I wouldn’t call 700% increase over just two years ago „reasonable”…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/business/france-sends-gas...
The rivers won't be low in the winter.
And whose fault is that? Why can't their much-vaunted Energiewende manage to keep people warm? After half a trillion dollars of public investment in green energy?
Germany is in the process of moving to greener energies, not just on the state level but also in private homes. But that's mostly true for new constructions of which there are comparatively few. Coincidentally, the German government has recently announced to de-incentivize new construction and rather suggest updating existing houses. It will take many years, though, to get all those houses to move off of gas and oil, especially because Germany has a relatively high percentage of rentals over home owners. There's no real reason for landlords to update the heating system of their investment properties because the cost for heating is paid by the tenants anyway.
If you don't supply it yourself then it isn't unforeseeable. In fact, I'd say it's inevitable. It's only unforeseeable as to when it will occur. Energy independence is a great thing for this reason.
Yes and why is that? Electric heating is not some space-age technology. It has been around for a century. There are countries where it's ubiquitous.
Saying "Germany doesn't have the infra for electric heating" is not an explanation. It's just restating the problem in different words. It isn't some accident, it happened by deliberate policy.
I keep harping on this point, but the German government has spent cumulatively half a trillion USD on moving toward green energy, ostensibly in the name of combatting global warming. And yet with all that money and effort, they couldn't transition towards ubiquitous electric heating? Instead, they wrecked their one dependable green energy source (uranium) and became further dependent on Russian gas, which fuels global warming even more (despite propaganda to the contrary). It's all because wind and solar are intermittent, there's nowhere near enough storage capacity on the grid and there won't be for decades, and their politicians have their heads in the sand about the whole business.
Gas price was 4 ct/kWh two years ago, electricity at 35 ct/kWh. People always take what is currently the cheapest.
> It's all because wind and solar are intermittent, there's nowhere near enough storage capacity on the grid and there won't be for decades, and their politicians have their heads in the sand about the whole business.
They didn't put their heads in the sand. The former government sabotaged the whole renewable industry again and again (e. g. they didn't allow building new renewable power plants for years, storage facilities need to pay for the grid when they store energy and when they release it so they can't be competetitive to gas).
Except it was foreseeable and foreseen [1] just very politically and economically inconvenient.
1. https://www.gmfus.org/news/why-germans-ignored-putins-true-n...
If the 2014 invasion of Ukraine wasn't a dead giveaway, I don't know what else could habe make it more foreseeable.
It was very foreseeable. Both the US and other Eastern European nations warned about this but Germany chose to be ignorant till the very end.
The russian invasion of Ukraine happened because Germany is dependant on Russian gas.
The previous government's. Scientists have been criticizing them for years now that they failed to provide the necessary infrastructure and statutory framework for the "Energiewende" to work.
It's a more difficult situation if the house lacks water circulation (heated floors/radiators).
So lesser countries in Europe already managed to have higher count of green energy sources, while lots of construction yards in Germany are blocked on ongoing court cases.
The grid isn't build for such a load.
> An electric heater usually consumes 2000 Watt, that is not really something that should bring the electric grid to its knees.
That's an additional 40GW when all gas-heated apartments use one of those heaters. You'd need ~30 additional nuclear reactors to sustain such a load -- the 3 remaining ones in Germany provide 1.4GW each.
That's why experts are warning people to not suddenly switch from gas to electric heating this winter.
This would be the case during normal times. We're not in normal times though. There has been widespread panic buying of portable electric heaters all throughout summer. Owners of single-family homes are also increasingly switching to heat pumps as the main source of heating (as is strongly encouraged by the government).
If we actually run into a gas crunch this winter, blackouts could ironically be a knock-on effect if everyone turns on their electric heater at the same time.