Friday, February 14, 2020

Steffen Kotré, January 31, 2020, Withdrawal from Coal, Electricity Price.

Steffen Kotré
Withdrawal from Coal. Electricity Price.
German Bundestag, January 31, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/144, pp. 17988-17990

[Steffen Kotré is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Brandenburg. He is an engineer. He here introduces an AfD motion opposing the German government’s policy of ending coal production in Germany.]


Many thanks for the floor.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

I see yet again no minister on the government bench.

          (Federal minster Christine Lambrecht waves from the government bench)

Ach so, excuse me. I take it back. To the theme.

Welcome to Madhouse Germany! Nonsense reigns in our country. With the coal withdrawal, the government damages its own economy; approximately 100 to 150 billion euros will be taken from the citizens’ pockets in the form of tax money and the price of electricity. That alone is already nonsense, but is also nonsense in that there is no basis for it and the specific aim in view cannot be attained.

After the withdrawal from nuclear energy, the Federal government now wishes to withdraw from a second domestic and valuable source of energy. They wish to destroy half the assured electricity production, half the assured output, 43 gigawatts, without an assured replacement. That means that soon we will not have a sufficient supply of electricity. The consequences will be devastating, ladies and gentlemen.  

The withdrawal from coal is the product of an infantile policy; over-hasty, guided by impulse, and without understanding. It is without foundation; it is in regards its intended purpose completely inappropriate; it is un-social and dangerous, ladies and gentlemen. The German coal CO2 portion of world-wide emissions is 0.6 percent and is thus negligible. It is doubtful whether a reduction can practically effect a decrease in the rise of temperature. The climate model can indeed at not point apprehend or clarify the past climate.

The withdrawal from coal is therefore insupportable and contributes nothing to achieving its stated goals. It will however contribute to the un-social, further increase in the price of electricity: 30 cents per kilowatt-hour per household is the world’s highest. Hearty congratulations, Frau Merkel, on this position! In that regard, there is in the CDU/CSU government program for 2005 to 2009, I cite:

Almost nowhere in Europe is energy so expensive as in Gemany. That is the result of an ideological policy.

Thus, ladies and gentlemen of the CDU/CSU, expensive electricity and the energy transformation are an ideological policy. You have acknowledged that. Yet today you yourselves implement this ideological policy! Under your government, the price of electricity has increased an additional 50 percent. Please make a note of this figure! Besides, you should in any case stop in and rummage through your older programs.

          Sylvia Kotting-Uhl (Greens): You are still in favor of the old programs!

One or two of these may still be correct.

Frank Passemann (AfD): They have long since forgotten that!

Please do that sometime.

The un-social policy disproportionately burdens those of low income and damages the German economy. A citation from the Bavarian chemical association:

It – that is, the price of electricity – must be reduced. Otherwise, internationally competitive production in Germany will soon no longer be possible…The reinvestment quotient of the energy intensive industry in Germany already in the year 2000 was less than the write-off…A creeping de-industrialization is already for years underway here
  
Or take Wacker Chemical, one of the largest of electricity consumers. I cite:

The question of a more secure, of a before all interference-free electricity supply on a large scale and at competitive prices, emerges as an immediate, existential concern

And a re-location of production to the USA is being considered.

Please once again make a note…The withdrawal from coal plus the energy transformation equals de-industrialization and loss of prosperity.
         
The transfer network manager predicts for 2021 a shortfall in output of 5.5 gigawatts. It remains completely unclear as to how this gap can be closed. There is no strategy, no concept. At times of peak output, we will not be able to draw from foreign countries, since then there also the capacity is reached. Gas power plants are too expensive, must be subsidized and are available at the earliest in ten years. The costs will be distributed to the citizens. Costs without end, ladies and gentlemen.

The unstable electricity from renewables does not have a guaranteed performance; that is to say, one cannot proceed on the basis that it will be available at a given point in time: The wind does not always blow, the nights are dark and electricity cannot be stored for industrial purposes. Technologies like hydrogen or fuel cells are not competitive. Fuel cell technology has been around for 180 years and it will be here in the future to serve us. Yet were it the future, it would have long since have been put to use. But it plainly is not because it is not competitive.

The electricity supply is becoming more insecure, the network outages more frequent and longer. Energy intensive businesses can no longer rely 100 percent on the electricity supply. Electricity is becoming a scarcity good, the German energy policy a socialist, scarcity economy, ladies and gentlemen. And what can happen during an area-wide electricity outage can be read of in the 2011 report of the Committee for Education, Research and Technology Assessment: After a few days, there can be the first deaths.

The Renewable Energy Law – we can remind ourselves – is a planned economy law, leading to exemptions. Industrial firms and such which export are partially exempted from the EEG assessment. And so non-exporting firms, such as the manual labor [Handwerk] bakeries, must pay the EEG assessment while exporting, industrial firms, with the same goods and the same customer base, do not. Bakery goods of the exempted industrial firms – to stay with the example – can thus be offered at a lower price than those of the manual labor firms. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the state-ordered distortion of competition.

Yet one word on nuclear energy. We should put aside the poisoned and ideological discussions and the left-green disaster fantasies and test and develop new concepts for new reactors. Part of the CDU is also for that. It is to be thereby noted that the worst examples of Fukushima and Tschernobyl cannot happen here –

          Gesine Lötzsch (Linke): That is what was earlier thought!

 – and the disposal site problem is on the way to being solved.

          Joseph Weingarten (SPD): Which solution?

Even for the CO2 fantasists is that indeed the right way.

It is thus high time for a policy change in Germany. No more planned economy, socialist experiments around here! Back to a healthy, human sensibility and an ethic of responsibility.

Many thanks.


[Translated by Todd Martin]