The one crucial graph missing here is what all this is costing.
Why anyone would want to emulate such high profile examples as Denmark and Germany is the ecomics of the madhouse frankly. Its little wonder Denmark is backpeddalling on this given it has been the one with the longest and largest committment to it per capita. Even wealthy nations do not have a fiscal bottomless pit and energy costs have a knock on effect everywhere in an economy
Same comment applies to you. read below.
You would think that with Europe's exorbitant spending on green energy they would not have to rely on our coal but there it is. The fact that so many refuse to see is the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow and the money invested in those so called power plants is money down the toilet. You are right about one thing though, coal is cheaper not to mention reliable. The bang for the buck thing is what is important here and this so called green energy is a fire cracker for a dollar compared to coal which is a stick of dynamite for a dollar.
Omg dude. There is no god damn silver bullet. There is no quick-fix solution.
Energy production, and green energy production, is a process. A time-consuming process. It's basically revamping the entire energy production network for 500+ mil people. You think you can do that in... what... the 6-7 years that the EU has been really interested in green energy as a EU-wide policy? No, you can't. But it's moving along.
Yes, you need to offset the costs of the fact that constructing the green energy infrastructure is expensive... you need to offset it by making energy from non-green sources cheaper, that means, cheaper coal. Fine. But you're going to be doing this trade for 3-4 more years and then you're going to have to NOT do it anymore because green energy production will increase and it will start gobbling up more and more of the demand.
Bang for your buck is important, but so is the environment and technology and research. Lets take solar. maybe solar energy isn't at the best levels it could be, ok. Maybe it's not economically efficient or as economically efficient as burning petrol or natural gas or coal for energy is. Fine. I'll grant you that this is true because it is true. But you know how much time it took for coal and petrol and natural gas energy production to be as efficient as it is now? DECADES. The first power plants were wasteful. They were horribly inefficient. But they were built in a time where energy needs were so small that it was ok. As technology grew and grew, and energy demands grew and grew, they became better and better, more and more efficient until you get the power plants of the late 1970s and 80s which are really efficient at getting the most Watts/kg of product.
Green energy needs to be more efficient and if you give giving money to R&D and sponsor the industry, it will become more efficient. And it is competing with the established energy sources and so far, it's doing a bang-up job really. Both the US and the EU are on the right track to getting better green energy.
And if there has to be a cost increase, fine, let there be a cost increase. It's not like it will be the end of the world. Government don't go bankrupt because they are trying to sort out their energy needs. They go bankrupt because they fail to do so properly and can't keep up.