Blackouts threaten Germany as the proliferation of heat pumps and e-vehicles drives power demand to new heights

Here’s a disturbing report out of Starnberg, a wealthy suburban town south of Munich, where years of sustainability woo coupled with recently rising gas costs have induced an unfathomable demand for heat pumps. As the energy crisis looms and people fight to avoid high heating bills, these are subject to almost year-long back-orders.

There’s only one problem:

Despite all the euphoria … [h]eat pumps need electricity, and at the same time more and more e-vehicles are being connected to the grid. “In the Fall, all our lights are going to go out,” says [heating company chief Bernd] Krüger. And yet the absurdly long backorders could potentially forestall a blackout. At least that’s what [another heating company executive named] Achim Richter … is hoping for.

As prices for oil and gas have risen enormously, consumers are looking for alternatives. Those who can afford it, have heat pumps installed. Those who can’t are going to the hardware store and buying electric heaters, Krüger says … And all of that requires electricity, but the grid isn’t designed for it … “We're not going to be able to do that. The power grid is going to collapse. The blackout will come for sure.”

It’s a bleak picture that the CEO of the Starnberg-based company describes … In Gauting, there is a street where three charging terminals for e-vehicles have just been installed … “So a heat pump is already too much for the grid there. You couldn’t operate it at all.”

We’re looking at nothing less than the total failure of green energy policies. The Greens have spent years promoting electricity as the only environmentally responsible sustainable solution, shutting down our nuclear power plants, pouring untold billions into wind and solar which do not work, and burning cheap Russian gas as a fake “transitional” measure to hold the whole scam together. It’s no accident that former chancellor Angela Merkel, responsible for our disastrous decision to phase out nuclear power, fought so hard for Nord Stream 2. But now the Russian gas is gone, and random plumbers in Starnberg are praying that new heat pumps are delayed long enough to spare their fragile electrical grid new shocks ahead of winter.