Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
Interestingly, most of Finland heats with electricity. I used to live there before I moved to Germany. Unlike Germany, Finland does not use a lot of natural gas.<p>So, Germans subsidizing Finnish heating with clean energy is not necessarily a bad deal for Finland. I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s a better deal for the planet than Russia subsidizing gas usage in e.g. Belarus, which is currently negotiating a new deal for this with Russia (in exchange for becoming part of Russia). Finland is in any case not great for wind power.<p>The article is correct that bureaucratic inertia and taxing practices in Germany don&#x27;t make much sense and are very counter productive (and not just for the energy market). I live there. German ineptness and inefficiency is cringe-worthy. It&#x27;s a political problem; the current government seems paralyzed waiting for their term to run out and not getting much done at all.<p>That does not mean clean energy is a no go but it does mean that pressure on politicians to fix things will increase over time. Also, the rest of Europe gets a sweet deal on energy. E.g. the Netherlands where I&#x27;m from is far ahead in EV deployments and despite being a gas producer is already implementing a policy of decommissioning gas usage by households over the next decades (this is a big deal in NL). Germany has no such plans in place. Heating oil disappeared a long time ago from my country as well and apparently is still a thing in Germany. Even coal heating was still a thing when I moved to Berlin 11 years ago (you could smell it in the winter). That&#x27;s a lot more rare now.<p>Fundamentally, selling excess clean energy at negative rates is a sign of desperation. It should be a very valuable commodity. The problem is that we subsidize production but tax&#x2F;penalize consumption. It should be the other way around. That would drive demand up and the cheapest way to meet that demand would be clean energy. With plenty of EVs hitting the market at tens of thousands per month across the EU, there should be no shortage of new demand.<p>That&#x27;s why Texas pumps and refines oil using lots of solar and wind power. It&#x27;s an economic no-brainer for them. Most of the clean energy capacity in that state (and it is world leading on that front) is actually consumed by their industry.