Talk:Energiewende

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Ain't energy transition a general term of a societies move from one source of energy o an other, rather then the specific move from coal & nuclear energy to reneweble in Germany? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.170.227.131 (talk) 12:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

If you talk about Germany (Energiewende) as the article currently does, then no. This term is used to describe the efforts to replace fossil fuel and nuclear power sources with renewable sources. I don't know if this term is more generically used in the English language. 82.209.173.81 (talk) 19:35, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Guanolto (that's myself) and Reinthal have been discussing where this article belongs. It was a stub article, and I then started adding sections to it by translating parts of the corresponding German-language Wikipedia article. In the meantime, people have changed its content from an overall focus to an article dealing only with developments in Germany. In order to preserve my article and continue adding to it, on Fri12Apr13 I will rename this article "Energy Transition in Germany" and make a new article "Energy Transition", which will again have a more global treatment of the issue. I will also add links to connect these articles with each other and with others whose topics overlap with them. Scott Ellsworth (talk) 01:43, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I propose this article should be merged with Energy Transition Ottawakismet (talk) 17:12, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. Although the two articles may look very similar at the moment, they are developing in different directions. One is about the issue in general; the other is specific just to what's happening in Germany. The big problem with trying to keep them the same is that then people keep pulling the one article in two different directions, each making changes that are not acceptable to the other group. Personally, I'm working on the general article, and I don't like people coming in and rewriting it so that it pertains only to Germany. Scott Ellsworth (talk) 16:57, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

The sentences *** "Industry has had their rates frozen and so the increased costs of the Energiewende have been passed on to consumers, who have had rising electricity bills. Germans in 2013 had some of the highest electricity costs in Europe.[8] In comparison, their neighbour France has some of the cheapest in the EU (#7 out of 27)." *** is not very precise. I'd even consider it pro nuclear biased. While the price for private customers and small business is high in Germany, the price at the energy exchange (EEX) and the price for industy and large scale consumers is one of the lowest as those consumers are exempt from the cost for subsidizing renewables. The electricy supply in France is soley based on EdF, a tax subsidized state owned enterprise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.138.39.55 (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

"The key policy document outlining the Energiewende was published by the German government in September 2010, some six months before the Fukushima nuclear accident." That's somewhat misleading if not plain wrong. Key to the "Energiewende" is the EEG from 2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Act The reference to Fukushima also implies that the energy transition equals the nuclear phaseout. That is a popular misconception. 92.206.201.238 (talk) 13:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Space requirements
I deleted the claim that there isn't enough space for a energy transition in Germany. The calculations were based on the ridiculous claim that the energy transition would only use solar farms to generate electricity, whereas in reality it is mostly wind turbines and solar roofs with a lot less space requirements. There were calculation errors in it, too. And last but not least it was WP:OR, so even if you ignore the mistakes the deletion was mandatory. I also checked my literature. Armaroli and Balzani dicuss the point of space requirements in a global context and conclude: "CSP and solar PV plants do have a non-negligible footprint, but they do not need much spacing areas. Altogether, it has been estimated that the above mentioned plan would require an additional area of about 0.74% of the global land surface for footprint and 1.18% for spacing, which reduce to about 0.41% and 0.59%, respectively, if 50% of the wind energy were over the oceans.73 Therefore, although the development of renewable energies requires the use of considerable land areas, it is not limited by space requirement." (Nicola Armaroli, Vincenzo Balzani, Towards an electricity-powered world. In: ''Energy and Environmental Science 4, (2011), 3193-3222, S. 3203 .) And Volker Quaschning states that solar farms in Germany can produce 140 TWh (rougly a quarter of the German electricity demand) using only 0.2 million ha. (Volker Quaschning, ''Regenerative Energiesysteme", Hanser 2013, p. 359.) which would mean that for providing the whole German electricity demand with solar farms there would be needed only 0,8-0,9 million ha, or 8000-9000 km² This ist only just over a thenth of the Bavarian territory. So the calculations were, as I said in the beginning, WP:OR and plain wrong. Andol (talk) 14:54, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

I have changed the wording of the last sentence in criticisms. I did not intend to change the meaning. There seemed to be an abrupt change in style at that point because of being written by another author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Graemem56 (talk • contribs) 11:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Example for 'energy conservation' is wrong (in introduction)
The article states "An example of an effective energy conservation measure is improved insulation for buildings" — this however remains an example of energy efficiency. An example of energy conservation would be to turn down the thermostat. My viewpoint is in agreement with the article on energy conservation and also with usage in the literature, for instance:

I about to make the necessary changes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 16:57, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite of introduction
I am planning to rewrite the introduction section so that it is more specific to Germany. If you want to make suggestions below, I will try and incorporate them. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:30, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * My draft is at User:RobbieIanMorrison/sandbox/energiewende. I will wait two weeks (till 27 May 2016) for comments before transferring it across.  RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 09:14, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * ✅. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Rename page to "Energiewende in Germany"
I believe this page would be better served by the title "Energiewende in Germany". Any comments? RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 21:40, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe. Is Energiewende more common in english than energy transition? Andol (talk) 00:30, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is with the translation of "Energiewende" as "energy transition". The translation is poor. That it is the product of German political parties and German federal ministries doesn't make it less wrong. A more appropriate translation would be "energy revolution", but that has negative connotations in German, which is probably why it wasn't chosen. So I am for avoiding the pitfalls of translation entirely and just using the German term for it. "Energy transition in Germany" is simply too misleading. --Rhombus (talk) 09:05, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 09:20, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree with "energy transition" being a poor translation. "Transition" is used in cases like the Spanish transition to democracy, Transition economy or Phase transition to designate a substantial change in the state of matter that is not accomplished in a large coup or otherwise overnight, but involves a transitional period. But more importantly, it's not our translation at all. It is a widely introduced term, see the English- and French-language sources on Energy transition, often using the term beyond the German context. In Google nGram, following a short peak of Energiewende – interestingly between 1994 and 2002 – "energy transition" has become again the clearly more widespread term, and should therefore be used. --PanchoS (talk) 10:44, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not disputing that the term 'energy transition' is a real term, nor that it is widely used. I am saying that it is referring to something else, and that it does not accurately convey the meaning of the term "Energiewende" in German. The German term describes a radical energy system transformation with a short time horizon. In fact, the term has its origins in the "Wende", the term used to describe the peaceful but very sudden democratization that happened in East Germany in 1990 -- so it's not a coincidence that your Google nGram shows the "short peak" between 1994 and 2002. Further, the verb "wenden" primarily means to "turn around", i.e., make a 180-degree turn and travel in the opposite direction. Please maintain the historical perspective; that the original targets (at least for electricity) have not just been met but exceeded by a large margin (32.5 % from renewable sources in 2015), should not make us forget that when this term was first used, the percentage of electricity production from renewable sources in Germany was about 4 %, almost all of which was hydroelectric. So the radical nature of the original plan to switch entirely to renewable energy sources is not disputed. The term "energy transition" (as used by Vaclav Smil, say) describes phenomena in global energy systems and is far more general, and not least, it is Smil's thesis that energy system changes happen slowly. Anyway, we can completely avoid any dispute about the translation by simply using Energiewende as a loanword. --Rhombus (talk) 12:35, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Not saying it was a mere coincidence, but IMO it is surprising that the use of Energiewende in English-language sources peaked between 1994 and 2002. This supports the notion of the actual political decisions starting with the 2000 Renewable Energy Sources Act being only reactions to a societal project that has previously been widely discussed and supported for years, and eventually became inevitable. The Energiewende started in 1990, was intermediately interrupted by the Merkel government's rollback, only to be continued in course by Merkel's second rollback following Fukushima. Targets may have been exceeded, but recently the Merkel government stepped on the brakes in order to deliberately slow down the hived-off transition. So the Energiewende is a genuine "transition", not a revolution, and iIn spite of its German-language name, the Energiewende is not at all comparable with the 1989/90 political Wende that took place within just half a year (September 1989–March 1990]). --[[User:PanchoS|PanchoS (talk) 17:16, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
 * A search on Google Scholar for "Energiewende" and English reporting shows the term can be regarded as a reasonably common loanword.  Moreover, the phrase "Energiewende in Germany" appears quite often too.  Regards to all. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 18:17, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

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Clarification needed (Biomass section)
The last part of this phrase about groundwater seems to be out of place: "Between 2004 and 2011 policies lead to around 7000 km² new maize-fields for biomass-energy by ploughing-up of at least 2700 km² of permanent grassland. This released large amounts of climate active gases, loss of biodiversity and potential of groundwater recharge."

Shouldn't it be something along the lines of "...and potential for reduced groundwater recharge", given the negative context of the section? I cannot access the cited article unfortunately, otherwise would verify myself. Montblanc44 (talk) 16:18, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Criticism
An October 2022 opinion piece by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times is highly critical of the Energiewende and Atomausstieg, see
 * "In Europe they pretended – with Putin's covert encouragement – that they could abandon large-scale, largely emissions-free energy like nuclear power, as the Germans did, and just jump directly to intermittend wind, solar and other renewables and everything would just peachy. Oh, my godness. The Germans felt so virtous in doing so – without acknowledging that the only reason they were getting away with this pipe dream was that Putin was selling them cheap gas to make up the difference.


 * When Putin ended the charade, here's what happened: On Sept. 28, Reuters reported from Frankfurt, "Germany's cabinet on Wednesday passed two decrees to prolong the operation of sizable hard coal-fired power generation plants up to March 31, 2024, and to bring back idled brown coal capacity up to June 30, 2023, to boost supply."

The question is what that covert encouragement all included. --Myosci (talk) 13:36, 8 October 2022 (UTC)


 * On 8 October 2022, the exiled Russian dissident Garry Kasparov questioned the motives of German chancellor Angela Merkel and raised the possiblility of blackmail: "Their predecessor Schröder is almost respectable in comparison, openly working for Putin as employee, advocate, and lickspittle. It raises awkward questions about Merkel's motivations and what information Putin may possess from the bad old days." --Myosci (talk) 10:27, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Nuclear exit extended due to Ukraine invasion
Just to note that the German nuclear exit has recently been extended for three facilities due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and subsequent events. No new fuel rods will be supplied but the operating lifetimes will be extended. This measure is not expected to impact positively on carbon emissions. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 07:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC) RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 07:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Etymology, non-Etymology
The "Etymology" section does not actually contain an etymology.Johundhar (talk) 19:03, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * True. Well, it consists of "Energie", which is "energy", and "Wende", which is "turnaround" (see also Die Wende). Not much for etymologists to do here. Maybe the title should be "Use of the term" or something like that.
 * BTW, we write from left to right and from top to bottom here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)