Batteries are not the Solution, Synthetic Fuels maybe

[NMNeil]

DonkeyApple said:

NMNeil said:

So when you cut through all the BS rhetoric it comes down to the fact that Germany wants to put profits before the environment.

That's just corporate v state. Nothing to do with any nationalities.

100% true, but Germany was initially all aboard with the plan to reduce emissions, even to the point of introducing a law requiring that greenhouse gas emissions had to be reduced by 55% by 2030. In 2021 Merkel even updated that number to a 65% reduction.
Now with the clock ticking they seem to have changed their tune.

[DonkeyApple]

NMNeil said:

100% true, but Germany was initially all aboard with the plan to reduce emissions, even to the point of introducing a law requiring that greenhouse gas emissions had to be reduced by 55% by 2030. In 2021 Merkel even updated that number to a 65% reduction.
Now with the clock ticking they seem to have changed their tune.

There was certainly a delusion that German manufacturing could somehow compete against the might of the US and China.

The real issue is that until recently Germany held the view that the EU would continue its inexorable expansion to the East, bringing in new vassal states to be lent German money to that is then spent on German infrastructure building in their country and German goods. All of this powered by cheap imported gas.

The German economy and EU were in step and the peasant poor of the vassal states would have no choice but to buy EVs while Chinese goods would continue to be locked out as best as possible. Right up until 12 months ago when that ended overnight. EU expansion is over there will be no more new millions of forced customers for the German economy. The cutting off of gas to the Eastern EU has revealed the massive absence of energy self sufficiency. The car manufacturers are having to move more production to China to find viable margins and the German economy has gone from one of lend to spend in its relationship with the other member states to being close to the U.K. model of the last few hundred years of give to support (which is how the EU should always have been structured if it wanted to survive robustly).

The net result of this fracturing of alignment is the need to row back on events such as 2035 and 2050 because what were once seen as events that bolstered economic security and dominance now have switched to being a significant risk of undermining growth and protectionism.

Hence the sudden rise in rhetoric against China ( it would be disastrous for the European car manufacturers of a market such as Britain opened its doors to cheaper Chinese cars due to the cost of living issue) and the meteoric rise in yammering about just about anything that could be pulled out of thin air to save the industrial heartland of Europe. Magical gasses, special liquids etc. And into that rampage gets hurled the lax €millions of taxpayer funds in the hands of provincial governments and the swooping in of VCs to seize that money by showing any old mad up stuff that fits the bill.