much resource. (their own resources of course, which we ultimately steal.)  
The point is that I heard about the Energy Crisis in primary school in the 70's.  So why since realising this hasn't every home been built with Solar Panels and a couple of little Windmills on the roof ?  Job pretty much done.  I'm sure servicing / recycling of parts would have evolved quickly and efficiently.Instead we've been eating up our host rendering ever larger areas uninhabitable toxic wastelands, and digging up the most harmful substance to life (in fact genetics itself) that exists in our planet, but was safely tucked out of harms way in the rocks.  But we've been paying $$ for it all.  And that's what it's all been about, $$.  What have we done with all this dirty energy ?  Well we've pretty much pee'd most of it up against a wall.  
Whichever side of the Global Warming debate you subscribe to, CO2 emissions are an effective red herring. What matters is we're turning our green and blue planet, a brown colour. A poisonous shade of brown, with streaks of 'radioactive red'.  And any green bits left you're as likely to step on a land mine, made in the u.s.a. , like oil company's.
Well done Germany, it's something at least.  

Solar Bore Hole (unregistered) wrote in #15
Could solar panels eventually exhaust all the energy given out by the sun? 
I enjoyed your post until I read this..  don't be stupid !!

Some sorely needed positive news
Now to improve the energy situation even more, trying to stimulate people away from the tv and doing things outside and warm blankets and alpaca vests n such instead of raising the temperature inside the house

There is nothing 'renewable' about solar panels. They would need replacing every decade or so to maintain optimum efficiency... which means more metal needing to be dug out of the ground... not to mention the enormous costs (to taxpayers) involved.

Wha t am I missing here in regards to the "green energy" misnomer?

Don 't get me wrong, I am not anti-green but we must find cheap and sustainable energy but solar is not the silver bullet most of us hope it to be.

Do they really have so much money to waste...

A great positive art icle RT.
Glad to see humanity is moving forward!

Christen Stephansen (unregistered) wrote in #15
4% power consumption covered by solar power. Wow! That's nice, but nowhere near the needed energy output.

Denma rk has 20% energy consumption covered by wind power.
Scotla nd is now 33% wind power! Windy place mind! You'd think the Australians would find it fairly easy to copy the Germans x50 with their endless sun and acres of desert land that isn't good for much else! 

Now Germany just needs to free itself from NATO, the US occupation, Israel, and the degenerate EU.

You will talk about ANYTHING but the essentials...any distraction.....any avoidance will do...because you can`t face the SOCIOLOGICAL limitations of your own technology.... the design flaws in mankind as a species.
There are far too many people...we have no plans to address this FACT....or the presence among us of people and institutions dedicated to increasing our population and attacking anyone who has the sense and courage to ask WTF wind farms and solar panels can do if we WASTE so much energy on people and have  no plans to stop them wasting more and more energy
Nuclear technology has brought us to the point where the Likud have hundreds of nuclear weapons while we have no way of even asking WHY....or inspecting them in the insolent stupid "right wing"  arrogant way these people DEMAND we do of  the Iranians.....
..t hat`s the sort of issue WE need to address folks....HOW COME some Israelis have our species over a barrel in thisway?