"We cannot run an industrial nation only with pressure differences in the atmosphere. Stand up for weather-independent electricity!"

 

We're short of energy in New Zealand because we don't build enough reliable energy production, hampered by the RMA and relying too much on unreliables — so-called renewables, or 'green energy,' which need real back-up energy when sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow — and finding it damned difficult even to build these unreliable sometime-producers.

So, we are running short because we're shooting ourselves in the foot by not building enough. In Germany, they're running short because politicians decided to shut down the reliable (and clean) nuclear producers they had, and rely instead on unreliables — and on buying extra from France's reliable nuclear fleet.

So how's that going? A: It's expensive. So much so that German automakers are struggling. And B: well, as Staffan Reveman points out, whatever capacity is cited for unreliable energy production, it just doesn't produce it reliably, if at all:

German #wind power in the first 9 months of the year 2024. [Graph: Agorameter with 1h resolution]

The installed capacity is 70 gigawatts. Wind power delivered everything between almost nothing and

50 gigawatts. We see here that we cannot run an industrial nation only with pressure differences

in the atmosphere. Stand up for ... weather-independent electricity!

In the words of one local, "This country hat nicht alle Tassen im Schrank."

It goes double for us.