Barry Brook on Twitter, two hours ago:
Germany’s energy policy will cost $1.3 trillion & lead to increased future CO2 emissions due to more coal usage: Link to “Nextbigfuture” blog.
Of course, both of these statements are wrong.
I have debunked Altmaier’s estimate already, so let’s just link to a couple of related posts: (1) Comparing Altmaier’s ONE TRILLION EURO with the 2011 ministry report (2) EUR ONE TRILLION for Renewable in Germany: Great Idea! and (3) Altmaier: Trillion Euro Cost for German Feed-in Tariff.
Of course it was to be expected that the Fossil Nukes, who are rooting for Germany to fail with the nuclear phaseout, would pounce on this. The only surprising thing is that it took them so long to notice this particular wrong statement by Altmaier.
The latter part (“lead to increased future CO2 emissions due to more coal usage”) doesn’t make any sense at all. Germany is phasing out fossil fuel in the electricity sector over the next couple of decades. There is no way a shift to renewable energy can increase coal usage.
