Alternative Energy: Should other nations follow

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Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer

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Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany's pro-renewables policy has
been a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of bad
energy policy:

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Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solar
panel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment is
growing among the German press and public.
I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counterproductive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This
is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of
the world which hopes to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment
in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only
started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables
advocates for not realizing it yet -- but it's time for the green movement to do a
180 on this.
Some awful statistics before I get into the details:
Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a
third of the world's nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany has
over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, highenergy-cost California. (That doesn't sound bad, but keep going.)
Germany's residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest
rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing
renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in
Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France
and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than
300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off
because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high
residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save
households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted
by the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]
Germany's utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to
excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment
minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next
two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn't even
include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, a
major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the
direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion,

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which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany's GDP for 50 years
straight. [4] That doesn't include economic damage from high energy
prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.
Here's the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany's
carbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing
[5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of illplanned "renewables first" market mechanisms. This regime is
paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic
solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of
electricity storage -- it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity
must be produced at the exact same time it's used. [29] The more daytime
summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they
need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced
offline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar power
production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and
makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale
PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage,
but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of
business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can't run steadily enough to
operate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that
doesn't hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choose
between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more
pollution.
So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you're convinced by these
facts, feel free to stop reading now, throw me an upvote, and go on about your
day. This is going to get long -- I haven't even explained the half of it yet. There
are lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worse
the picture gets.

Issue 1: Wrong place, wrong tech to start the green

revolution
Renewables advocates constantly hold up Germany as an example of how
large-scale rooftop solar power is viable. But the problem is, Germany's
emphasis on solar power is bad policy. I'm pretty sure other countries
can do solar better, but that isn't saying much because German solar is just
awful. To be blunt, it's a stupid place for politicians to push solar
panels. I was there all last week for a work meeting and I didn't see the sun
the entire time. From talking to the locals, it's overcast for about a third of the
year in the region near Hanover where I was staying. Their solar resource is
simply bad, nearly the worst of any well-populated region in the world:

Annual Solar Irradiance

Between the northern latitude, the grey weather, and the Alps blocking much of
the diffused morning sunlight from the south, Germany is a terrible place for
solar power. When you put the US side-by-side on the same scale, you realize
that Germany has the same solar power potential as dismal Alaska, even worse
than rain-soaked Seattle:

Solar Radiation Map

I look at this and ask, "what on earth are they thinking?" They couldn't have
picked a worse generation technology for their climate.
But most people seem to look at it and say, "if Germany is investing so much in
solar power, then it's obvious the US should build solar panels too." I insist we
examine the contrapositive: if solar power is only taking off slowly in the US,
even with significant subsidies/incentives and one of the world's best solar
resources, then the Germans should be building even less solar capacity. It's
clear their market must be severely distorted for them to pursue such a suboptimal energy policy.
You're welcome to disagree with my thought process here, but the simplest
proof can be seen in the capacity factor, which is the percent of the nameplate
capacity that is actually generated over the course of a year. The existence of
nighttime means solar capacity factors must be less than 50%, and when you
add clouds, dawn, dusk, dust, and non-optimal installations, 18% is the average
capacity factor for panels in the continental US. [9] In contrast, Germany's
total solar capacity factor in 2011 was under 9%! [1]
German residential solar panel installations today cost about $2.25/watt
capacity, [10] versus a hair over $5/watt in the US. [11] (Numbers vary over a
considerable range. Most of this is labor/permitting costs.) But German panels
generate less than half as much actual power over time. So when you
normalize the panel install cost by capacity factor, US and German
solar power generation are already at cost parity. The payback periods
for solar investments are about the same in California and Germany. This is
surprising to most solar advocates, who tend to blame higher costs for the low
uptake rates in the US. But system economics alone do not explain disparities
in installation rates.
So why does Germany have 16 times as much nameplate panel capacity per
capita as the US? [12] Yes, permitting is much easier there, but that's mostly
captured by the $/watt costs since installation companies usually pull the
permits. And I don't think the German people are that much more proenvironment than the rest of the world. There's no good reason for the
disparity that I can find -- it ought to swing the opposite way. Solar just isn't a
good power source for a cold, dark country that has minimal daytime air
conditioning load. Solar in Phoenix, Arizona makes sense, but not in Frankfurt.
The only conclusion I can come to is that Germany's solar power boom is
being driven entirely by political distortions. The growth of solar is not
economically justified, nor can it continue without massive political
interference in power markets.
Many people are surprised to hear that Germany only gets a tiny 2.0% of its
total energy / 4.6% of its electricity from solar power (in 2012). [5,13] All the
headlines about new records on peak summer days make it seem more like
50%. Despite all the cost and pain and distortions, PV solar has turned out to
be a very ineffective way of generating large amounts of energy. They could
have generated at least four times as much carbon-free power via new nuclear
plants for the same cost. [14] (Nuclear would have been a better option for a lot

of reasons. I'll get to that later.)

With subsidies for new solar systems phasing out over the next 5 years, solar
growth has already started to decline. The installation rate peaked and is
now dropping. [13, 15] Despite falling panel and installation costs, the
majority of new German solar projects are expected to stop when subsidies
end. They're already on the downward side of the technology uptake bell curve:

(Data after 2008 from [14], prior to 2008 from Wikipedia)

If you pay close attention, all the pro-solar advocates are still using charts with
data that stops after 2011. That's because 2011 was the last year solar was
growing exponentially. Using data through July 2013 and official predictions
for the rest of this year, it's now clear that solar is not on an exponential growth
curve. It's actually on an S-curve like pretty much every other technology,
ever. Limitless exponential growth doesn't exist in the physical world. [13]
Also note the huge gap on that graph between the actual generation and the
nameplate capacity. That's where the miserable capacity factor comes in. (I
think this is the source of a lot of misplaced optimism about solar's growth
rate.) Green media outlets only report solar power either in peak capacity or as
percent of consumption on sunny summer days. Both of these measurements
must be divided by about 10 to get the true output throughout the year.
In reality, solar is scaling up much slower than conventional energy
sources scaled up in the past, despite solar receiving more government
support. This graph shows the growth rate of recent energy transitions in the
first 10 years after each source reached grid scale (1% of total supply):

[13]
I think this chart is the best way to make an apples-to-apples comparison of
uptake rates. Only about a quarter of the "renewables" line is due to solar (the
majority is biomass, wind, and trash incineration). So the true solar growth
rate from 2001-2011 is only 1/4th as fast as nuclear from 1974-1984, and 1/6th
as fast as natural gas from 1965-1975. [13]

When a new energy source is genuinely better than the old energy sources, it
grows fast. Solar is failing to do so. Yet it's had every advantage the government
could provide.
What this all implies is that without government intervention, PV solar can't be
a significant source of grid power. The economics of German solar have only
made sense up til now because they tax the hell out of all types of energy (even
other renewables), and then use the proceeds to subsidize solar panels. Utilities
are forced to buy distributed solar power at rates several times the electricity's
market value, causing massive losses. The German Renewable Energy Act
directly caused utility losses of EUR 540 million in August 2013 alone. [16] It's
a shocking amount of money changing hands. When you strip away the wellintentioned facade of environmentalism, this is little more than a forced cash
transfer scheme. It's taking from utilities (who are losing money hand over fist
on grid management and pre-existing conventional generation capacity) and
from everyone who doesn't have rooftop panels, and shoveling it into the
pockets of everyone who owns or installs panels. Which means it's both a
massive market distortion and a regressive tax on the poor.
This explains why per-capita solar uptake is so high in Germany. The
government has engineered a well-intentioned but harmful redistribution
system where everyone without solar panels is giving money to people who
have them. This is a tax on anyone who doesn't have a south-facing roof, or
who can't afford the up-front cost, or rents their residence, etc. People on fixed
incomes (eg welfare recipients and the elderly) have been hardest hit because
the government has made a negligible effort to increase payments to
compensate for skyrocketing energy prices. The poor are literally living in the
dark to try to keep their energy bills low. Energiewende is clearly bad for social
equality. But Germany's politicians seem to have a gentleman's agreement to
avoid criticizing it in public, particularly since Merkel did an about-face on
nuclear power in 2011. [17]

Issue 2: Supply Variability

One major problem with all this solar-boosting, ironically, is oversupply. It's
mind-boggling to me that a generation technology that provides less than 5% of
a country's electricity supply can be responsible for harmful excess electricity
production, but it's true. On sunny summer afternoons, Germany actually
exports power at a loss compared to generation costs: EUR 0.056/kWh average
electricity export sale price in 2012, [18] vs EUR 0.165/kWh average lifetime
cost for all German solar installed from 2000 to 2011. [14] (This is
optimistically assuming a 40 year system life and 10% capacity factor -- reality
is probably over EUR 0.20/kWh.) German utilities often have to pay heavy
industry and neighboring countries to burn unnecessary power. On sunny
summer days, businesses are firing up empty kilns and furnaces, and are
getting paid to throw energy away.
You can argue that this excess summer solar generation is free, but it's not -not only is this peak summer output included in the lifetime cost math, but
excess solar power actually forces conventional power plants to shut down,
thereby lowering the capacity factor of coal & gas plants. Yes, this means
large-scale solar adoption makes non-solar power more expensive
per kWh, too! On net, excess solar generation is a significant drag on
electricity economics. You're paying for the same power generation equipment
twice -- once in peak conventional capacity for cloudy days, and again in peak
solar capacity for sunny days -- and then exporting the overage for a pittance.
Why would they bother exporting at a loss? Because the feed-in-tariff laws
don't allow utilities to shut off net-metered rooftop solar. Utilities are forced
by law to pay residential consumers an above-market price for
power that isn't needed. Meanwhile, Germany's fossil-burning neighbors
benefit from artificially-low EU energy market prices. This discourages them
from building cleaner power themselves. It's just a wasteful, distorted energy
policy.
Remember, electricity must be used in the same moment it's generated. [29]

The technology for grid-scale electricity storage does not yet exist, and nothing
in the development pipeline is within two orders of magnitude of being cheap
enough to scale up. Pumped-hydro storage is great on a small scale, but all the
good sites are already in use in both Europe and the US. The only plan on the
table for grid-scale storage is to use electric car batteries as buffers while
they're charging. But that still won't provide anywhere near enough capacity to
smooth solar's rapidly-changing output. [19] And if people plug in their cars as
soon as they get home from work and the sun goes down, the problem could
get even worse. California's regulators have recently acknowledged
that the generation profile at sundown is the biggest hurdle to the
growth of solar power. The classic illustration is the "duck chart" (shaped
like a duck) that shows how solar forces conventional power plants to ramp up
at an enormous rate when the sun stops shining in the evening:

[29]
People often complain about wind power being unreliable, but when you get
enough wind turbines spread over a large enough area, the variability averages
out. The wind is always blowing somewhere. This means distributed wind
power is fairly reliable at the grid level. But all solar panels on a power
grid produce power at the same time, meaning night-time under-supply
and day-time over-supply. This happens every single day, forever. At least in
warm countries, peak air conditioning load roughly coincides with peak solar
output. But Germany doesn't use much air conditioning. It's just a grid
management nightmare. The rate of "extreme incidents" in Germany's power
grid frequency/voltage has increased by three orders of magnitude since
Energiewende started. [20]
The severe output swings have even reached the point where Germany's grid
physically cannot operate without relying on neighboring countries to soak up
the variability. The ramp-down of solar output in the evening happens
faster than the rest of Germany's generation capacity can ramp-up.
(Massive power plants can't change output very quickly.) Which either means
blackouts as people get home from work, or using non-solar-powered
neighbors as buffers. Here's one day's generation profile for German solar
power, showing how net electricity imports/exports are forced to oscillate back
and forth to smooth out the swings in production:

[21]
If Germany's neighbors also had as many solar panels, they would all be trying
to export and import at the same time, and the system would fall apart. The
maximum capacity of the entire EU grid to utilize solar power is therefore
much lower than the level reached by individual countries like Germany and
Spain.
Solar boosters often say people need to shift their energy consumption habits
to match generation, instead of making generation match consumption. That's
feasible, to an extent -- perhaps 20% of power consumption can be timeshifted, mostly by rescheduling large consumers currently operating at night
like aluminum electrosmelters. But modern civilization revolves around a
particular work/sleep schedule, and you can't honestly expect to change that.
People aren't going to give up cooking and TV in the evening, or wait three
hours after the sun goes down to turn on the lights. And weekends have
radically different consumption profiles from weekdays.
It all adds up. PV solar output doesn't properly sync up with power
demand. That severely limits the maximum percentage of our
electricity needs it can provide. Germany hit that limit at about 4%. They
are now finding out what happens when you try to push further.

Issue 3: Displacing the wrong kinds of power

You may have noticed in the daily generation chart above how wind power is
throttled back when the sun comes out. Residential solar has legal right-of-way
over utility-scale wind. A lot of the power generation that solar is displacing is
actually other renewables. Most of the rest is displacing natural gas and nuclear
power. Coal power is growing rapidly. [6,8]
Here's what the weekly generation profile is predicted to look like in 2020:

[22]
Notice the saw-tooth shape of the big grey "conventional" (coal/gas) category.
What all this solar is doing is eating into is daytime base load generation, which
seems good for displacing fossil fuels, but in the long run it's doing the
opposite.
The majority of electricity worldwide comes from coal and nuclear base load
plants. They are big, efficient, and cheap. But base load generation is extremely
difficult and expensive to throttle up and down every day. To simplify the issue
a bit, you cannot ramp nuclear plants as fast as solar swings up and
down every day. It takes several days to shut down and restart a nuclear
plant, and nuclear plants outside France are not designed to be throttled back,
so nuclear cannot be paired with the daily oscillations of PV solar. Supply is
unable to match demand. You end up with both gaps and overages.
Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of the
Fukushima accident, but the Germans didn't really have a choice. They are
being forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output.
That's a big, big problem -- Germany gets four times more electricity from
nuclear than solar, so the math doesn't add up. The generation time-profile is
wrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replace
nuclear plants with something else.
The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas "peaker"
plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and loadfollowing gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they're doing is
building more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It's
expensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and then
throttle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilities
than nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has been
fighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, and
coal is in.
If you're a regular follower of my writing, you'll know what a terrible idea this
is. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionably
the most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistake
that any group of environmentalists has ever made. It's unbelievable
how much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushima
meltdown was pretty much a "worst case scenario" -- one of the largest
earthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactor
meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions -- and not a single person has died

from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer rates
due to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number too
small to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful to
the public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation has
killed more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone had
just stayed in place. [26,27]
In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceans
with mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other human
activity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the
industrialized world. [23]
This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important.
Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricity
demand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damage
this does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit from
the solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solar
power that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When you
get to the "duck chart" stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you'll end up
worse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.
So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet.
But there's more.

Issue 4: The kicker

The category for "biomass" power you see in all these charts is
actually firewood being burned in coal plants. 38% of Germany's
"renewable energy" comes from chopping down forests and importing wood
from other countries. [28] Effing firewood, like we're back in the Middle Ages
or something. Due to overzealous renewables targets, and a quirk in the EU
carbon pricing system that considers firewood carbon-neutral, Europe is
chopping down forests at an alarming rate to burn them as "renewable
biomass." The environmental movement has spent most of the last 200 years
of industrialization trying to fight deforestation, and that noble goal has been
reversed in an instant by bogus carbon emission calculations.
In the very long run, over 100 years or so, firewood is close to carbon neutral
because you can regrow the trees and they absorb CO2 as they grow.
Unfortunately, using firewood for fuel destroys a living carbon sink and
releases all its carbon to the atmosphere right now. When you consider that
you're destroying a carbon sink as well as releasing stored carbon, firewood is
actually much worse than coal for many decades thereafter. [28] The next
few decades is humanity's most critical time for reducing carbon emissions, so
this policy is mind-boggling lunacy.
Germany is so focused on meeting renewables targets that it is willing to
trample the environment to get there. They've managed to make
renewables unsustainable! It's tragicomic.
To summarize: Energiewende is the worst possible example of how to
implement an energy transition. The overzealous push for the wrong
generation technology has hurt citizens, businesses, and the environment all at
the same time.
I want to make it clear that I'm not saying we should abandon solar. It should
definitely be part of our generation mix. Due a mix of bad climate and bad
policy, Germany ran into problems at a very low solar penetration, and other
countries will be able to reach higher penetrations. But even if we ignore cost,
there is still a maximum practical limit to solar power based on the realities of
grid management.
You can't build more PV solar than the rest of the grid can ramp up/down to
accept. The necessary grid storage for large-scale solar power is a "maybe
someday" technology, not something viable today. Calls for 50% of power to
come from solar in our lifetimes are a fantasy, and we need to be realistic
about that.
You can't force utilities to buy unneeded power just because it's renewable.

The energy and materials to build the excess capacity just goes to waste. That
is the opposite of green.
We have to learn those lessons. We can't sweep this failure under the rug.
Every time a renewables advocate holds Germany up as a shining beacon, they
set back the credibility of the environmental movement. It's unsupported by
reality and I think even gives ammunition to the enemy. We have to stop
praising Germany's Energiesheie and figure out better ways to
implement renewables. Other models should work better. They have to -the future of the world depends on it.
[1] Solar power by country
[2] Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good SPIEGEL ONLINE
[3] German 'green revolution' may cost 1 trillion euros - minister
[4] Global Warming Targets and Capital Costs of Germany's 'Energiewende'
[5] Germany's 'Energiewende' - the story so far
[6] Germany: Coal Power Expanding, Green Energy Stagnating
[7] Merkel's Blackout: German Energy Plan Plagued by Lack of Progress SPIEGEL ONLINE
[8] Merkels Green Shift Backfires as German Pollution Jumps
[9] Capacity factor , Price per watt
[10] German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at
$4.44
[11] It Keeps Getting Cheaper To Install Solar Panels In The U.S.
[12] Germany Breaks Monthly Solar Generation Record, ~6.5 Times More
Than US Best
[13] Germany and Renewables Market Changes (source link in original article
is broken, here is an updated link:http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp... )
[14] Cost of German Solar Is Four Times Finnish Nuclear -- Olkiluoto Nuclear
Plant, Plagued by Budget Overruns, Still Beats Germanys Energiewende
[15] 313 MWp German PV Capacity Added in July 2013 - 34.5 GWp Total
[16] EEG Account: 5,907 GWh of Renewable Energy in August Sold for EUR
37.75 at Expenses of EUR 399.52 per MWh - EUR 540 Million Deficit
[17] Germany will dilute - not abandon - its Energiewende plan
[18] German power exports more valuable than its imports
[19] Ryan Carlyle's answer to Solar Energy: How large would an array of solar
panels have to be to power the continental US? How much would such an array
cost to build? And what are the major engineering obstacles to powering the
US this way?
[20] Electricity demand response shows promise in Germany
[21] Energiewende in Germany and Solar Energy
[22] Problems with Renewables and the Markets
[23] Ryan Carlyle's answer to Society: What are some policies that would
improve millions of lives, but people still oppose?
[24] Stephen Frantz's answer to Nuclear Energy: What is a nuclear supporter's
response to the Fukushima disaster?
[25] Fukushima Cancer Fears Are Absurd
[26] Evacuation Fukushima deadlier then radiation
[27] Was It Better to Stay at Fukushima or Flee?
[28] The fuel of the future
[29] Fowl Play: how the utility industrys ability to outsmart a duck will define
the power grid of the 21st century
Written 2 Oct, 2013.

Matt Chano, Follow http://flashpoint.gatec... (more)

57 upvotes by Bill McDonald, Jake Millan, Hubert Gertis, (more)

I sent Ryan Carlyle's exhaustive answer to this question to Amory Lovins ,

Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute , who, not
surprisingly, disagrees. In equally exhaustive depth. On nearly every point.
I'm no expert on this subject, and don't want to enter the fray myself, but if you
want to have a truly informed opinion on the subject, I would suggest that you
read Ryan Carlyle's answer together with Lovins' answers, which are in these
two posts on his blog:

Germany's Renewables Revolution

Separating Fact from Fiction In Accounts of Germanys Renewables
Revolution
Updated 17 Apr.
Upvote 57

Downvote Comments 6+

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George Gombay
6 upvotes by Bill McDonald, Iain McClatchie, Philip Ngai, (more)

Judging by the latest news out of Germany, the politicians are getting the
message. The article referred below states that in the current coalition talks
"Among the central themes will be agreeing a minimum wage, overhauling a
renewables law that has sent energy costs soaring, "
Economy, energy center stage as German coalition talks begin .
Written 23 Oct, 2013.
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Orjan Lundberg
5 upvotes by Judith Meyer, James H. Kelly, Jason Hardjosoekatmo, (more)

Some numbers for this winter:

Germanys #Energiewende Q1 2014: solar + 82.5%, offshore wind + 33%,
natural gas -19.7%, coal - 17.4%, nuclear - 4.6%
Source: Germanys Energiewende Is Very Much Alive & On Track
Avg temps winter 2013-2014:
Monats- und Jahreswerte Deutschland
Political situation:
Europes future energy security requires political cooperation with Russia
Written 29 May.
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Hubert Gertis, optimized generalist. @hubert

17 upvotes by Erik Halberstadt, Adam Gieseler, Christopher Strobel, (more)

Actually, that's the wrong question.

The emphasis of "Energiewende" has been on renewables, not solar-only.
That's why capacities in wind and solar are more or less on the same level (and,
as it looks, pretty complimentary over the year).
And no, other nations should not follow the lead of Germany. But build upon
her learnings and experiences.
Let me expand on that, as an addendum:
As energy is the lifeblood of our western economies, there are two large
importers which are on the verge of becoming net exporters of energy, the US
and Germany.
It's just two completely different approaches.
The US went for oil. By around 2020, the United States is projected to become
the largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia until the mid-2020s),
says the IEA. And, eh voil, North America becomes a net oil exporter around
2030.
Oil wells in Germany are about as common as grand cru vineyards in Alaska.
Lignite and coal are so 19th century. Nuclear power plants are a hard sell in
Germany (and the necessary fuels would have to be imported anyways). So,
being a rather industrious people, it seems like some Germans anticipated the
IEA World Energy Outlook 2012: Renewables become the worlds secondlargest source of power generation by 2015 (roughly half that of coal) and, by
2035, they approach coal as the primary source of global electricity.

http://www.iea.org/publications/...
Call me biased. But in this case, I prefer the German approach.
Updated 23 Oct, 2013.
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17 upvotes by James H. Kelly, Erik Halberstadt, Anna Demers, (more)

They should follow Germany's lead in doing something. Energiewende may or

may not be the best possible solution to the problem, but it does have a lot
going for it. Germany may or may not wind up with the best long term energy
solution, but it's pretty certain to be much better than what they have (and
what we have) today.
Speaking from an entirely US-centric point of view All of our infrastructure is designed for, and around, first and second
generation industrial corporations. All of it. Transportation, education,
healthcare, finance, government, and energy.
First generation industrials are almost all dead. Second generation industrials
are mostly dying, or being moved offshore. The third generation is a lot less
industrial, a lot less centralized, and a lot less energy intensive, than the first
and second generations were. Advances like 3D printing and laser sintering are
making the availability of large quantities of dense electrical power less and
less critical, and that trend is going to continue.
I don't think solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal can replace our existing grid.
But that doesn't matter, because simply replacing what we have is the wrong
thing to do. A less centralized industrial model requires a less centralized
infrastructure to support it, or at least doesn't require as centralized of a model.
If we keep building infrastructure to meet the needs of General Electric and
General Motors, we're doomed. The barriers to entry that made those
companies viable are falling all over the world, and if they don't change their
own models soon they won't have long to live. We need to build infrastructure
for the next generation. Massive power plants servicing grid quadrants isn't it.
Written 6 Dec, 2013.
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