Friday, August 19, 2022

Regulation Coming?

 This morning, Focus published what is a draft proposal of the coalition German gov't (SPD-FDP-Greens) on the energy situation....come September.

The ideas?

1.  Public building temperatures will be set to no more than 19 C (66 F).

2.  Illuminated advertising (boards, buildings, bus stops)....must be turned off between 10 PM and 6 AM.

3.  You own a private pool (not public pools)....and it's heated by natural gas or electrical, you are not supposed to heat it (would beg questions). 

4.  If you operate a retail business, with the doors always set to be open...that practice must stop.

5.  Outdoor lighting for public buildings and statues?  Must be turned off.

6.  Common areas (like in hospitals or work areas)...meaning hallways or entry points....cannot be heated.  Will make for an interesting situation at schools/universities.  

7.  Industry type heating?  Well....they are talking about 16 C (61 F).  The hint here is that people are standing or moving around in this situation.


4 comments:

PROCON said...

Welcome to the 'green new deal', the environmentalists and politicians who pushed this fiasco should be tarred and feathered. Relying on Russian and other energy sources turns out to be foolish, I wonder if Germany gets an artic-type winter and people freeze to death if anyone will be held responsible. I know you've written about this recently but no one but the German government and the enviro-nuts for these new sanctions on energy use.
France had it right keeping their nuclear, will Germany wise-up BEFORE it's too late?

Schnitzel_Republic said...

After much pondering/thought, I'd say that there are three separate and totally different topics (electrical, nuke, natural gas). They were all on different paths, and having whole different set of values.

Nuke energy in Germany died the moment that Fukushima occurred. It was lingering around prior to that with chaos over Chernobyl and how the old rods would be disposed. For the Germans, it was always a untrusted source....even if safety improves every decade.

Once you said nuke energy was out, they got into the idea of using natural gas for power plants. Well, that just dug them deeper into Russia's provider status.

On keeping the remaining three operational nuke plants running. Nothing to prevent that. They need to order more rods (requiring a order to keep running) and the company said they can procure these with only six months notice. Politicians return from vacation in ten days, and all of this will be settled then.

On the heat, it really matters if this is a moderate winter or a harsh winter. Out of past 5 years, there were two really moderate winters, and three medium winters. I still haven't used all my procured 'salt' from 2020's winter.

Daz said...

Perhaps we should save the tar and feathers for the politicians who continued to subsidised coal and gas after we knew from the mid 80's that it was an existential problem? The environmentalist kept telling them to invest that money in renewables, but no, they had to make their corrupt friends rich instead and send us down this path of the wider society having to pay for their kleptocracy.

Schnitzel_Republic said...

There might be some heavy criticism to hand out, but once the renewable thing caught on, you were led to the back-up situation. Using wind and solar, you needed to have some low-cost and 'flick-of-the-switch' plants to cover low wind and heavy clouded periods. Natural gas was the solution.

Lets imagine the war had not started in 2022, but in 2026...with twice as many natural gas power plants, no nuke plants and few if any coal plants. In 2021, around 12-percent of the natural gas imported...was for power plants. This could have been a bigger mess to deal with.

There has to be some meeting where the environmentalists sit at the table and get real about the enormous pull on the grid in the decade ahead, if all these E-cars arrive. So far, I don't see much conversation.