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Your energy prices are so high that century-old factories are shutting down and your export sector is collapsing. Yet you guys keep a (presumably) straight face

Your energy prices are so high that century-old factories are shutting down and your export sector is collapsing. Yet you guys keep a (presumably) straight face while insisting that the truth is the opposite of what anyone with eyeballs can see. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

uecker 9mo ago
Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-old factories" "collapsing"). The prices households or industry pays are only indirectly related to the generation cost and a lot more with fees, so this is something to study. Also, if you compare to France, EDF was renationalized and now contributes to the relative high amount of government debt compared to GDP.
- quotemstr 9mo ago
  LOL. The wonderful thing about reality is that it's deaf to this kind of motivated reasoning. Enjoy your lignite and industrial collapse. When you're shivering at night, your children can't get jobs, and your country has no voice in global affairs, you can console yourself with the idea you at least tried reduced global carbon emissions by 0.1%.
- UltraSane 9mo ago
  It is a real problem and is being addressed Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agrees-subsidised-power-price-industry-2025-11-13/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr... Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-electricity-intensive-companies-1-january-2026-new-industrial-electricity-price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el... Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry? https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-germanys-industry/a-71644198 https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge... Deindustrialization in Germany: Energy Costs Driving Industries Abroad https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/ https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/
  - uecker 9mo ago
    Whether there is a real problem with high electricity was not the question, but whether it is caused by renewables vs. nuclear.
    - UltraSane 9mo ago
      It is caused by a overall incredibly stupid energy policy.
      - uecker 9mo ago
        Thanks for confirming my comment about the intellectual level of this debate.
  - quotemstr 9mo ago
    The subsidy strategy is strategically reckless and economically doomed. What is it supposed to accomplish? The factories aren't profitable at today's energy prices. Since it's these factories that create Germany's wealth, their being unprofitable makes the country unprofitable, driving down standards of living. If you subsidize electricity by capping consumer prices, then you have to either cap producer prices (creating shortages) or have the state pick up the difference. The latter option might make individual factories profitable, but it makes Germany even less profitable: now the country as a whole is paying not only to import electricity, but also for administrative overhead of the subsidy and the deadweight loss produced by non-market allocations of a scarce factor of production, electricity. All these subsidies do is transfer wealth to the industrial and energy sectors from literally everyone else and impoverish the country as a whole. A subsidy might be justifiable if it covered a temporary market hiccup. These high prices aren't shocks. They're structural. They're foreseeable consequences of state policies that decrease the supply of electricity and thereby make it more expensive than in competing polities. Imagine the US trying to address oil shocks in the 70s by subsidizing gasoline. Wouldn't have worked. Subsidies cannot create more of a resource. Also, given the 2028-2030 pension budget crisis you're facing, I'm not sure you guys can afford to impoverish yourselves with subsidies even in the short term. If you guys want to remain competitive, you need to find ways to generate power under an affordable cost structure and stop lying to yourselves about how, any day now, the Energiewende will produce a cornucopia of electrons. It's just not happening. Something has to break here. Maybe you accept declining living standards. Maybe you just burn an enormous ocean-boiling amount of barely-not-peat lignite from your western states. Maybe you become a Russian client state and return to suckling the Siberian gas teat. Or maybe, just maybe, you see that nuclear power works for others and can work for you too if you get over your atomic phobia.

uecker 9mo ago

Sad is the low intellectual level of this discussion where people draw conclusions from insufficient understanding of the data (or more likely, they believe what they read somewhere without even looking at data - which I assume is the case for you - as you do not provide logical arguments and merely repeat the talking points from political discussions, which are worded to evoke an emotional reaction "dying century-old factories" "collapsing"). The prices households or industry pays are only indirectly related to the generation cost and a lot more with fees, so this is something to study. Also, if you compare to France, EDF was renationalized and now contributes to the relative high amount of government debt compared to GDP.

quotemstr 9mo ago
LOL. The wonderful thing about reality is that it's deaf to this kind of motivated reasoning. Enjoy your lignite and industrial collapse. When you're shivering at night, your children can't get jobs, and your country has no voice in global affairs, you can console yourself with the idea you at least tried reduced global carbon emissions by 0.1%.
UltraSane 9mo ago
It is a real problem and is being addressed Subsidised electricity price set at 5 euro cents per kWh until 2028 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agrees-subsidised-power-price-industry-2025-11-13/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-coalition-agr... Germany cuts costs for electricity-intensive companies from 1 January 2026: the new industrial electricity price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-electricity-intensive-companies-1-january-2026-new-industrial-electricity-price https://www.gleisslutz.com/en/know-how/germany-cuts-costs-el... Are high electricity prices a threat to Germany's industry? https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-germanys-industry/a-71644198 https://www.dw.com/en/high-electricity-prices-a-threat-to-ge... Deindustrialization in Germany: Energy Costs Driving Industries Abroad https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/ https://ceinterim.com/deindustrialization-in-germany/
- uecker 9mo ago
  Whether there is a real problem with high electricity was not the question, but whether it is caused by renewables vs. nuclear.
  - UltraSane 9mo ago
    It is caused by a overall incredibly stupid energy policy.
    - uecker 9mo ago
      Thanks for confirming my comment about the intellectual level of this debate.
- quotemstr 9mo ago
  The subsidy strategy is strategically reckless and economically doomed. What is it supposed to accomplish? The factories aren't profitable at today's energy prices. Since it's these factories that create Germany's wealth, their being unprofitable makes the country unprofitable, driving down standards of living. If you subsidize electricity by capping consumer prices, then you have to either cap producer prices (creating shortages) or have the state pick up the difference. The latter option might make individual factories profitable, but it makes Germany even less profitable: now the country as a whole is paying not only to import electricity, but also for administrative overhead of the subsidy and the deadweight loss produced by non-market allocations of a scarce factor of production, electricity. All these subsidies do is transfer wealth to the industrial and energy sectors from literally everyone else and impoverish the country as a whole. A subsidy might be justifiable if it covered a temporary market hiccup. These high prices aren't shocks. They're structural. They're foreseeable consequences of state policies that decrease the supply of electricity and thereby make it more expensive than in competing polities. Imagine the US trying to address oil shocks in the 70s by subsidizing gasoline. Wouldn't have worked. Subsidies cannot create more of a resource. Also, given the 2028-2030 pension budget crisis you're facing, I'm not sure you guys can afford to impoverish yourselves with subsidies even in the short term. If you guys want to remain competitive, you need to find ways to generate power under an affordable cost structure and stop lying to yourselves about how, any day now, the Energiewende will produce a cornucopia of electrons. It's just not happening. Something has to break here. Maybe you accept declining living standards. Maybe you just burn an enormous ocean-boiling amount of barely-not-peat lignite from your western states. Maybe you become a Russian client state and return to suckling the Siberian gas teat. Or maybe, just maybe, you see that nuclear power works for others and can work for you too if you get over your atomic phobia.