Energiewende kaputt: Merkel's Legacy, Continued by Scholz, is the Destruction of Germany

Announced to grand virtue-signalling, new 'emissions-free' commuter trains running on H2 are a fiasco as too little fuel is available after massive delays and enormous spending

Oh my, today I’ve got a gem for you that illustrates, more than anything else, Germany’s decline following Angela Merkel’s disastrous ‘Energy Transition’, or Energiewende. Announced to great fanfare in the wake of the tsunami that hit the Japanese nuclear power station in Fukushima (2011), Berlin began to pour untold billions of euros into increasingly hare-brained schemes to ‘end fossil fuels.’.

To that end, this piece will take you to rural Brandenburg, the federal state surrounding the German capital, specifically, to the area between Berlin’s northern borders and the Polish border known as the district (Landkreis) Barnim.

Since 1903, the so-called Heidekrautbahn was integrating these areas, and while there were many changes across the 20th century, the rural area is served by this regional railroad connections run by the Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB, Niederbarnim Railway Company).

And it is to their wonderful ambitions to replace diesel-powered engines operating on the still not-electrified railroad line that we now turn to. (In case you’d like a nice background piece, see here.)

(Non-English content comes to you in my translation, with emphases, and [snark] added.)

February 2022: Co-Funding Secured

In a press release, one of the ‘coordinating’ LLCs (GmbH) by the name of ‘Now’ told the below fairy tale (in English, no less, hence here follow merely a few choice excerpts):

The states of Berlin and Brandenburg and the Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB, Niederbarnim Railway Company) have concluded negotiations on the research contract for the Heidekrautbahn. Particularly noteworthy: For the first time, hydrogen-powered trains will be used in the region around the German capital city.

As a first step, the operational preparations—especially for the establishment of the necessary hydrogen infrastructure—as well as the procurement of the vehicles can now begin…operations on the main line between Basdorf and Wilhelmsruh is scheduled for the end of 2024, which coincides with the commissioning of the hydrogen vehicles on the Heidekrautbahn.

There is, of course, no shortage of jubilant quotes from politicos™ celebrating themselves, such as this wondrous comment by Bettina Jarasch (Wikipedia profile), Senator for the Environment, Mobility, Consumer and Climate Protection of the State of Berlin:

The hydrogen research project on the Heidekrautbahn puts climate-friendly propulsion systems to the test under real-life conditions. I am eagerly looking forward to the experiences and the comparison with other options such as the electrification of the line or battery-powered trains…

Ms. Jarasch, of course, is a member of the Green Party. Here is Guido Beermann (a conservative-in-name-only CDU politico™; Wikipedia profile), Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Planning of the State of Brandenburg:

We are working to further develop the infrastructure for a future-oriented and demand-driven rail transport service and are thereby advancing the mobility transition in our country. With the project contract for the RB27 railway line, we are already taking a giant leap into the future. From as early as 2024, we will be shaping regional mobility with regional green energy in the regional economic cycle. Greater sustainability is hardly possible…With the new hydrogen trains running on the Heidekrautbahn line, we are not only launching a lighthouse project for Brandenburg, but also for Germany as a whole.

I’ll spare us all more of the same boilerplate nonsense; do note that even (sic) conservatives pay lip-service to left-wing radical talking points, such as the ‘giant leap into the future’ and the like.

There will be ‘new rail vehicles’, incl. ‘seven innovative hydrogen-powered rail vehicles are to operate on the Heidekrautbahn network’.

The project is funded with a total of 25 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Transport, which will go to the three project sponsors ENERTRAG, Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB) and Kreiswerke Barnim. The funding is coordinated by NOW GmbH and Project Management Jülich (PtJ).

With this funding support, the three partners, who have each already been involved in the region north of Berlin for many years, are striving to set new standards in the development of a regional hydrogen infrastructure and sustainable mobility in local rail passenger transport. The main focus is on the development of a closed regional hydrogen infrastructure. In addition to the procurement of the fuel cell trains, the construction of a hydrogen production facility and the establishment of the refuelling systems play a decisive and supporting role…The switch from diesel to hydrogen, which is produced entirely from renewable and regionally generated electricity, corresponds to an annual CO₂ reduction of three million kilograms and a saving of 1.1 million litres of diesel fuel.

So far, this is what was planned/announced/funded by the federal transportation ministry. We shall now find out how it’s going.

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Two Weeks Later: New H2 Trains Run Out of Fuel

By Timo Brauer, via Inside-Digital.de, 1 Jan. 2025 [source]

A fortnight ago, new hydrogen trains entered into service in Berlin-Brandenburg. Just two weeks later, they are back on the railway sidings— there is no fuel left…the so-called Heidekrautbahn railway connects the Brandenburg hinterland with Berlin. Prior to that, regional trains with diesel engines travelled on the non-electrified line. At the timetable change on 15 December, passengers could look forward to brand new hydrogen trains. Now, they are back on the railway sidings. What has happened? And does hydrogen have a future?

Hydrogen Trains Without Hydrogen

Travellers from the region have been looking forward to the new trains for a long time. The Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB) has ordered 38 of them from Siemens for the Heidekrautbahn network north of Berlin. 31 of these are battery-powered and seven vehicles run on hydrogen. With a range of up to 1,000 kilometres, they are suitable for routes on the network where there is no overhead catenary at all.

Since 27 December, the brand new trains have been back on the sidings after just two weeks. The reason: there is no more hydrogen. According to the Berlin Brandenburg Transport Association (VBB), the contracted company Enertrag is having difficulties procuring enough hydrogen [Enertrag is a locally-based, global energy company providing ‘fossil fuel-free energy’; funny enough, there’s a map with all their projects, which lists the Heidekrautbahn project—with its 4 MW output—as ‘under construction’].

The hydrogen is currently being transported to Brandenburg by lorry from Frankfurt am Main and Austria, among other places [will this be factored into the wondrous calculations about CO2 reductions?]. There, the trains are refuelled directly from the trailers in a labour-intensive and time-consuming process. The company is currently looking for alternative sources of hydrogen [wait, weren’t you guys contracted to provide ‘the necessary hydrogen infrastructure’ in 2022? What did you people do in these past three years? And, relatedly, where did the money go?]. Until then, diesel trains from other lines will have to be used, which means that many connections are currently only operated with shorter trains and fewer seats.

Do Hydrogen Trains Have a Future?

Hydrogen trains currently have a tarnished reputation in Germany [no shit analysis here, Sherlock]. In the Rhine-Main Transport Association (RMV), the manufacturer Alstom has been struggling with massive technical failures for over two years. Consequently, RMV has now even announced that it will be procuring replacements for the unreliable trains [ouch, but then again, that happens if you put ideology (‘Green and sustainable future’) before reality].

The situation near Berlin is by no means that bad [for reasons unknown, this still isn’t the official Berlin slogan; case in point: massive cost-overruns and delays with the new airport]. The hydrogen trains ordered went into passenger service here in mid-December as planned and are running smoothly, provided there is enough hydrogen. As soon as the delivery problems have been resolved, the trains will run regularly again [so, no need for AfD to presumably enter office and declare, Mussolini-style, that trains will run on time now (apologies to non-Germans, but the piss-poor state of the Deutsche Bahn or railroad company, has been a twisted joke for decades…)].

The new trains offer passengers a great deal of additional comfort. For example, there is better accessibility, information monitors, power sockets, USB ports, cell phone-enabling windows [that do not interfere with, say, using your phone], powerful air conditioning, more space, and additional parking spaces for bicycles and luggage [provided there is fuel].

And in the long term, a permanent solution for the supply of hydrogen is also in sight. A proper hydrogen refuelling station is currently being built along the route to supply the trains with regionally produced hydrogen from wind energy and hydropower [sigh; hydrogen isn’t an energy source, it’s an energy carrier (much like, say, ‘electricity’]. This will save over one million litres of diesel per year on the Heidekrautbahn alone [what’s the cost of that infrastructure? This is but a repeat of the talking point from the above-cited press-release, where are the energy return on energy invested (EROI) calculations? Where is the H2 coming from?].

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GONGO F***-Up

That was painful, wasn’t it? I do have several questions:

• What happened to the 25m euros in funding?

• Why didn’t the contractors (or operators) consider building the refuelling station plus the H2 generating plant at the same time they were ordering the H2-powered trains?

• Go back to the press release from Feb. 2022 and check it out: there are three (!!!) joint awardees of the federal funding tender: WTF did they do? (I mean, planning stuff is obviously not their strong suit, so the money certainly went somewhere…)

• Why didn’t it occur to anyone to figure out how and where to source fuel?

We already talked a bit about Enertrag, which seems like a legit company, even if it peddles utter green-washing nonsense (their website features a huge wind turbine: they’re proudly contaminating the countryside):

Wind Turbines and 'Nasty Fibres' are Deadly

So, what about the other two contractors, NOW GmbH and Project Management Jülich (PtJ)?

As regards the former, if you’re up for corporate-grifting boilerplate, check out their ‘who we are’ subpage (my personal favourite here is the give-away in the header):

A climate-neutral society is the goal. Innovative technologies and concepts are the way forward. We are working on this together as a team across programs and technologies on behalf of the German federal government. We evaluate, advise and steer.

So, this is a ‘GONGO’, a gov’t-organised NGO’, which is

a non-governmental organization that was set up or sponsored by a government in order to further its political interests and mimic the civic groups and civil society at home, or promote its international or geopolitical interests abroad.

Note the quite honest (for once) Wikipedia wording: GONGOs ‘mimic’ stuff regular people do. In other words: NOW GmbH is a gov’t front office that pretends to be something operating on the ‘private market™’.

The same applies to the third project partner, Projekt Jülich, which claims:

As one of the leading project management organizations in Germany, we work hand in hand with public authorities in the topics of science, industry, and policy-making…

We support our clients in the German federal and state governments, federal institutions and foundations as well as the European Commission in achieving their funding policy objectives…

With our portfolio, we cover the entire chain of innovation—from basic research right up to market entry. Above and beyond this, we play our part in helping to establish innovations in society.

And just like that, the grift is revealed: NOW and Projekt Jülich ‘coordinated’ the 25m grant from the federal gov’t—and the results speak for themselves:

The new trains were delivered by Siemens (I don’t know what they cost; I’ve looked around but couldn’t find a price tag…), but the incompetence of the parties is perhaps best illustrated by the third contractor, Enertrag:

From the get-go, Enertrag said that the hydrogen supply was secure. Yet, on 27 December 2024, the operator Verkehrsverbund Berlin Brandenburg (VBB) announced in a tweet and, later, in a press release that the hydrogen supply had collapsed.

What has happened is that Enertrag isn’t producing H2 themselves but merely the middleman here. And they were unable to procure enough fuel.

It is a wee bit surprising that Enertrag didn’t know as of 15 Dec. 2024 that the hydrogen supply chain—via the suppliers commissioned by Enertrag—would collapse. This shows that the company had either few, if any, reserves or shoddy planning (I think it’s both).

Yet, it’s worse than incompetence—for Enertrag also lacks the investment capital to put up an electrolysis facility in the first place (source):

The Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn (NEB), together with ENERTRAG AG and Kreiswerke Barnim, has been planning the realisation of an extensive hydrogen project for two years...

After a second funding application was submitted to the project management organisation BAV in July 2019 due to the prospect of improved funding conditions, there were changes to the funding as part of the 2020 federal budget consultations. The resulting extended application deadlines for the funding of hydrogen projects are now leading to a delay in the implementation of the project. As a result, the new hydrogen trains on the RB27 are now not expected to be deployed until the end of 2024. The original plan was to implement the project by the timetable change in December 2023.

These lines were written on 23 Jan. 2020, which is five years ago.

Bottom Lines

The project began in 2017/18, it was delayed in 2020—and now it’s 2025.

I’m beginning to wonder about cost overruns and a ton of other things.

But the main issue here is: at least two (NOW GmbH, Projekt Jülich) of the three contractors are actually GONGOs and thus front offices for gov’t projects (this is why I call ‘climate change™’ a grift). There are several hundreds of employees that are notionally working™ for a private™ company whose sole purpose is to feast on the public trough.

The main issue that I have here isn’t this ‘public-private partnership™’ per se (even though this model has a lot of problems), but the issue I have is that it doesn’t work.

That is, for you and me; it works—perhaps as intended—for those grifters who feast at the public trough.

The main problem here is: accountability.

Who gets shafted/penalised when things go south? It’s neither the gov’t as sponsor nor is it the grifting contractor.

Those who get shafted twice are taxpayers, once for paying for these ‘services’—such as the project management/coordination efforts by NOW GmbH and Projekt Jülich—and a second time by delays, cost-overruns, and f***-ups like the lack of hydrogen infrastructure.

If anything, we need to restore accountability.

These kinds of problems are found everywhere, and none of the instigators pays for these shenanigans.

Perhaps ‘we’ all deserve this shit-show, which is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that the NOW GmbH’s most recent annual report dates from—2020. There is literally nothing to see here, folks, move on.

This is what one gets when citizens become too dependent on gov’t (lazy), too reluctant to punish transgressors, and, generally, have gotten away with there being few, if any, consequences for one’s one behaviour.