By Gunnar Schupelius
The failure of the supply of natural gas reveals the snag of electromobility: According to Gunnar Schupelius, politicians had not developed any plan for the power supply of the future.
Last Wednesday, 200 new “lantern charging points” were put into operation in Berlin. These are sockets that are installed in street lamps and can be used to charge an electric car.
The State Secretary for Mobility, Meike Niedbal (Greens), explained that “residents” should be able to “charge close to home” in this way.
The charging points are part of state subsidies for electric cars, as well as the exemption from vehicle tax and the purchase bonus of up to 9,000 euros. This rewards the switch to the electric drive, which is politically desired.
But does this change really make sense? In view of the gas crisis, not really, at least not in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. Here, the electricity for the electric cars is mainly generated either by burning natural gas (Berlin) or lignite (Brandenburg). Wind and solar power play a rather subordinate role. Long-distance lines to the wind farms in the North and Baltic Seas do not yet exist.
Because natural gas will be scarce next winter, the federal government wants to use as little natural gas as possible for electricity production. So electricity is also a scarce commodity and has to be saved on every corner. In future, even the traffic lights in Berlin will remain switched off at night.
When electricity is so scarce, it is practically impossible to supply electric cars with it as well. They put additional strain on the network. Therefore, the following applies to the coming months: the fewer electric cars driven, the better. If you drive a car with diesel or petrol drive instead of an e-car, you defuse the gas emergency.
The only alternative would be not to drive at all, which is not an option for those who rely on the car. All this sounds strange, but it is true.
Natural gas will not only become scarce this winter, but also in the coming years, because Russia, as the largest supplier, is either permanently absent or is no longer a safe candidate. Against this background, the switch to the electric car cannot be described as the right solution.
Now the lie of life of e-mobility is recognizable. Electric cars and electric buses have been promoted for political reasons without answering the question of where the electricity should come from.
In order to illustrate how dependent electricity production in Berlin is on natural gas, you have to look at these figures from 2020 (more recent figures are not yet available). 4500 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity were generated by burning natural gas, 1900 GWh by burning hard coal and only 405 GWh by using renewable energies (sun, wind, biomass).
This means that less than eight percent of electricity is generated from renewable sources, but more than 92 percent from natural gas and coal. Against this background, it makes no sense to drive an electric car, especially not when electricity is scarce.
Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]