Germany’s “Silent Catastrophe” …330,000 Households See Power Turned Off In One Year
By Paul Homewood
Reposted from NoTricksZone:
Many households are no longer able to afford electricity and are seeing themselves catapulted back to the 19th century. According to t-online.de here, “More than 330,000 households in Germany have seen their electricity cut off over the past year alone.”
The German site writes that those hit the hardest are households on welfare, i.e. society’s poorest and most vulnerable.
German politician Eva Bulling-Schröter of the Left Party has called it “a silent catastrophe“.
Not only have the poor been broadsided by the high electricity prices, but so have energy intensive industries. This all makes many average workers uneasy. Over the past years a number of German plants have been moving their operations to less expensive locations abroad, especially in the chemical industry. Traditional power companies have also been getting creamed, seeing billions of losses and thousands of layoffs.
Read the full story here:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Daddy, what did people do before candles? Electricity my son”.
All these regressive policies hurt the poor. Only the rich get rewarded for installing greencrap.
Not even an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, as it was all so predictable. So why does Germany (and the UK, of course) want to further disadvantage the poor and cripple its industry?
The UN’s 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is the driving force with climate change policies in the vanguard. It is a massive world socialist program to strip developed nations of their industry and disperse it to developing countries.
Dear Prime Minister,
Please, please, get fracking, build new CCGT’s and stop the huge subsidies paid for UNRELIABLE GREEN CRAP.
Britain could be GREAT again
The only time Britain was ‘Great Britain’ was when we had “The Empire” & we were supplied by millions of slaves around the world & at home, then, only 1% reaped the benefits from the 99%, now its about 4% taking from 96%.
To be a ‘winner’ you need to have ‘losers’, do you really want to live in a world mainly populated by losers ?
Read your history books.
As per the post, Germany is shown to be in trouble with the energy generation route they have taken.
I want the UK government to change the direction of their green energy policies to provide inexpensive energy, which helps the poorest.
By removing vast subsidies, which go to the rich, for unreliable energy generation. Based on green propaganda of non-proven science, that CO2 warms the planet, is preventing us from getting that inexpensive energy.
The country is still called Great Britain, but it most certainly isn’t great whilst sticking to the constraints of the Climate Change Act 2008
That’s utter garbage. Given that the UK was the world’s largest industrial and manufacturing power and the world’s financial centre, What were all these “slaves” providing exactly?
And the world isn’t a zero-sum game – as is obvious to the densest moron. Is there now far, far more wealth in the world than there was in 1800? Yes by a vast factor. So where did that come from if it’s a zero-sum?
To believe otherwise is to believe obviously false claims about the world and about history, and makes you very, very sad.
“we were supplied by millions of slaves around the world & at home”
There were no slaves in the UK and we were the driving force in abolishing the slave trade.
Our success was in the main due to our starting and leading the Industrial Revolution, and had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery.
Why don’t YOU read your history books, cretin?
So take that chip off your shoulder – and GET A JOB!
catweazle666 – you say-
“There were no slaves in the UK”, then you call me a “cretin”.
Britain has had slaves throughout history, documented from Roman time’s right up to 2017.
Taking the Industrial Revolution as an example –
The mills, mines quarries & ironworks all used indentured workers (look it up, it’s nothing to do with false teeth) it’s a form of legalized slavery; plus the workhouses, asylums & convents all used the inmates as slave workers (the catholic convents were still using unmarried mothers until the 1960s).
After Wilberforce succeeded with the slave trade act 1807, Britain embarked on a world wide indentured worker scheme starting with The British East India Co shipping millions of Indians & Chinese to the plantations overseas. That’s how we got huge amounts of cheap raw materials to feed the Industrial Revolution.
The system of indentured labour was officially abolished by British government in 1917 but still continues to today.
The Industrial Revolution was largely financed from the profits of the slave trade, (example – research where Richard Pennant got his cash from & how he ran his UK business ).
Your clothing, food, fuel, even the metal in your car & the tires it runs on have all been touched by modern day slavery. Worldwide there are +45million people living in modern slavery today. http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/
Modern UK slavery in 2017 is mainly ‘sex workers’ (~ 25% are children) plus some on building sites, domestic servitude, forced agricultural labour, cockle pickers….. Estimated at 13-20,000.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/modern-slavery
https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/slavery-uk/
You should be ashamed that YOUR ignorance allows this to go on.
Why don’t YOU read your history books, you ignorant tw@t.
More contentious garbage.
Get a life, you sad little child.
Obama’s EPA Director, Gina McCarthy, did not give a whit about the plight of West Virginia, the coal miners and their families or those being hit by escalating electricity bills. Apparently Germany has the same mindset. You just wonder how people can be so cold and uncaring about the people they are sworn to protect. Gina would not come to WV or other coal states–she did go to Philadelphia once. She probably thought she would need a visa and vaccinations to go into such backwoods areas. Good riddance to them all.
Fortunately, the new Director of EPA, Scott Pruitt, has a very different outlook. Already, the EPA establishment is in fear and trembling. Nice to see them experience what they have foisted on us for decades. At least under the Trump Administration THEY won’t go without light and heat as they had planned for the non-elite.
“You just wonder how people can be so cold and uncaring”
You only have to read some of the comments from Pierre’s resident trolls, “sod” & “Sebastian H” to see the Green mindset…
O/T – Pruit’s denial of CO2 being the Devils Gas isn’t going down too well in Guardian la la land!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/09/epa-scott-pruitt-carbon-dioxide-global-warming-climate-change
“Pruitt’s comments were quickly condemned by scientists, environmental activists and even his immediate predecessor as EPA chief, Gina McCarthy”
As if McCarthy had cred?
I see a good proportion of the scientific cognoscenti over at the Grauniad still believe that when the Arctic sea ice melts it will drown all the coastal cities.
It is well said, you can’t fix stupid.
I suppose the invaders have all the surplus cash flung at them?
What’s the context?
It’s less than 1% of homes, so NOT a catastrophe.
The 330K is Extraordinary Claim Do we have the extraordinary evidence? Well government report and even SOD isn’t disputing the ball park fig. Context : Germany has 37.5m households So it’s about 0.8%
Double counts? Does it count some households 3 times eg say they reconnect 2 times in one year ?
– How long are people off grid ? Is it only weeks.
Maybe 1% of homes are rebuilt each year ? That would cover it.
If it really is genuine families, is it showing in health stats ?
I tend to agree with Stewgreen on this… How homes homes had power turned off five years ago? Or 20 years ago?
What is showing up is the increasing problem of “wood rustling”. Foresters in Germany are now advised to keep cut logs in locked storage.
I’m sure the MSM is quiet about this because we wouldn’t want to alarm all those poor people into thinking there’s a chance they could freeze to death or be out of work so the elite can have a tax write off.
I have to say that all the electricity meters are being changed in France apparently at the behest of the EU. The new ones can not only be read remotely, they can also be used to turn off the supply remotely. The meters seemingly lead to an increase in the bill for the consumer (anecdotal rather than demonstrated with figures) of 20% or more.
2009, a great year for a terrific reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in Germany – down to 907 million tonnes [there was a piddling issue of the collapse of the world’s banks around that time also]. But then [ignoring emissions rising to 945 million tonnes in 2013], emissions tumbled to 902 million tonnes in 2015 [a fall of well over 0.5%]: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets
In 2009, Germany’s gross electricity generation from all renewables was a mere 94,912 GWh, but by 2015 [a result of massive expenditures] it had rocketed to 187,364 GWh – an increase of 97.4%. Assuming some increase in efficiencies of all of the technologies involved, it is reasonable to assume that installed capacity might not have been so impressive – say, just 90%: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
The raison d’etre for deploying renewables technologies for electricity generation – low-carbon electricity.
The lessons all nations can learn from Germany: Increase renewables by 90% and you’ll achieve an emissions reduction of well above 0.5%.
Now add to that cutting off electricity to a third of a million domestic consumers, while exporting record amount.
Germany’s energy policy – way to go !! Showing us how to get to 100%, zero-carbon renewables future.
German carbon emissions rise in 2016 despite coal use drop
German energy-related CO₂ emissions rose almost 1 percent in 2016, despite a fall in coal use and the ongoing expansion of renewable energy sources, according to first estimates by energy market research group AG Energiebilanzen. A rise in overall energy consumption covered in parts by an increased use of natural gas and diesel for electricity, heat and transport further dented the chances that Germany will reach its 2020 climate targets. The head of Germany’s utilities lobby BDEW said that a stronger focus on natural gas could help to bring emissions down more quickly. [Corrects switched labelling in graph on share in primary energy consumption 1990-2016]
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-carbon-emissions-rise-2016-despite-coal-use-drop