The Fraud of the Renewables “Boom”: the Case of Germany

On June 20, German authorities proudly announced that installed solar power at the end of March had increased by 21% compared to March 2022. Nominal power went from 58,500 to 70,180 MW.

But nominal power, of course, is not the actual power produced. The latter depends on whether and for how long the sun shines. The fact of the matter is that the more Germany depends on solar panels during the day, the more it burns fossil fuels during the night.

Italian Professor Franco Battaglia from Modena University exposed the fraud of German renewables in an article for the daily La Verità of June 22, entitled “Germany Imposes Green Dictates but Uses More Gas and Coal than Ever”. Over the last three years, he writes, “fossil input to electricity production increased from 44% in 2020 to 51% in 2022. Why, despite the nominal increase in ‘renewables’ capacity, financed with billions of euros of taxpayers’ money?”

Taking the week of April 20-26, 2022 as a reference (representative of annual average, being in spring), data show that power demand oscillates between a minimum of 40 and a peak of 65 GW. Two peaks occur: one at noon and another (55 GW) at about 7 p.m. On the supply side, photovoltaic production has a peak at noon as well, but plunges to zero by the 7 p.m. demand of 55 GW. Wind power helps, Battaglia adds, but never produces more than 30 GW, i.e., half of the demand. And sometimes, it doesn’t blow at all. For instance, between April 23 and April 24, joint solar and wind production was “practically zero,” whereas the demand was between 40 and 55 GW.

And this was a spring day. “If we take a winter day at random, say Dec. 15… electricity produced by solar panels was more or less zero almost the entire day, except a few hours around 1 p.m., when production peaked at 7 GW”, out of 66 GW of installed power.

“All this means one and only one thing — apparently, hard to penetrate the small heads of the Greens in power in Germany: They can install all the photovoltaic power they want, but they cannot shut down one single coal or gas plant. So they should stop pestering the entire world. Let us acknowledge it once and for all: no energy transition, shaped as they tell us, will ever be possible.”

The other side of the coin, to be taken into account, is that energy-intensive industries in Germany had a decrease of production of 12.9% in April, year-on-year.