Europe’s Wind Turbine Makers Can’t Compete With Coal-Powered China

 Source:

https://stopthesethings.com/2022/03/23/re-bites-back-europes-wind-turbine-makers-cant-compete-with-coal-powered-china/

"Victims of their own success, Europe’s wind turbine makers are being crushed by rocketing power prices – caused by reliance on intermittent wind and solar. Oh, the irony…

The staggering surge in European energy costs has rendered them unable to compete with Chinese manufacturers, whose operations benefit from abundant supplies of nuclear and coal-fired power.

China’s rapid – and still surging industrialisation – wasn’t built on windmills and wishes, by the way.

One of the biggest, Siemens, has been particularly hard hit, with its wind turbine manufacturing unit dragging the company’s share price to the floor.

... And, as you read on, note the candid response from Siemen’ boss, Christian Bruch to the petulant who believe that Germany should already be running exclusively on wind and solar

 – that Germany will remain dependent upon (mostly Russian) gas “over the next decades” which, he should have added, is critical to Germany’s ability to provide electricity whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

Vlad Putin’s territorial ambitions and the need to keep Europe in tow by turning off the gas tap might require a slight rethink on where that gas will come from.

Here’s Eric Worrall with a lament for Germany’s renewable energy champion, Siemens.

FT: Siemens’ Wind Energy Losses
Threaten the Future of the Company
Watts Up With That?
Eric Worrall
25 February 2022

Shareholder Fury: According to Financial Times, the disastrous financial losses in Siemens’ wind power unit are a threat to the financial credibility of the entire company.

Siemens Energy’s struggling wind unit blows Germany’s largest spinout off course
Financial Times
Joe Miller

Even as groups of teenagers routinely protested against climate change in the streets below his Munich office, Christian Bruch struck a defiant tone.

“Everybody is looking for a silver bullet which . . . makes [energy] sustainable overnight,” Bruch told the Financial Times in the summer of 2020, as he prepared to take charge of Siemens Energy.

“[But] over the next decades we’re going to need natural gas.”

His unfashionable stance failed to cut through to investors.

Weeks later, against the backdrop of a resurgent Green party, Siemens Energy slumped on its stock market debut in Frankfurt after becoming Germany’s largest ever spin-off.

Those who did invest in the fossil fuels company were more attracted to its sole clean energy business — the rapidly growing Spanish manufacturer of wind turbines, Siemens Gamesa, or SGRE.

Yet it is this renewables unit — rather than the gas and coal contracts that make up the bulk of Siemens Energy’s balance sheet — that now threatens the company’s future and is causing headaches for its largest shareholder, Siemens.

SGRE’s problems reverberate beyond Siemens Energy’s boardroom.

They have raised doubts among executives as to whether European and American companies can compete in the wind energy sector, or whether, as with solar, they will eventually be undercut by cheaper Asian imports.
Financial Times

There is an obvious explanation for why Asia is undercutting European manufacturing so badly – the Chinese economy is powered by coal.

Siemens and other big European manufacturers face an increasingly impossible disadvantage vs Asia, because of skyrocketing European energy prices.

European energy prices are skyrocketing largely because European countries have embraced wind turbines and solar panels manufactured by the likes of Siemens.

Watts Up With That?

Coal: what makes China an industrial power."