[Skybird]

The AdG writes on the indulstrial implosion of Germany:
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The de-industrialization continues. RWE is providing election campaign support for the Greens and at the same time is leaving the German countryside. The next domino to possibly fall is the chemical industry in eastern Germany.

The deviation of global temperature from the 30-year average of satellite-based measurements by the University of Alabama (UAH) fell slightly in September 2022 compared to August, from 0.28 degrees to 0.24 degrees Celsius. The average temperature increase per decade since 1979 has been about 0.13 degrees Celsius, a trend of little concern.

Minister Habeck does not care about the real modest temperature development. He began his press conference on the early coal phase-out in the Rhenish coalfield on Oct. 4, 2022 with the dramatic words : "The structural crisis of our time - that is without question global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels."

At a time when politicians are asking people to prepare for power cuts lasting longer than 72 hours, at a time when rows and rows of businesses are shutting down production because of excessively high electricity prices, at a time when electricity and gas bills are becoming unaffordable for many families, the Minister of Economics is wielding the big club of fear over a climate development that is not covered by reality (see linked chart above). But he needs the backdrop of fear because he now realizes that his energy policy of a double phase-out of nuclear energy and coal is a fire hazard for the country and its people. And so he has to reluctantly "green" the temporary return to coal-fired power generation with the promise: to return to coal by March 2024 and then to exit coal again all the more quickly.

12 coal plants with 7 GW are to be brought out of reserve or not shut down to compensate for the closure of the last 3 nuclear plants (4.5 GW) and to replace gas plants to a small extent. These coal-fired power plants are to continue running until March 2024. And what comes then ?

In order to help the ailing Economics Minister with regard to the associated additional CO2 emissions, RWE boss Markus Krebber and the CDU/Green state government of North Rhine-Westphalia jumped to his side. They had agreed to bring forward the lignite phase-out, which was planned for 2038, by 8 years to 2030 and to shut down 3000 MW of lignite-fired power plants as early as 2030. Krebber's campaign support for the Greens, whose approval ratings are in a tailspin ahead of the Lower Saxony elections on October 9, is being carried out on the backs of the 5,500 miners in the Rhineland coalfield whose jobs will be cut in 2030.

Krebber treats the workers as a plaything: first, hundreds are called out of early retirement to continue operating the Neurath and D and E lignite-fired power plants until 2024, after which thousands of jobs will be lost. This doesn't even include those jobs that get into trouble as suppliers for the power plants or buyers of cheap lignite-based electricity. This is because the abandonment of lignite will have to be replaced by more expensive power plants, which, however, would first have to be built. And every energy expert wonders how the lost electricity will be replaced.

Here, too, the helpful RWE CEO Krebber distributes politically oriented tranquilizer pills: gas-fired power plants are to be built, which can be converted to hydrogen as quickly as possible. Krebber himself realizes that this is completely uneconomical : "It seems strange to plan new gas power plants in the middle of the biggest gas crisis". But he knows the counter deal of the federal government for its well-meaning chairman of the board. He says the federal government will "create a framework to enable investment in these plants," in other words, to support RWE with permanent subsidies from tax revenues. Krebber:" RWE will participate in this tender. I assume that a large part, if not all, will be provided by RWE."

RWE is getting out of the way : 5.9 GW of lignite will be closed in the Rhenish coalfield by 2030. As possible compensation, investments in 1 GW of unreliable renewables and 3 GW of taxpayer-subsidized gas-fired power plants are announced. The latter are to be fed 50 percent by hydrogen from 2030 and completely by hydrogen from 2035.

But it is completely illusory to provide these quantities of hydrogen for hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants by 2030. The steel industry alone needs 2 million t of hydrogen to convert 25 million t of pig iron production in the blast furnace with hydrogen. To produce just this amount of hydrogen, about 110 TWh of renewable electricity is needed. This is equivalent to today's entire onshore wind power production, not to mention the power for e-mobility, heat pumps, the chemical industry, air and truck traffic. Krebber's promise turns out to be the same cloud pushing we know from Economics Minister Habeck.

There will be no hydrogen for power plants and it will be unaffordable. We don't yet know how it will be transported or how it will be stored. The first small experimental turbine from Kawasaki is to be tested in 2024. But the reason given today is that RWE is on track to meet the 1.5 degree target of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In reality one wants to conceal one thing: RWE is looking the other way. RWE is no longer interested in what happens to Germany as a business location. Instead of fighting for green coal-fired power plants with CO2 capture in Germany, it wants to make two-thirds of its investments by 2030, about 25 billion euros abroad. Parallel to the press conference with Minister Habeck, it was announced that RWE is acquiring the U.S. solar and wind power company Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses for $6.8 billion.

If the miners in the opencast mines had hoped that their union would fight for a future for lignite, for example through further development into green lignite with CO2 capture, they were disabused. IGBCE Chairman Michael Vassiliadis merely pointed out that there must be no deviation from the promised state adjustment payments and early retirement pensions. In any case, no more resistance was to be expected from the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state party has long had nothing to do with industrial jobs in the Rhine region. That's why it is losing the support of skilled workers, engineers, workers in the trades and in industry.

Only the eastern state premiers did not allow themselves to be infected by the exit orgy from the only significant domestic energy source in the middle of the deepest energy crisis Germany has ever experienced. According to Minister President Reiner Haseloff, a phase-out before 2038 would "permanently weaken" Germany as an industrial location. "There will be an energy gap that we will not be able to close." The Minister President of Brandenburg, Dietmar Woidke, also reacted negatively: "The security of energy supply is now paramount. Our Lusatian lignite makes an indispensable contribution here."

Neither state premier was impressed by the impertinent, anti-employee and anti-industry slogans of Michael Kellner, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics. Kellner, who was the federal political director of the Greens from 2013 to 2021, had demanded: "Now it's time to aim for the 2030 phase-out target in eastern Germany as well. It would be fatal if economic future opportunities were squandered in eastern Germany because the state premiers of the SPD and CDU want to hold on to dirty coal."

But Kellner is an ideological politruk who puts the party line ahead of the country's interests. He could have read up on worldwide efforts to capture CO2 from combustion processes, as the Schwarze Pumpe coal-fired power plant in Lusatia developed 10 years ago. It is not the next stage of technical development of the CO2-free coal-fired power plant that counts, but the stupid prejudice of "dirty coal" cultivated at party conferences. CO2 capture, as it is now practiced in Norway, the USA and Canada, would reduce CO2 emissions faster and more cost-effectively than Habeck's and Krebber's phantoms of hydrogen power plants.

In the East, the danger associated with the lignite phase-out is being felt. The consequences of the oil boycott of the Druzhba pipeline are already being felt there. At the Leuna chemical park, production has been cut in half. In Schwedt, people fear for their future. The German Economics Minister's hope of having crude oil delivered via the port of Gdansk has not yet been realized because the Polish government is opposed to supplying the refinery as long as Russia's Rosneft has a stake in the refinery. It is not enough for the Polish government to place the refinery under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency. It is demanding expropriation.

When Schwedt and Leuna shut down, the entire East German chemical processing industry topples over, with domino effects from electrical engineering to mechanical engineering. The construction industry is also hit.100 percent of bitumen and asphalt in eastern Germany comes from Schwedt.

In a situation where industrial jobs are threatened by scarce and overly expensive energy sources such as gas, oil and electricity, further shutdowns must not be allowed to take place; instead, the energy supply must be expanded. This means producing our own natural gas, CO2-reduced lignite and nuclear energy. Instead, the German government is trying to buffer prices with ever new bailouts via government debt. That won't work for long.

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/rwe_w...nd_nix_wie_weg
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Its no longer just bored discussion to kill time, or grim joking, but reality materialising all around me. I see it everywhere now in my everyday life experience how this country is abolishing itself, destroys its economic and financial space and freedom to act - but all the time making bigger and bigger words and claimign to serve as an exmaple for the world.


Yes, an exmaple. For how, at no cost, not to run a country as long as you do not wish to see it committing suicide.



This is a journey down the spiral from which there is no more escape possible. Germany's fate is sealed.