[petcat]

> Varta lost its key customer in the spring: Apple plans to source the rechargeable "CoinPower" button cells for its AirPods headphones from China in the future.

It's another tough loss for German and European industry. Battery tech requires a lot of electricity and German energy prices are simply not competitive. And EU regulations limit how much the German government can subsidize industrial electricity costs.

Lots of debt, expensive labor, expensive energy, and EU Battery Regulation and limits on subsidies all adds up to just losing the business completely to China.

[gbil]

You forgot the new US tarrif because of "forced labor"! At least in China things are much better on labor side!

Sorry couldn't resist....

[tim333]

It's all kind of ridiculous, that stuff.

[philipwhiuk]

The assumption that Europeans can just absorb high energy prices is crazy. Ought to be a national imperative to invest in infrastructure to lower prices.

[thyristan]

The problem there is the "national imperative" part imho. All EU politicians are hell-bent on ignoring any kind of market-based solutions, doing everything through regulations and picking winners. So there will never be a proper market equilibrium and therefore prices will always be higher than in places without all those regulatory interventions.

Investment won't help there in any way, because if that investment were worth it, it would already happen because of market forces. If it doesn't happen on its own, then the state (doesn't matter which level) has to do it, which means using tax money, which means that prices will rise. So that state investment will further skew the market equilibrium, putting the EU further behind.

[jojomodding]

I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. There is currently a lot of demand for building out solar and wind in Germany. There is also large demand for building battery storage. The demand especially for the latter comes from the mismatch between supply and demand in electricity markets, so in a sense the battery operators hope to do arbitrage in a way that will also increase the efficiency of the market (by allowing the use of solar after dark).

This is very much a market-based solution. What the state has to do is provide permits and stuff for getting the batteries etc. actually built; which the state is doing but not as fast as it could right now. (at least in Germany)

[thyristan]

It would be a market-based solution if the state wouldn't interfere with the markets in major ways. E.g. many battery projects in Germany are nonviable due to the fact that some less-efficient but cheaper battery technologies are verboten. Meaning the market gets screwed again. There are also fees and taxes on power transit that are set up in such a way that energy storage is disadvantaged compared to energy production, especially gas-based energy production. Hydro storage e.g. is comparable to gas peaker plants in the quickness of powering up/down, but hydro storage pays transmission fees twice, once to charge, once to discharge...

[namibj]

What battery technologies are banned??? While being good except for efficiency?

[sajithdilshan]

Also all the regulations are based on hardcore ideologies. EU truly wants to be carbon neutral and that is applaudable, but at what cost is the question. Does is make sense to decimate most of the energy heavy industries in the continent to be carbon neutral? I guess only time will tell.

[p-e-w]

Lol. Depending on the country and who the buyer is, 50-80% of energy prices are taxes and levies. Those prices have nothing to do with missing infrastructure.

[sajithdilshan]

I think it's a self made crisis. They turned off their atomic power plants in the middle of an energy crisis (even the current German government admitted that it was a mistake: https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-...) and now importing far expensive natural gas from middle east and USA

[k_g_b_]

Germany's use of gas has basically nothing to do with nuclear energy. It's used for gas peakers (which are for now and were needed, whether some % of electricity is provided by nuclear plants or not), heating (which has/had nothing to do with nuclear plants) and heavy industry like steel (which wouldn't be able to replace their gas usage any easier with nuclear than with renewables).

The current government is full of hardcore ideological incompetents captured by fossil fuel interests that wouldn't recognize a free market if it threw € bills in their face. Merz in particular can "admit" whatever he wants, it was an uninformed talking point to get a few points on media as a response to a small time-limited news wave on nuclear - nothing else to it. He's easily triggered.

The previous government extended the runtime of the shutdown-ready plants because of the energy crisis. Shutting off the last few hasn't had any significant impact on industrial energy prices https://www.smard.de/page/en/topic-article/5892/216044/indus...

[sajithdilshan]

You do know that the gap left by shutting off the nuclear power plants are now being filled by fossil fuel which makes the pricing quite volatile due to geo political situation in middle east. Also other not only Germans, but also other European countries had to pay a price as well for the shutdown of the power plant (https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241220-sweden-sees-r...)

> The current government is full of hardcore ideological incompetents captured by fossil fuel interests

I could argue the same about the previous Green government, that it was an incompetent, eco terrorist extremist government where the shutdown of the power plants were spearheaded by an idiotic children book writer who has no idea about energy market.

[k_g_b_]

I don't know that because it is utterly untrue, as is easily verified by looking up plenty of available data in the German electricity mix - it's replaced by the growth in renewables, fossil fuels have continuously shrunk https://strom-report.com/electricity-mix-germany/.

If you don't want to out yourself as a hardcore ideologue you should argue with data instead of political talking points.

Congratulations on picking up far right "children's book author" talking points! I'd say that is more of a worthwhile economic activity than whatever Merz has done in his life. If you can't recognize the self-serving ideology of Germany's "conservatives", I do have some perpetual micro-nuclear reactors to sell you.

[ZeroGravitas]

The German government guy "admitting it was a mistake" hates wind turbines and claims they will all be replaced in a decade or two by nuclear fusion.

An absolute loon when it comes to energy. It is mind blowing that he is being touted as the voice of reason.

[sajithdilshan]

Not sure if that would happen in a decade or two, more like in five decades or so, but totally make sense. If we have fusion reactors, then why would anyone spend money on an inferior technology like wind turbine?