The top management of Thyssen-Krupp, Germany’s leading steelmaker, confirmed yesterday that it will streamline itself and become transformed into a “green steel“ producer. This means shifting the power supply from coal to “green“ hydrogen, which would required 8 billion cubic meters annually. That transformation would cost at least EU10 billion, far exceeding what the company can pay. Therefore the state—the taxpayers—should have to shoulder part of the cost of this ridiculous greendoggle.
Generating “green“ hydrogen from wind power in Germany would require at least 3,000 big wind power units and is extremely expensive. Therefore some seek to produce hydrogen from overseas, preferably in Africa. The peak of insanity here is a proposal by Günter Nooke, Germany’s Africa envoy, who said the proposed Grand Inga hydroelectric dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo could be used to generate “green“ hydrogen for export to Germany! The affair just underlines the insanity of the entire “sustainability“ debate.
These proposals would be quite at home in Jonathan Swift’s fictional Academy of Lagado, in which one of the researchers had spent “eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers.”
