The news on German energy never gets any better. It seems as if they lurch from miserable New Age renewable schemes to desperately throwing cash at the flaming remnants trying to mitigate the fallout, then lather, rinse repeat. In the meantime, for all the promises of greener pastures, the wind doesn’t blow, winter is cold, the Russians start a war – the Germans can’t manipulate a thing to fall their way.

Wind was supposed to be the savior for the country’s transition to renewables, scheduled to be completed by 2045. That’s not humming along like they’d game-planned it. Last year and this past summer, in fact, the wind itself turned downright hostile to producing anything, and flat-out refused to blow. During the European winter, repeated large-scale high-pressure systems combined with wide-scale low-cloud coverage routinely produce something called the dreaded cold “dunkelflaute” or “anti-cyclonic gloom” (they’re both great terms).

In the coming decades, the European energy system is expected to become increasingly reliant on non-dispatchable generation such as wind and solar power. Under such a renewable energy scenario, a better characterization of the extreme weather condition ‘Dunkelflaute’, which can lead to a sustained reduction of wind and solar power, is important.

This winter’s forecasts are looking somewhat grimmer than the norm. The dunkelflaute will dunk on your grid.

We’re suffering curse of (German word) ‘Dunkelflaute’. Electric demand 43.77GW unsurprisingly. Wind 1.11GW, 2.54%. Nuclear at full tilt (most turning off in next couple of years) 5.77GW, 13.18%. Solar (lots of panels covered in snow) 0.21GW, 0.48%. #renewableenergy failing today. pic.twitter.com/2Pc0Aorta7

— Craig Mackinlay MP (@cmackinlay) December 12, 2022

German wind generation is also in jeopardy because the wind industry itself is facing a crisis. Long the recipient of subsidies and stipends, those sources of largesse are drying up, even as the need for power becomes greater. It’s only proving that the sector cannot stand on its own.

Wind energy is supposed to step in and play a key role in supplying Germany with energy as other sources get cut off. But that too is not going to plan.

“Nordex is closing its plant in Rostock, Siemens Gamesa is sliding deep into the red and at Vestas the workforce is on strike,” reports Blackout News.

The German government aims to solve the country’s massive energy woes by doubling wind energy output over the next decade or so, but wind parks just aren’t getting built and orders are “collapsing sharply”, falling by “more than a third in the third quarter” at Siemens Gamesa year-on-year.

…Government reforms have to have “driven turbine manufacturers into cutthroat competition” and the German market “has collapsed in recent years,” Blackout News adds. “For the market leaders Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex and Enercon, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find financiers willing to invest in wind turbines.

It’s already snowing in Germany and 28° near Ramstein, which is early for this time of year. It’s the last thing anyone needs, from people wondering how they’re going to afford to heat their homes (including our son and his friends stationed there), to the government wondering how they’re going to keep the lights on.

Part of the backtracking as unreliable renewables fail in the face of “weather” is returning to the very power generation sources long reviled by the people driving the change. Coal, for instance. There aren’t too many people bad-mouthing it at the moment.

Coal has made a comeback in Germany this year, as Europe’s largest economy turns to the dirty fuel to power it through an energy crisis.

More than a third (36.3%) of the electricity fed into the German power grids between July and September came from coal-fired power plants, compared with 31.9 percent in the third quarter of 2021, according to German statistics office Destatis.

Long demonised by Germany’s Green party, which leads some of the government’s top ministries, coal was set to be phased out by 2030, but Russia’s war with Ukraine and gas export curbs, brought coal back into favour.

Coal-to-power generation output rose by 13.3% year-on-year to 42.9 terawatt hours (TWh) in the three months of July-September, during which overall German power output – at 118.1 TWh – lagged the same period in 2021 by 0.5 percent, Destatis said.

Gas generation rose slightly, despite high prices, as wind and hydro power output were low, and domestic nuclear output also fell in July-Sept.

It’s amazing what desperation can do for one’s popularity. The situation is so dire, whoever thought you’d read a GERMAN news item like this, from October?

A wind farm is being dismantled in western Germany to make way for an expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in a “paradoxical” situation highlighting the current prioritization of energy security over clean energy in Europe’s biggest economy.

Hey – they hate themselves for doing it all they want, but at least they’re warm and can read the instructions on the Cup O’ Noodles.

All this comes at an enormous cost, not only to consumers buffeted by repeated bad decisions on the part of their government but to the German government itself. As I said in the intro, the powers that be are madly tap-dancing through self-induced crisis after crisis and throwing money at the flaming wreckage in an attempt to cauterize the wounds.

Germany is bleeding cash to keep the lights on. Almost half a trillion dollars, and counting, since the Ukraine war jolted it into an energy crisis nine months ago.

That’s the cumulative scale of the bailouts and schemes the Berlin government has launched to prop up the country’s energy system since prices rocketed and it lost access to gas from main supplier Russia, according to Reuters calculations.

And it may not be enough.

“How severe this crisis will be and how long it will last greatly depends on how the energy crisis will develop,” said Michael Groemling at the German Economic Institute (IW).

“The national economy as a whole is facing a huge loss of wealth.”

The money set aside stands at up to 440 billion euros ($465 billion), according to the calculations, which provide the first combined tally of all of Germany’s drives aimed at avoiding running out of power and securing new sources of energy.

That equates to about 1.5 billion euros a day since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Or around 12% of national economic output. Or about 5,400 euros for each person in Germany.

Europe’s preeminent economy, long a byword for prudent planning, now finds itself at the mercy of the weather. Energy rationing is a risk in the event of a long cold spell this winter, Germany’s first in half a century without Russian gas.

Who knew wholesale conversion to completely untested and radically inefficient energy sources – simply to fall in line with fanatics following their progressive ignis fatuus further into the Green swamp – would result in the swift and stunning collapse of hard-won western “standards of living”? That’s not at all the earth-friendly Utopia that was promised.

The German money drain is going to get even worse because, in addition to the gazillions already being spent subsidizing citizens’ energy bills and nationalizing energy companies to keep them afloat, the state is going to fork over another astonishing sum to take on one of those energy companies’ risky debts.

After setting aside almost half a trillion dollars to date tackling its energy crisis, Germany is also poised to take on the risks associated with 216 billion euros ($229 billion) of derivatives built up by energy giant Uniper.

Germany is nationalising Uniper in what is the biggest corporate bailout in the country’s history, after Russia’s move to choke off gas threw Europe’s biggest economy into chaos.

Uniper (UN01.DE) has already booked billions of euros of losses on derivatives, exacerbating a crisis as it rushed to plug the gap left after Russia turned off the taps. But even before the Ukraine conflict, the gas giant was under pressure and had to turn to German state bank KfW (KFW.UL) for support.

…Like other energy firms, Uniper uses derivatives, such as securing an option to sell gas at a set price in the future, to guard against energy price swings. These carry risks in themselves, however, and have become costly to maintain.

And, as with anything involved in trading, no one is really clear on what’s going on.

…Uniper has already attracted the attention of officials at the European Central Bank, as well as some in the European Parliament. Some officials fear energy companies are acting as de facto traders, but without regulatory oversight applied to banks, one person familiar with the matter has told Reuters.

…”It depends on the structure of the trades – but here, we don’t fully see what is happening,” said Slatten, who wants energy companies to be more transparent about derivatives.

That’s great if it’s a private company and tanks. If the state’s acquired it, what happens to the country if there’s a little cabal of SBFs wheeling and dealing?

DUNKELFLAUTE. That’s what.