The tax reduction will almost certainly be extended and not be allowed to sunset. Industry electricity costs are more or less in line with other highly developed countries around the world and will remain so. Also, many larger industrial companies do not source their electricity from the common grid, but have dedicated power plants and increasingly their own investments in renewable energy production.

The rare earths do come from China and that's where most of the environmental damage they cause happens. Rare earths can be mined almost anywhere. They aren't rare but they also aren't concentrated because they aren't water soluble. They are mined in places that don't care about environmental damage, not in places where specific geologic conditions exist (like everything else except AL). Also, you need them to make generators. When you put those generators in wind instead of in hydro or nuclear, you waste them. This is because they will generate 6 to 9 times as much power in hydro or nuclear plants as in a wind turbine.

> it'd spark a frenzy of activity and demand for locally produced replacements

Now you're just being funny. The reason Chinese solar outcompeted European solar is because China can produce at a lower cost. Yeah, Germany could theoretically produce solar panels in required quantities. However, the price is going to be higher. Which means electricity is going to be more expensive. And expensive electricity is one of the problems for the German industry. Let's not forget that many enterprises will simply not survive while the solar production is ramping up.

How is closing your nuclear plants working out for you?

Germany burns the lowest grade coal known to man to make up for the loss of its nuclear fleet. Germany has one of the dirtiest grids in the world and the dirtiest grid in the developed world. And for reference, a single NPP makes roughly 600 GW hours of power a month. Germany closed down about 15 NPPs which would make several times as much power as the solar PV in the article. More than enough to power everyone's ACs.

The number of big companies in that energy hungry sector is big compared to other countries. And it’s good that Germany managed to keep this industry going. Also those big companies fuel much of what the Mittelstand does. Please lookup biggest chemical companies in the world and you will see that Germany is well represented. It’s just unnecessary to let that industry “go”. If it dies in Germany and flourishes in let’s say China the climate has not won anything but Germany lost an entire industry. This mix (big industrial companies, lots of smaller mittelstand companies paired with a big services sector) is what makes Germany so uniquely resilient. This is the biggest potential problem for Germany. Reducing resilience, giving up stability

Exactly. I'm starting to wonder how much higher our neighbors' prices are thanks to our excessive excess-energy emergency-dumping during green-energy peaks. How much of that "EU average" is "Germany as a cost externality for its neighbouring energy grids"?

Spain's shut down was the same reason Spain has cheap electricity compared to Germany: They've chronically underfunded their grid infrastructure and haven't properly adapted to a renewable grid.

Germany has extremely high renewable penetration, and has one of the most stable grids (if not the most) in the world.

I live in Germany and my 12 kwp solar produces more energy than I need throughout the year for a house and a family of four including charging my car. Even if it would produce only 6 months a year, it world be a decent Investment and I get more like 9 months worth barely any grid supply out of it. The only reason we don’t go full offgrid is that the wood stove for heating in winter would be much more expensive to build and run than buying energy from the grid. What the hell are you talking about?

By the way: the number of power cuts I have experienced in the past 10 years is 1, because some idiot rammed a powerpole somewhere. The number of times I read about a power cut in the USA somewhere is more or less daily.