Welcome Fritz to London.
Pleased to have you back.
You were here last in 2012 to give the annual lecture.
What has changed in Germany since then?
I mean, we read that the green energy transition is finished.
We had a former secretary of state saying
there was no energy generated for a few weeks this winter.
So therefore the Energiewende is kaput!
Not so fast, Benny.
I think the system is much more resilient as we thought.
The first part of the Energiewende, that was closing down the nuclear plants, 30 % of the power,
now we have the second part that means also to get rid of coal and
until now we see that coal is the backup for the Energiewende.
If we did not have lignite and coal, it would be plunging immediately.
We have other reasons that we are not in really serious problems.
We have 9 neighbour countries where we can put the overcapacity when wind is too much there
as base energy to Poland, to Switzerland, whatever.
And we have a third reason that it is working
that we have a grid which is really over engineered by German engineers
They are very carefully looking that nothing goes wrong
From that point we are profiting from this old engineering tradition.
But every year the renewables are mounting…
We see that the problems are lurking behind the corner.
I think in the next 2 to 5 years we will see whether we are really in the dead-end.
OK, so the lights are still on, electricity is still generated,
most of the nuclear power plants have been shut down.
My understanding is that still 40 % of electricity is generated by coal,
but this is now supposedly being phased out.
The whole thing costs about 25 billion a year,
but CO2 emissions are rising
Something isn't going in the right direction,
so you spend like crazy but CO2 emissions are going up.
How is that possible?
That is coming out of the system of the Renewables Act.
The wind and solar power is going to the exchange for zero.
It is required that it comes first,
so 30 % of the power is going to the exchange
and shifting all other productions like hard coal, gas, out of the market.
The cost is 25 billions for renewables,
but they shift away the production of gas and hard coal
which is a bit lower than lignite
so the effect is not a CO2 reduction.
So are you saying the direct effect of prioritizing renewables
makes coal actually more competitive?
Makes the cheap coal more competitive. The cheaper coal is lignite
and some newer coal plants and gas have no chance in this scheme
and gas is a little bit lower in CO2 emissions.
It is contradictory in itself.
Therefore, you see, we have stable emissions,
we are also stable in consumption of electricity, which hasn't been reduced.
That was the target of the government, –20 % until 2020, but they will never achieve that.
And they will also never achieve –25 % in CO2.
Right, so every household in Germany now has to pay roughly 300 euros per year
to subsidize the wealthy landowners and the farmers and the people with big houses
who invest in renewables,
but there doesn't seem to be any real outrage about it.
Yes, that is interesting to see,
but I think this is covered up by the very good economic situation in which Germany is.
In other circumstances there would be a totally different picture
to have an additional load not only on households, but also on enterprises.
Beside the steel and alluminium production, which is a relief from the renewable levy
that is the extra load by the Renewables Law is double of the exchange prices, it's a heavy load.
But the population and the households, they have been told:
you have to pay this to save the world.
One of the reasons that there is a little bit of complacency in that respect is
that the government has achieved that the people in Germany have a bad conscience.
Wrong things have been done and we have to do now a little bit
and then an extra burden to help the world.
This is only working in good times and we are in good times in Germany.
So there is very little party political opposition?
There is no party political opposition in the parliament, none.
But I understand that there is growing local opposition
to some of the projects of the Energiewende.
Yes.
And where does that come from?
That is interesting to see that the opposition is also coming from the
outer parliamentary movement that was in the 1970s anti-nuclear.
There was also an enormous support in the Parliament for nuclear
and now we have an enormous support for wind and solar.
But in the rural areas we see that the people are saying
that the urban elites are realizing their dreams of a sustainable electricity
on the loss of our homeland.
They see that their surroundings are destroyed.
There are 800 initiatives fighting against new wind farms
which are now placed more and more
in the near of home areas on the one hand, because they need space.
That is the problem for the renewables, they need a lot of space!
And the second is, they are going now into forests,
into very sensitive areas, where birds are now in danger
Therefore there is a huge resistance that is coming from the nature movement.
So it's very interesting that there is a new Green movement against the Green political price
who is saying we have to do this, we have to destroy the German nature to help the Earth.
I am quite sure that this is the most decisive point in the next five years
and that movement will come to Parliament
in different parties – in the Liberals or the AfD, whatever,
they will come to the Parliament and speak out what happens in reality in the rural areas.
Tell me a little bit about these divisions among the conservationist movement in Germany.
So you have the big Green NGOs who all campaign for renewable energy,
and then you have conservationists so concerned about the negative impact of these projects
on the environment, on wildlife.
You yourself are chairman of the Wildlife Foundation.
How do you deal with this division within the environmental movement?
What we see is that we don't see any implication until now by climate change
but what we see is that biodiversity is really destroyed by the measures against climate change.
We see that for instance very important birds of prey like the red kite,
we have investigated as foundation, is really endangered by wind farms.
We have 1,000 sacrifices per year and we have only 12,000 of them in Germany.
So it is foreseeable that in 10 to 15 years it will be not there.
Therefore the Green movement has a big problem.
The Green Party has decided to go that way whatever it costs, whatever it costs to nature.
Therefore we see now that the nature organisations are splitting,
some are supporting the "official political view",
we have to save the world, and even if we have to destroy our own nature...
There are more and more that are stepping out of this movement
and we are creating new forms of initiatives, even new organisations have been founded
who say: no, nature conservation is our first target and all other targets have to be secondary
when the official Green line is the opposite.
It is very interesting to hear about these splits and divisions
because obviously Germany always had a kind of trail-blazing tradition
in environmental policy making and thinking and so on.
So, do you think that with the growing number of renewable energy projects
we are talking about wind farms, solar farms, biofuels, deforestation for biofuels, wood pallets,
and all sorts of big projects that can have a strong impact on the environment,
do you see that this division will actually happen in other parts of the world?
I think we in that way we are also really the vanguard, because we are very developed in that sense.
On the other hand, we have a very romantic and nature orientated tradition in Germany,
so I don't know how France and UK and others are looking at this.
But if you imagine that to fulfil the targets of the Energiewende in Germany,
to build 55,000 wind turbines
and if you spread it over the country, then you have every 2.7 km a turbine
and then you can imagine that you are totally shifting the landscape,
that you destroy nature which needs these landscapes
We know that some investigators say that turbines are now killing 240,000 bats [a year]
because the bats are living in the forest and the wind turbine needs a street to its site in the forest
and bats are flying through this free space to the turbine
so they are attracted by the turbine and they are clever animals,
they see the rotors by their radar system and they go through the rotors,
but what they don't know is that behind the rotor there is low pressure.
The low pressure bursts their lungs and then they are killed.
That is something which is forbidden by law.
You cannot place something there that systematically kills endangered species.
The policy is looking away from that, but the people more and more hint at that.
Therefore I think that is really the most important thing to change the way of energy policy in Germany.
Not the cost, maybe the stability of the grid,
which is also something that really every person is concerned about.
But the nature is the thing which in the end is underestimated by the government.
How do you explain either the silence or even ignorance of the Green NGOs
when it comes to manifest destruction of the environment and animals?
Honestly speaking, the Green Party has never been really a nature conservation party.
From the very beginning it was a left party who needed a green cloak, a camouflage.
The target was to change society, to transform it, they needed a good argument for that.
The best argument they could find is that if you don't fight against industry,
against technology, against capitalism – we will burn the world.
And this message went to the brains of the people, reached the people.
They believed them, that it's true.
That is the main cause for all this Energiewende
Why are we doing such silly things as to pay for wind farms
if they are not able to bring the electricity into the grid
because the grid is full, there is too much wind in the area – we pay for it!
We pay for something that has never been produced, that is silly!
But why we do this? We do this because there is such a big motion behind that
and that is the climate catastrophe, which we are expecting.
that is the driver for all these things
and therefore the Greens have no sensors for the truth, that's not really their thing.
If they are so concerned about the climate, as you say,
which is something perhaps also questionable,
why are they against nuclear energy?
Because you could argue that if you really want to decarbonise,
the best way of decarbonising is to build nuclear power plants.
So that does not add up.
You are absolutely right.
The beginning of the movement of the Greens was the fight against nuclear,
not only nuclear power but also nuclear arms.
and that's the same source when we came out.
Therefore you're right – that it is a contradiction I cannot explain, because you're right,
It was very silly to step out of the nuclear
because after Fukushima we were the only country to step out of it, in one week.
and even if you look at Japan, where the failure has been made,
they are already again into it and no other country followed us.
To think that you can substitute cheap and CO2-free energy by intermittent expensive energy,
that is one of the silly things of the German Energiewende.
It was the Schröder's government who said OK, 2032 we will throw it out.
So we had then 25 years to really make a prudent step to a new energy system.
What we are doing now is really a very bumpy road that we cross.
In Germany there are about million families that are benefiting directly from the transition
in either because they own the land or they are farmers or they have solar panels on their houses.
These are the wealthiest families and the most influential families in Germany.
Is there any scenario where realism comes back and the government actually says hold on,
perhaps that was not the best for our nation.
You are right that there are huge vested interests.
For a turbine you receive 75,000 euro per year and that's for 20 years.
That's just for the piece of land?
Just for the piece of land.
You are also right that it is a social transfer from the working class and poor people to the rich,
because poor people have to pay for it and they have no land and they have no roof to profit from that.
That is something that happened already, but it leads not to an implosion of the system.
I think the system has three challenges.
The first is: will climate change really happen in that way what the IPCC has told us?
What is in the next ten years if temperature is not going up?
Then the people will doubt – for 30 years you are wrong, why should you be right for the next 100 years?
The second is: the stability of the grid is more and more in danger
If you have only a blackout for two or one day, it is a huge disaster.
And the third, I think, is really the destruction of nature in Germany that is a growing concern.
If you steal from the Germans their forests,
you should not underestimate the power which can grow out of this mood.
Fritz, thank you very much.
You will have obviously the talk tonight in the House of Commons.
We are all looking forward to your talk. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Benny.
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