7 ms·

Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state [0]. As with much of Europe, it makes for worrying reading. I

by roenxi 3y ago

Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state [0]. As with much of Europe, it makes for worrying reading. It would be extremely impressive if they can remain a manufacturing leader through this. If there is less energy, someone will have to use less energy. As far as I can tell that means either compromising living standards or giving up some heavy manufacturing. I'm assuming that this is an expression of that dynamic unless it is proven otherwise. German politicians should have taken their energy security more seriously back in the 2010s. My main hope is maybe the rest of us can learn from these energy starved European powers and do things differently. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany

_Microft 3y ago
Add a few other countries to the list and see how their curves look almost the same as Germany's... (The situation is not much different on the other graphs) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=DEU~USA~GBR~CHE~SWE~KOR~FRA~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... Edit: Here's the same (semi-randomly chosen) set of countries, applied to the same article (see parents [0]-link) in full: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=DEU~USA~GBR~CHE~SWE~KOR~FRA~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=DE...
- achates 3y ago
  The US has also lost its lead in manufacturing during the same time period.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > US has also lost its lead in manufacturing during the same time period On a relative basis, yes. In absolute terms we are close to our pre-financial crisis peak [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMNTO01USQ661N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMNTO01USQ661N
    - roenxi 3y ago
      Do you happen to know what "Total Manufacturing" means in practice? I can't figure out what that series is measuring. It seems to be OECD data of some sort, but it doesn't have enough context to interpret. One of the problems with US manufacturing is that it can be equal by, say, amount of money spent but get much worse productivity than Asia. And I'd believe it is a sophisticated method that accounts for that somehow, but I want to check it.
- jddj 3y ago
  Without speaking to whether or not it's valid conjecture, it's become necessary to treat any Germany is dying material with a little extra skepticism due to it being used as a polemic talking point about what happens when you go all in on renewables, etc.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    It serves as a good signal, it makes it easy to know who you can simply ignore.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    It’s also probable per capita energy usage will decline no matter what we do because affordable fossil fuel stocks are due to collapse before the population does. Increasing per capita energy usage as a policy goal seems profoundly unwise to me, even without accounting for global warming, and if we do it becomes even less wise.
    - jddj 3y ago
      I don't know how much, in Germany's case, but some fraction of energy usage is wasted. We saw European customers start paying attention to wasted consumption almost overnight when electricity prices hit the news and some of those changes have persisted for now. That's without considering efficiency improvements. Both would drive down per capita without implying reduced output
    - nradov 3y ago
      Throughout human history, increases in per capita energy consumption have been directly coupled with increases in living standards. Perhaps we will see some decoupling between those metrics, but I doubt it. And while there are good environmental reasons to reduce fossil fuel use we are in no danger of running out of affordable stocks. Alarmists have been predicting "peak oil" for decades but the extraction industry keeps improving their technology.
      - faeriechangling 3y ago
dependsontheq 3y ago
It really makes no sense to look at per capita figures this way. I am driving an electric car in Germany now and I built a new home with better insulation and I have LED lights. My per capita figures went way down, I am also taking my cargo bike in the city everywhere, so my per capita figures went down again. There's a very relevant question about the viability of energy intensive industries in Germany, but even that is dependent on energy source. A lot of industries are switching to electric heating that will also lead to lower per capita energy use. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-intensity?tab=chart&country=DEU~USA~GBR~JPN~FRA~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-intensity?tab=char...
- throwaway220033 3y ago
  Congrats being an exemplary citizen but how does your electric car and cargo bike play role in Germany's manufacturing?
  - eigenspace 3y ago
    Presumably they were just giving an example. The huge spike in German energy costs absolutely did push manufacturers to find ways to be more energy efficient in a very similar way it pushed regular consumers to also be more conscious of their energy use.
    - smallmancontrov 3y ago
      Probably a bit, but there is only so much juice to be squeezed out of the efficiency stone and it's hard to squeeze. It takes time and money and wherever the math penciled out comfortably it already happened. If drops in energy consumption happen quickly, deeply, or on a budget then it's probably demand destruction, not efficiency gain.
      - eigenspace 3y ago
        Check the numbers. Germany's economic output didn't shrink nearly as much as its energy usage did. For highly energy-intensive, low-value-added sectors like producing fertilizer and other chemicals, yes I agree, but in a lot of other sectors there are huge efficiency gains to be made that were never pursued because it wasn't worth it. If you have an old, inefficient appliance (e.g. an incandescent lightbulb) and electricity is cheap, then it makes perfect economic sense to just keep operating the appliance and only replace it with a newer more efficient model once it actually breaks down. If electricity prices suddenly triple (which they did for a brief time in Germany), suddenly it starts making a lot of sense to start moving up the replacement date for those older less efficient appliances. Don't get me wrong, the energy shock was indeed quite economically harmful to Germany, but saying that pure demand destruction is the only thing that explains a drop in electricity usage is just wrong.
sinuhe69 3y ago
That does not mean they produced less energy but a sign of much higher energy efficiency, speaks better processing and technology. It’s the same for all advanced nations: UK, Japan, USA etc.
r00fus 3y ago
A lot of the industrial power use was built on the back of cheap natural gas from Russia - that got cut off after the Ukraine war.
0xQSL 3y ago
Primary energy consumption isn't a good indicator for this, as it also includes lost energy. If you replace a 50% efficiency coal power plant with wind or solar you'd reduce the primary energy by half but could still get the same amount of used electricity.
lenerdenator 3y ago
> German politicians should have taken their energy security more seriously back in the 2010s. Energy security AND national security. It was insane to build an economy on natural gas from a country with a long history of imperialism and autocracy, but Germans did it anyways. To be fair, the US did much the same with China with regards to manufacturing. The US was begging its NATO allies across the Atlantic to have a more skeptical view of Russia for most of the 90s and 00s, not just 10s, and concerns were brushed off as the ramblings of unsophisticated cowboys. I remember talking to Germans in January 2022 who still thought that the Russians wouldn't invade Ukraine.
- mk89 3y ago
  To be even more fair, US is still buying uranium from Russia... Anyway, that's how it is. The german economy profited quite well from the cheap gas. It was actually a strong decision to drop it, as the economy has a lot of heavy industry that apparently requires gas/oil. We will see how it goes in the next 5-10 years.
- guappa 3y ago
  The USA is not in a position to criticize… All of the computers are made abroad. I doubt banning Huawei will solve anything, if a foreign power has decided to inject malicious instructions into the hardware.
  - lenerdenator 3y ago
    China spent the first 15 years it had with significant computing resources in-country using them to hack the rest of the world. Once you do that, there is no restoring trust, no matter how hard you try.
    - guappa 3y ago
      Why do we trust to buy every computer then?
      - lenerdenator 3y ago
mk89 3y ago
The energy use per capita can also indicate that people use less energy because of more careful consumption, modern appliances etc. I wouldn't see it as "wow, there is no electricity in Germany!!!". There are some policies applied here since years such as the mandatory use of LED lights ( do they still sell non-led? Can't remember to be honest), etc. In the last 2 years alone it was crazy the amount of renovations in terms of eco-friendly measurements in terms of electricity/gas (things like deutsche bahn changing the bulbs to use LEDs, not a small company I mean). Etc. On the contrary, I see it as a positive thing: you can have a good modern lifestyle with less energy consumption.
nradov 3y ago
It's not just energy, but availability of cheap natural gas as a feedstock for the chemicals industry. That had been a key input for a large fraction of German heavy industry. Those sectors are now shrinking in Germany and expanding in other countries which have more gas. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-energy-transition-faces-key-chemical-sector-conundrum-maguire-2023-05-31/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-energy-trans...
skrebbel 3y ago
A country’s energy production is driven mostly by demand. Your argument is “Germans use less energy, therefore it’s going badly”. I think this is a very outdated worldview, equating energy consumption with growth. There’s been lots of technology development across the board that lets people have the same comfort, or businesses the same production, with lower energy consumption. I don't think you can just assume that those are a rounding error.
- nradov 3y ago
  Has anyone figured out how to reduce the energy demand for refining aluminum or manufacturing ammonium nitrate? Efficiency gains in things like lighting, heating, and ground transport are nice but those only go so far. Heavy industry will always require enormous energy inputs.
  - conjecTech 3y ago
    Smelting recycled aluminum uses only about 3% of the energy as creating it from raw ore. So yes, recycling allows us to do that more efficiently.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Those are things that will be done where energy is cheaper. For example, making ammonia in Europe makes little sense when natural gas is so much more expensive there than in the US or the Mideast.
eigenspace 3y ago
In addition to things mentioned by other users, electricity production is also misleading there because Germany's grid isn't a closed system. It's strongly coupled to the wider european power grid. Germany's international grid connections are so wide that it's not even that abnormal for Germany to import or export more than a third of their total load from neighbouring countries. A better metric would be to look at the total load on the German electrical grid, and if you look at that, you'll see that load has decreased a little over the past couple of years, reflecting the real economic downturn, but the dip is quite small compared to how much electricity generation has decreased. Germany is simply exporting less electricity, and also importing more of it.
panick21_ 3y ago
They should have built nuclear plants instead of ripping them down.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  This wouldn't have helped replace fossil fuels when competing with cheaper energy elsewhere.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state [0]. Usage and harvesting has become significant more efficient in the last decades. And the changing climate demands for less consumption in certain areas. Outsourcing of lower levels of production has likely removed a significant amount of consumption too.
holgerschurig 3y ago
> and their per capita figures are in a grim state - and Germany is one of the european countries with okayish inflation rate, most other european countries are far worse https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate%20-?continent=europe https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate%20-... - and it's by now economic-wise at position #3 of the world ranking, now even before Japan (which has twice the amount of inhabitants). If you look up Germany on a real globe, you'll notice how tiny it actually is - the unemployment rate is quite low (especially given that people like you call the econimic sitation a "grim state") https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1224/umfrage/arbeitslosenquote-in-deutschland-seit-1995/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1224/umfrage/... --- it's actually lower than in the years then people Germany "the locomotive of europe" - the stock index "DAX" for german stock company is at an all-time high https://www.finanzen.net/index/dax https://www.finanzen.net/index/dax So really, the worrying thing here is that people tend to think binary. Either Germany is super-strong, even too strong for it's neighbors. Or it is too weak, so that people actually worry. In my book, both views are extreme and don't replicate reality. > It would be extremely impressive if they can remain a manufacturing leader through this There is no indication that this will change. Examples: Germany's battery production has doubled in the last year. And there is no end in sight --- https://www.produktion.de/technik/co2-neutrale-industrie/batterieproduktion-in-deutschland-hier-entstehen-neue-werke-124.html https://www.produktion.de/technik/co2-neutrale-industrie/bat... For the solar industry, I identify two reasons of the decline: - first, the "high" of the german solar industry was based on subsidies. That meant that the companies build plants ... but they didn't really optimize the costs. Once this large scale subsidies were reduced, the industry wasn't competitive - second, the EU is blind on subsidies done in China. Over there, they have a weird conglomerate of socialism and capitalism. Basically the companies, even when privately owned, are still under control of the chines communist party. And the party decides that "this industry is vital, we push it so squelch abroad competition". They do this e.g. by heavy state investments. The EU turns a blind eye here, they don't ask for tariffs that equalize the market situation for the various competitors. Similarly, market access is asynchronous. If an abroad company wants to make a plant there, they have to accept a Chinese partner --- which will do industry espionage. Whereas Chinese companies buying or making plants in Europe (or USA etc) aren't required to have a local partner.
holgerschurig 3y ago
> German politicians should have taken their energy security more seriously back in the 2010s Well, any country. Did you know that Poland imported most of their fossil fuels from Russia also? Or, that today, Bulgaria still imports all (that is, 100% !!!) oil from Russia? People like to blame Germany, and they point to North Stream. Few people looked at a map of oil and gas pipelines of Europe ... noticing that MOST of them are in eastern- and southern europe. All of europe depended on cheap russian fossil energy, not just Germany. Map of oil & gas pipelines, centered on central and western europe: https://theodora.com/pipelines/europe_oil_gas_and_products_pipelines.html https://theodora.com/pipelines/europe_oil_gas_and_products_p... Only gas pipelines, but showing eastern europe much better. Note that the amount of pipelines in Germany seems to be higher ... but also notice that a good part of them run from the northsea towards the industrial areas. The pipeline system was never designed to be run solely by Russian fossil fuel, unlike the ones in eastern europe countries. http://www.mappery.com/maps/Europe-Proposed-Natural-Gas-Pipelines-Map.gif http://www.mappery.com/maps/Europe-Proposed-Natural-Gas-Pipe...
- negative_zero 3y ago
  Poland was legally obligated to purchase Russian gas based on an agreement signed in the early 90s. The writing was on the wall for years. The difference is that Poland started constructing an alternative pipeline to Norway. Poland also appealed to an arbitration panel to have the Russian gas contract right to renewal clause removed (which it was successful in doing). Germany meanwhile doubled down on Russian gas and built Nordstream 1 & 2.
majoe 3y ago
To add to what others already commented. The EU has been setting energy efficiency targets for itself for several decades now. In the most recent update to that target "EU countries will be required to achieve an average annual energy savings rate of 1.49% from 2024 to 2030" [0]. So it's not that surprising, that Germany's energy production is sinking, it is required to do so. [0]: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficiency-targets-directive-and-rules/energy-efficiency-targets_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-...
wewxjfq 3y ago
The 1970s had several energy crises and Western countries went from wasteful energy consumption to energy conservation in an effort to strengthen their energy security.
Archelaos 3y ago
This reasoning is a too simple. It does not take the increase of energy effiency into account. On the contrary, these figures are proof of enormous success in this respect. As of 2022, the German production industry (excl. construction) had a share of 23.5% of GDP[1]. For the US it was only 11% in 2023.[2] I would not argue that one is better than the other. It first of all demonstrates a remarkable difference between the two economies. Another one is the legacy of the German reunification. If one wants to assess the performace of the German economy in the last 35 years, one should take into account that a lot of investments had been made by the German state to bring up the infrastructure of the Eastern part (about 25% of the population) to a Western European standard. Eastern Germany is in a much better shape now than any other Eastern European region. And this investment is just starting to generate returns. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/295519/germany-share-of-economic-sectors-in-gross-domestic-product/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/295519/germany-share-of-... [2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-gdp-by-industry-in-2023/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-gdp-by-indu...
thelastgallon 3y ago
> Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state Two thirds of energy from fossil fuels is wasted[1,2]. Renewables don't have wasted heat. Germany has been going green for a while, energy production does not give us a full picture. From: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en... "This is shown in the chart below. It plots global final energy demand today2 compared to a ‘post-transition’ energy system where suitable sectors are electrified, and the rest is fuelled by hydrogen. Electricity demand does increase – from 110 to 189 EJ, but total energy demand drops from 416 to 247 exajoules (EJ)." [1]https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ [2] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/energy-loss-is-single-biggest-component-of-todays-electricity-system/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/energy-loss-is-si...
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Exactly, Germany's economy has grown quite a bit since the 1970s. It's energy usage is indeed trending down. Which means they are doing more with less energy. Back in the nineteen seventies they had inefficient cars, trucks, electricity generation (mostly coal based), and industry. Now they have a bigger economy and are not using a lot more energy. That's progress. Michael Liebreich [1] refers to this as the primary energy fallacy in his recent articles on why reaching net zero is both hard and easy. He traces back the origins of this fallacy to the nineteen seventies when people started tracking the notion of primary energy during the oil crisis. The issue is that this is based on the gross energy usage, not the net useful output of that energy. Which with fossil fuels is pretty terrible (<30%) and with clean energy typically a lot better (>90%). The other problem is that to this day, people base their policies on reports that still center on primary energy by agencies such as the IEA. It's a fallacy because any policy or plan based on the notion primary energy is off by about 3x in terms of actually needed energy. So, any plan that assumes replacing dirty energy gw fo gw with clean energy is technically bullshit. A good example is petrol which has about 9kwh of energy per liter. A typical car might have about 50 liters of petrol. So, that's about 450 kwh. Or nearly half a mwh. Comparable EVs tend to have more modestly sized batteries of maybe 60-70kwh. Does the petrol car go 7 times further? Not even close. Most of that is transformed into heat and noise rather than movement. Primary energy of nearly half mwh. Useful energy under 100kwh. That's a 5x difference. That's why EVs can be cleaner even if you do charge them using coal powered electricity plants. You simply get more km per kwh. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-net-zero-will-be-harder-than-you-think-and-easier-part-ii-easier/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-net-zero-will-be-harde...
hannob 3y ago
> If there is less energy, someone will have to use less energy. As far as I can tell that means either compromising living standards or giving up some heavy manufacturing. That's total nonsense, I guess you never heard the word "energy efficiency".
jupp0r 3y ago
Energy consumption is a poor proxy for industrial output when policy is geared towards increasing efficiency and productivity.
snowpid 3y ago
It is very bad doing analysis of Germany between 1950 - 1990 as there was no unified economic but just two states. The Eastern German communist economy was just very inefficient, very energy hungry (and thus it failed 1989). So this trend isnt not bad.
zhengiszen 3y ago
They really did by letting the French continue the nuclear and by making gaz deal with Russia... But Russian-Ukrainian conflict reminded them that they are still an occupied country with no sovereignty.

by roenxi 3y ago

_Microft 3y ago

Add a few other countries to the list and see how their curves look almost the same as Germany's... (The situation is not much different on the other graphs) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=DEU~USA~GBR~CHE~SWE~KOR~FRA~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... Edit: Here's the same (semi-randomly chosen) set of countries, applied to the same article (see parents [0]-link) in full: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=DEU~USA~GBR~CHE~SWE~KOR~FRA~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany?country=DE...

achates 3y ago
The US has also lost its lead in manufacturing during the same time period.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > US has also lost its lead in manufacturing during the same time period On a relative basis, yes. In absolute terms we are close to our pre-financial crisis peak [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMNTO01USQ661N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMNTO01USQ661N
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Do you happen to know what "Total Manufacturing" means in practice? I can't figure out what that series is measuring. It seems to be OECD data of some sort, but it doesn't have enough context to interpret. One of the problems with US manufacturing is that it can be equal by, say, amount of money spent but get much worse productivity than Asia. And I'd believe it is a sophisticated method that accounts for that somehow, but I want to check it.
jddj 3y ago
Without speaking to whether or not it's valid conjecture, it's become necessary to treat any Germany is dying material with a little extra skepticism due to it being used as a polemic talking point about what happens when you go all in on renewables, etc.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  It serves as a good signal, it makes it easy to know who you can simply ignore.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  It’s also probable per capita energy usage will decline no matter what we do because affordable fossil fuel stocks are due to collapse before the population does. Increasing per capita energy usage as a policy goal seems profoundly unwise to me, even without accounting for global warming, and if we do it becomes even less wise.
  - jddj 3y ago
    I don't know how much, in Germany's case, but some fraction of energy usage is wasted. We saw European customers start paying attention to wasted consumption almost overnight when electricity prices hit the news and some of those changes have persisted for now. That's without considering efficiency improvements. Both would drive down per capita without implying reduced output
  - nradov 3y ago
    Throughout human history, increases in per capita energy consumption have been directly coupled with increases in living standards. Perhaps we will see some decoupling between those metrics, but I doubt it. And while there are good environmental reasons to reduce fossil fuel use we are in no danger of running out of affordable stocks. Alarmists have been predicting "peak oil" for decades but the extraction industry keeps improving their technology.
    - faeriechangling 3y ago

dependsontheq 3y ago

It really makes no sense to look at per capita figures this way. I am driving an electric car in Germany now and I built a new home with better insulation and I have LED lights. My per capita figures went way down, I am also taking my cargo bike in the city everywhere, so my per capita figures went down again. There's a very relevant question about the viability of energy intensive industries in Germany, but even that is dependent on energy source. A lot of industries are switching to electric heating that will also lead to lower per capita energy use. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-intensity?tab=chart&country=DEU~USA~GBR~JPN~FRA~CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-intensity?tab=char...

throwaway220033 3y ago
Congrats being an exemplary citizen but how does your electric car and cargo bike play role in Germany's manufacturing?
- eigenspace 3y ago
  Presumably they were just giving an example. The huge spike in German energy costs absolutely did push manufacturers to find ways to be more energy efficient in a very similar way it pushed regular consumers to also be more conscious of their energy use.
  - smallmancontrov 3y ago
    Probably a bit, but there is only so much juice to be squeezed out of the efficiency stone and it's hard to squeeze. It takes time and money and wherever the math penciled out comfortably it already happened. If drops in energy consumption happen quickly, deeply, or on a budget then it's probably demand destruction, not efficiency gain.
    - eigenspace 3y ago
      Check the numbers. Germany's economic output didn't shrink nearly as much as its energy usage did. For highly energy-intensive, low-value-added sectors like producing fertilizer and other chemicals, yes I agree, but in a lot of other sectors there are huge efficiency gains to be made that were never pursued because it wasn't worth it. If you have an old, inefficient appliance (e.g. an incandescent lightbulb) and electricity is cheap, then it makes perfect economic sense to just keep operating the appliance and only replace it with a newer more efficient model once it actually breaks down. If electricity prices suddenly triple (which they did for a brief time in Germany), suddenly it starts making a lot of sense to start moving up the replacement date for those older less efficient appliances. Don't get me wrong, the energy shock was indeed quite economically harmful to Germany, but saying that pure demand destruction is the only thing that explains a drop in electricity usage is just wrong.

sinuhe69 3y ago

That does not mean they produced less energy but a sign of much higher energy efficiency, speaks better processing and technology. It’s the same for all advanced nations: UK, Japan, USA etc.

r00fus 3y ago

A lot of the industrial power use was built on the back of cheap natural gas from Russia - that got cut off after the Ukraine war.

0xQSL 3y ago

Primary energy consumption isn't a good indicator for this, as it also includes lost energy. If you replace a 50% efficiency coal power plant with wind or solar you'd reduce the primary energy by half but could still get the same amount of used electricity.

lenerdenator 3y ago

> German politicians should have taken their energy security more seriously back in the 2010s. Energy security AND national security. It was insane to build an economy on natural gas from a country with a long history of imperialism and autocracy, but Germans did it anyways. To be fair, the US did much the same with China with regards to manufacturing. The US was begging its NATO allies across the Atlantic to have a more skeptical view of Russia for most of the 90s and 00s, not just 10s, and concerns were brushed off as the ramblings of unsophisticated cowboys. I remember talking to Germans in January 2022 who still thought that the Russians wouldn't invade Ukraine.

mk89 3y ago
To be even more fair, US is still buying uranium from Russia... Anyway, that's how it is. The german economy profited quite well from the cheap gas. It was actually a strong decision to drop it, as the economy has a lot of heavy industry that apparently requires gas/oil. We will see how it goes in the next 5-10 years.
guappa 3y ago
The USA is not in a position to criticize… All of the computers are made abroad. I doubt banning Huawei will solve anything, if a foreign power has decided to inject malicious instructions into the hardware.
- lenerdenator 3y ago
  China spent the first 15 years it had with significant computing resources in-country using them to hack the rest of the world. Once you do that, there is no restoring trust, no matter how hard you try.
  - guappa 3y ago
    Why do we trust to buy every computer then?
    - lenerdenator 3y ago

mk89 3y ago

The energy use per capita can also indicate that people use less energy because of more careful consumption, modern appliances etc. I wouldn't see it as "wow, there is no electricity in Germany!!!". There are some policies applied here since years such as the mandatory use of LED lights ( do they still sell non-led? Can't remember to be honest), etc. In the last 2 years alone it was crazy the amount of renovations in terms of eco-friendly measurements in terms of electricity/gas (things like deutsche bahn changing the bulbs to use LEDs, not a small company I mean). Etc. On the contrary, I see it as a positive thing: you can have a good modern lifestyle with less energy consumption.

nradov 3y ago

It's not just energy, but availability of cheap natural gas as a feedstock for the chemicals industry. That had been a key input for a large fraction of German heavy industry. Those sectors are now shrinking in Germany and expanding in other countries which have more gas. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-energy-transition-faces-key-chemical-sector-conundrum-maguire-2023-05-31/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-energy-trans...

skrebbel 3y ago

A country’s energy production is driven mostly by demand. Your argument is “Germans use less energy, therefore it’s going badly”. I think this is a very outdated worldview, equating energy consumption with growth. There’s been lots of technology development across the board that lets people have the same comfort, or businesses the same production, with lower energy consumption. I don't think you can just assume that those are a rounding error.

nradov 3y ago
Has anyone figured out how to reduce the energy demand for refining aluminum or manufacturing ammonium nitrate? Efficiency gains in things like lighting, heating, and ground transport are nice but those only go so far. Heavy industry will always require enormous energy inputs.
- conjecTech 3y ago
  Smelting recycled aluminum uses only about 3% of the energy as creating it from raw ore. So yes, recycling allows us to do that more efficiently.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Those are things that will be done where energy is cheaper. For example, making ammonia in Europe makes little sense when natural gas is so much more expensive there than in the US or the Mideast.

eigenspace 3y ago

In addition to things mentioned by other users, electricity production is also misleading there because Germany's grid isn't a closed system. It's strongly coupled to the wider european power grid. Germany's international grid connections are so wide that it's not even that abnormal for Germany to import or export more than a third of their total load from neighbouring countries. A better metric would be to look at the total load on the German electrical grid, and if you look at that, you'll see that load has decreased a little over the past couple of years, reflecting the real economic downturn, but the dip is quite small compared to how much electricity generation has decreased. Germany is simply exporting less electricity, and also importing more of it.

panick21_ 3y ago

They should have built nuclear plants instead of ripping them down.

pfdietz 3y ago
This wouldn't have helped replace fossil fuels when competing with cheaper energy elsewhere.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

> Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state [0]. Usage and harvesting has become significant more efficient in the last decades. And the changing climate demands for less consumption in certain areas. Outsourcing of lower levels of production has likely removed a significant amount of consumption too.

holgerschurig 3y ago

> and their per capita figures are in a grim state - and Germany is one of the european countries with okayish inflation rate, most other european countries are far worse https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate%20-?continent=europe https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate%20-... - and it's by now economic-wise at position #3 of the world ranking, now even before Japan (which has twice the amount of inhabitants). If you look up Germany on a real globe, you'll notice how tiny it actually is - the unemployment rate is quite low (especially given that people like you call the econimic sitation a "grim state") https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1224/umfrage/arbeitslosenquote-in-deutschland-seit-1995/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1224/umfrage/... --- it's actually lower than in the years then people Germany "the locomotive of europe" - the stock index "DAX" for german stock company is at an all-time high https://www.finanzen.net/index/dax https://www.finanzen.net/index/dax So really, the worrying thing here is that people tend to think binary. Either Germany is super-strong, even too strong for it's neighbors. Or it is too weak, so that people actually worry. In my book, both views are extreme and don't replicate reality. > It would be extremely impressive if they can remain a manufacturing leader through this There is no indication that this will change. Examples: Germany's battery production has doubled in the last year. And there is no end in sight --- https://www.produktion.de/technik/co2-neutrale-industrie/batterieproduktion-in-deutschland-hier-entstehen-neue-werke-124.html https://www.produktion.de/technik/co2-neutrale-industrie/bat... For the solar industry, I identify two reasons of the decline: - first, the "high" of the german solar industry was based on subsidies. That meant that the companies build plants ... but they didn't really optimize the costs. Once this large scale subsidies were reduced, the industry wasn't competitive - second, the EU is blind on subsidies done in China. Over there, they have a weird conglomerate of socialism and capitalism. Basically the companies, even when privately owned, are still under control of the chines communist party. And the party decides that "this industry is vital, we push it so squelch abroad competition". They do this e.g. by heavy state investments. The EU turns a blind eye here, they don't ask for tariffs that equalize the market situation for the various competitors. Similarly, market access is asynchronous. If an abroad company wants to make a plant there, they have to accept a Chinese partner --- which will do industry espionage. Whereas Chinese companies buying or making plants in Europe (or USA etc) aren't required to have a local partner.

holgerschurig 3y ago

> German politicians should have taken their energy security more seriously back in the 2010s Well, any country. Did you know that Poland imported most of their fossil fuels from Russia also? Or, that today, Bulgaria still imports all (that is, 100% !!!) oil from Russia? People like to blame Germany, and they point to North Stream. Few people looked at a map of oil and gas pipelines of Europe ... noticing that MOST of them are in eastern- and southern europe. All of europe depended on cheap russian fossil energy, not just Germany. Map of oil & gas pipelines, centered on central and western europe: https://theodora.com/pipelines/europe_oil_gas_and_products_pipelines.html https://theodora.com/pipelines/europe_oil_gas_and_products_p... Only gas pipelines, but showing eastern europe much better. Note that the amount of pipelines in Germany seems to be higher ... but also notice that a good part of them run from the northsea towards the industrial areas. The pipeline system was never designed to be run solely by Russian fossil fuel, unlike the ones in eastern europe countries. http://www.mappery.com/maps/Europe-Proposed-Natural-Gas-Pipelines-Map.gif http://www.mappery.com/maps/Europe-Proposed-Natural-Gas-Pipe...

negative_zero 3y ago
Poland was legally obligated to purchase Russian gas based on an agreement signed in the early 90s. The writing was on the wall for years. The difference is that Poland started constructing an alternative pipeline to Norway. Poland also appealed to an arbitration panel to have the Russian gas contract right to renewal clause removed (which it was successful in doing). Germany meanwhile doubled down on Russian gas and built Nordstream 1 & 2.

majoe 3y ago

To add to what others already commented. The EU has been setting energy efficiency targets for itself for several decades now. In the most recent update to that target "EU countries will be required to achieve an average annual energy savings rate of 1.49% from 2024 to 2030" [0]. So it's not that surprising, that Germany's energy production is sinking, it is required to do so. [0]: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficiency-targets-directive-and-rules/energy-efficiency-targets_en https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-...

wewxjfq 3y ago

The 1970s had several energy crises and Western countries went from wasteful energy consumption to energy conservation in an effort to strengthen their energy security.

Archelaos 3y ago

This reasoning is a too simple. It does not take the increase of energy effiency into account. On the contrary, these figures are proof of enormous success in this respect. As of 2022, the German production industry (excl. construction) had a share of 23.5% of GDP[1]. For the US it was only 11% in 2023.[2] I would not argue that one is better than the other. It first of all demonstrates a remarkable difference between the two economies. Another one is the legacy of the German reunification. If one wants to assess the performace of the German economy in the last 35 years, one should take into account that a lot of investments had been made by the German state to bring up the infrastructure of the Eastern part (about 25% of the population) to a Western European standard. Eastern Germany is in a much better shape now than any other Eastern European region. And this investment is just starting to generate returns. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/295519/germany-share-of-economic-sectors-in-gross-domestic-product/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/295519/germany-share-of-... [2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-gdp-by-industry-in-2023/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-u-s-gdp-by-indu...

thelastgallon 3y ago

> Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state Two thirds of energy from fossil fuels is wasted[1,2]. Renewables don't have wasted heat. Germany has been going green for a while, energy production does not give us a full picture. From: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en... "This is shown in the chart below. It plots global final energy demand today2 compared to a ‘post-transition’ energy system where suitable sectors are electrified, and the rest is fuelled by hydrogen. Electricity demand does increase – from 110 to 189 EJ, but total energy demand drops from 416 to 247 exajoules (EJ)." [1]https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ [2] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/energy-loss-is-single-biggest-component-of-todays-electricity-system/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/energy-loss-is-si...

jillesvangurp 3y ago
Exactly, Germany's economy has grown quite a bit since the 1970s. It's energy usage is indeed trending down. Which means they are doing more with less energy. Back in the nineteen seventies they had inefficient cars, trucks, electricity generation (mostly coal based), and industry. Now they have a bigger economy and are not using a lot more energy. That's progress. Michael Liebreich [1] refers to this as the primary energy fallacy in his recent articles on why reaching net zero is both hard and easy. He traces back the origins of this fallacy to the nineteen seventies when people started tracking the notion of primary energy during the oil crisis. The issue is that this is based on the gross energy usage, not the net useful output of that energy. Which with fossil fuels is pretty terrible (<30%) and with clean energy typically a lot better (>90%). The other problem is that to this day, people base their policies on reports that still center on primary energy by agencies such as the IEA. It's a fallacy because any policy or plan based on the notion primary energy is off by about 3x in terms of actually needed energy. So, any plan that assumes replacing dirty energy gw fo gw with clean energy is technically bullshit. A good example is petrol which has about 9kwh of energy per liter. A typical car might have about 50 liters of petrol. So, that's about 450 kwh. Or nearly half a mwh. Comparable EVs tend to have more modestly sized batteries of maybe 60-70kwh. Does the petrol car go 7 times further? Not even close. Most of that is transformed into heat and noise rather than movement. Primary energy of nearly half mwh. Useful energy under 100kwh. That's a 5x difference. That's why EVs can be cleaner even if you do charge them using coal powered electricity plants. You simply get more km per kwh. [1] https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-net-zero-will-be-harder-than-you-think-and-easier-part-ii-easier/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-net-zero-will-be-harde...

hannob 3y ago

> If there is less energy, someone will have to use less energy. As far as I can tell that means either compromising living standards or giving up some heavy manufacturing. That's total nonsense, I guess you never heard the word "energy efficiency".

jupp0r 3y ago

Energy consumption is a poor proxy for industrial output when policy is geared towards increasing efficiency and productivity.

snowpid 3y ago

It is very bad doing analysis of Germany between 1950 - 1990 as there was no unified economic but just two states. The Eastern German communist economy was just very inefficient, very energy hungry (and thus it failed 1989). So this trend isnt not bad.

zhengiszen 3y ago

They really did by letting the French continue the nuclear and by making gaz deal with Russia... But Russian-Ukrainian conflict reminded them that they are still an occupied country with no sovereignty.