The Wall Street Journal has a short editorial in this weekend’s edition on Germany’s ongoing energy transition failure. Under the headline, “When the wind didn’t blow in Germany,” the Journal documents this policy failure with stunning statistics.
New numbers are in and for the first three months of 2025, the Journal reports that renewable energy contributed only 47 percent of the nation’s electricity needs, down from 56 percent in the same period in 2024.
Even though, on paper, more renewable capacity was added since last year, unfavorable weather conditions, with cold, little wind, and little rain contributed to the disappointing result. Extra sunlight early this year made little difference in the otherwise dark German winter.
This being Germany, they have a compound word for it: Dunkelflaute (“still darkness”).
The incoming national government plans to press ahead with more renewables but is hedging its bet with 20 gigawatts of new natural-gas power. No nuclear, of course.
A fun geography fact: the city of International Falls, Minnesota (on the Canadian border), lies further north than Munich, Germany.
Here in Minnesota, we’re trying the same impossible trick as the Germans under the banner of 100 percent “carbon-free” electricity by 2040. The year 2040 would seem to be impossibly far in the future. But 15 years in infrastructure planning terms is the day after tomorrow. The current carbon-free plan for Minnesota in 2040 is to retain the state’s two nuclear power plants and keep 20 percent of the local grid running on natural gas.
As I never tire of pointing out, the chemical formula for methane (natural gas) is CH4. The “C” stands in for carbon. But such are the fictions needed to keep the lights on.
