{"id":45992,"date":"2019-05-07T10:20:49","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T15:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45992"},"modified":"2019-05-07T10:20:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T15:20:55","slug":"the-reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-meant-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45992","title":{"rendered":"The Reason Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Reason Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\u201cThe<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Energiewende \u2014 the biggest political project since reunification \u2014 threatens to fail,\u201d reports Germany’s largest news magazine. DER SPIEGEL<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany\u2019s renewables energy transition, the Energiewende<\/em>, as an environmental model for the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset,\u201d thanks to the Energiewende<\/em>, wrote<\/a> a New York Times<\/em> reporter in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Germany as inspiration, the United Nations and World Bank poured billions into renewables like wind, solar, and hydro in developing nations like Kenya<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then, last year, Germany was forced to acknowledge that it had to delay its phase-out of coal, and would not meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction commitments.\u00a0It\u00a0announced plans to bulldoze an ancient church and forest in order to get at the coal underneath it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After renewables investors and advocates, including Al Gore and Greenpeace, criticized Germany, journalists came to the country\u2019s defense. \u201cGermany has fallen short of its emission targets in part because its targets were so ambitious,\u201d one of them argued <\/a>last summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the rest of the world made just half Germany\u2019s effort, the future for our planet would look less bleak,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSo Germany, don\u2019t give up. And also: Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Germany didn\u2019t just fall short of its climate targets. Its emissions have flat-lined since 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now comes a major article<\/a> in the country\u2019s largest newsweekly magazine, Der Spiegel<\/em>, titled, \u201cA Botched Job in Germany\u201d (“Murks in Germany<\/em>“). The magazine\u2019s cover shows broken wind turbines and incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Reason Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization Is Because They Were Never Meant To \u201cThe Energiewende \u2014 the biggest political project since reunification \u2014 threatens to fail,\u201d reports Germany’s largest news magazine. DER SPIEGEL Over the last decade, journalists have held up Germany\u2019s renewables energy transition, the Energiewende, as an environmental model for the world.  \u201cMany poor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4330,7921,359],"class_list":["post-45992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-der-spiegel","tag-forbes","tag-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45993,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45992\/revisions\/45993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}