It has become a great rule of thumb to watch what is happening in Germany if you want to understand what will be happening in America in a few years where energy policy is concerned. The Biden energy policies are essentially carbon copies of actions the German government has already taken, and if Joe Biden or any other Democrat (we see you, Gavin Newsom) wins the presidency in 2024, America’s German-copying path to near-zero energy security will be essentially set in stone.
Because of this reality, all Americans should be greatly troubled by a story published Tuesday at Euractiv.com headlined, “EV chargers, heat pumps may be curtailed in Germany as of 2024.” With its power grid running dangerously bare of reliable baseload generation provided by coal, natural gas or nuclear power amid its efforts to force adoption of grid-draining electric vehicles and heat pumps onto the population, Germany’s government faces a choice. It can either 1) mount a national effort to rapidly rebuild baseload on the grid, or 2) invoke authoritarian measures exerting government control over the little peoples’ usage of EVs and their fancy new noisy and inefficient heat pumps.
No doubt many readers can easily guess which action government officials have chosen to pursue. This is Germany we’re talking about here, after all.
Predictably, Germany’s grid manager, the Bundesnetzagentur, is taking steps necessary to “throttle” power available to users of EVs and heat pumps starting next year. “We are taking precautions today to ensure that heat pumps and charging facilities for electric cars can be connected quickly and operated safely,” said Klaus Müller, president of the grid agency on November 27.
Make no mistake about this: Biden’s activist regulators are well along the process of forcing a similar crisis of electric grid inadequacy in the United States. The Biden government is pursuing the exact same policies of forcing retirement of reliable coal, natural gas, and even nuclear baseload at the same time it is trying to force the mass adoption of EVs and heat pumps. Biden’s advisors recently went so far as having the President issue an order invoking the Defense Production Act to enable the funneling of $160 million in new subsidies to heat pump manufacturers to speed up the draining of the grid.
Even with the declining demand growth for EVs happening in the U.S., grid managers across the country have spent the last two months warning the public about the rising levels of instability on their regional power grids as new demand threatens to overwhelm available generation resources. This is happening even in Texas, where more natural gas is produced every day than all but two other countries on earth.
In a report published Monday, Texas grid managers at ERCOT say there is a 14.4 percent chance they will need to resort to emergency rolling blackout measures if a winter event similar to the one that impacted the state in December 2022 rolls in again. That risk rises to 16.8 percent in January due to a variety of factors. It is key to note that last year’s event paled in comparison to Winter Storm Uri, which knocked out power to much of the state for the better part of a week in February 2021.
The U.S. situation is not quite as dire as in Germany just yet but will become so in a few years absent a fairly radical change in policy direction. The hard truth is that forcing rising instability on the nation’s power grids appears to be a feature of the Biden policy regime rather than a glitch. It is becoming increasingly difficult to write it all off to mere incompetence and stupidity.
Americans enjoy chuckling at stories like this one coming out of Germany, the UK, and other countries that seem so improbable to ever happen anywhere in America outside of California. What we need to all realize, though, is that the Biden policy regime has the U.S. well down the same road, though still perhaps a few years behind.
So, laugh at Germany’s foibles for now if you like, but know you will be suffering the same fate if the 2024 elections fail to produce real change.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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