This article appears in the December 19, 2025 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
German Industry in Free Fall
Bad news keeps coming from German industry, with virtually all major sectors—mechanical engineering, automotive, steel, and chemicals—in collapse. The head of the German Federation of Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, or BDI), Peter Leibinger, is sounding the alarm in a new report. He says German industry is in “free fall” and warns that this is “the deepest crisis in post-war history.” Industrial production has been declining for four years in a row. Sixty-eight percent of companies plan to relocate some or all of their production abroad in the next five years.
All this is the result of decades of misguided policies, which, especially since the introduction of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz or EEG), have sabotaged the energy supply and made production in Germany increasingly difficult, if not impossible for a growing number of companies.
The energy transition to so-called renewable sources is one of the main reasons for the exodus of industrial production; in 2024 alone, 100,000 jobs were lost in industry—and this trend is continuing; in 2025, more than 10,000 jobs per month have been lost. The energy crisis was further escalated by the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline on Sept. 22, 2022, but to date, the government seems to have little interest in investigating the circumstances behind it. For example, in Oct. 2025 when a Polish judge refused to extradite a Ukrainian citizen suspected of the bombing and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on his X account “case closed,” there was not even a whisper of protest from Germany, even though the sabotage caused several hundred billion euros in damage in Germany. Compared to the costs of the energy transition, however, this sum seems like peanuts.
Costs of the Energy Transition
A study commissioned by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (Deutsche Industrie- und Handelskammer or DIHK) concludes that the energy transition will result in additional costs of €2.5 trillion over the next 20 years. If, as announced, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government wants to generate all of Germany’s primary energy from wind and solar power by 2045, Germany will be rapidly deindustrialized.
The physical effort required to produce electricity is directly related to the energy density of the form of energy fuel used for production. The material costs for the production and distribution of solar and wind energy are relatively high, which means that only subsidies and market manipulation could make them competitive with energy-dense sources such as nuclear power. A nuclear power plant, for example, generates the energy that was used to build the power plant within just one week, whereas with solar energy it takes years.
That is only part of the problem. Due to the weather dependency of solar and wind power plants, back-up power plants must always be kept on standby in the power grid; this results in high capital and maintenance costs, which make electricity more expensive, due to the low utilization of these plants. Until 2000, Germany had an electricity supply that ensured a relatively high degree of self-sufficiency and sovereignty: 29 percent was generated by nuclear power, 26 percent by domestic lignite coal, and 24 percent by hard coal (anthracite).
At that time, the price of industrial electricity was still 5-6 cents per kWh, and 14-15 cents per kWh for private customers. Today, in 2025, private customers pay an average of 39.7 cents/kWh—after 270 billion euros have already been spent in direct subsidies from the German government to the producers of “renewable energy.” (See Figure 1.)
Due to decentralized power generation by plants distributed throughout the country, the cost of the power grid is also skyrocketing: private households now pay an average of 11.53 cents per kilowatt hour just for grid fees.
The Energy Transition Will Cost Trillions
Not even the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche, seems to believe that these horrendous prices will come down. When the monitoring report on the energy transition was presented, it became clear that the costs for grid expansion will amount to around 800 billion euros over the next 15 years.
Weather-dependent energy generation necessitates the expansion of huge overcapacities in power generation, storage, and distribution, which must be available in case the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. This also involves the planned construction of gigantic battery storage facilities. This means that the plants will be used inefficiently and that system costs will rise exorbitantly.
The German government now wants to use further subsidies to support the construction of new gas-fired power plants, which would otherwise not be profitable, due to the expected low utilization rate. The intended use of hydrogen for long-term storage is expensive, complex, and inefficient, with 60 percent of the energy lost during conversion.
Energy and Progress
Energy is the central factor in human progress, enabling access to technology and increasing life expectancy. (See Figure 2.)
As early as the 1970s, American economist Lyndon LaRouche described the relationship between energetic work per capita and per square kilometer and the resulting potential relative population density,[fn_1] the maximum sustainable human population. Humans can thus transform their relationship with nature by building infrastructure.
For example, to stop the global expansion of deserts, humanity can use modern seawater desalination technology for desert greening. However, this can only be achieved by increasing the work efficiency of individuals, namely by increasing the energy-flux density per capita and per square meter and by using higher-quality forms of energy.
LaRouche contrasted this thesis to the fraud of the Club of Rome, which deliberately excluded the role of scientific and technological progress in its early 1970s computer simulations in order to “prove” its thesis of overpopulation and call for a radical restriction on the use of raw materials.
A particularly radical proponent of the Club of Rome’s nonsense was Chancellor Angela Merkel’s most important energy advisor, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, then head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the German Federal Government’s Advisory Council on Energy. He publicly stated his conviction that Earth’s carrying capacity is only one billion people. What should happen to the rest of humanity, he left unanswered.[fn_2]
The Malthusian ideologues are also responsible for Germany single-handedly destroying a large part of its conventional power generation. Twenty-nine percent of this was safe and efficient nuclear power plants, which were destroyed by blowing up cooling towers and drilling holes in the pressurized water tanks.
The Fear of Radiation
Many of the theories still prevalent today about the alleged danger of low-level ionizing radiation are based on old, purely dogmatic claims made in the 1940s and 1950s by eugenics circles around U.S. biologist Hermann Muller, who, with the help of funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, made the LNT theory the regulatory standard.
The LNT (linear no-threshold) theory states that radiation damage to genetic material increases linearly with radiation intensity, regardless of the duration of exposure. It is therefore irrelevant whether the exposure occurs over a long period of time with a low dose, or over a short period of time with a high dose, and no threshold value is taken into account.
The examination of the archives and correspondence of this network around Hermann Muller by toxicologist Prof. Edward J. Calabrese, brought to light how the public was led to accept the thesis that radiation, even in the smallest doses, poses an immediate danger to humans through targeted fear-mongering and manipulation[fn_3] and through concealing relevant scientific data.
The famous Polish radiation biologist Zbigniew Jaworowski stated: “The LNT hypothesis is the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th century.”
The widespread acceptance of the unscientific theories of the Club of Rome is largely to blame for Europe’s current lag in scientific progress.
Contrast with the Chinese Approach
Even though China is a world leader in the construction of so-called renewable energies, it is relying on a so-called mix, because the country understands the value of reliable base-load power plants, it has built a grid heavily based on coal (55.3% of electricity generation, Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025), natural gas and oil (2.9%), nuclear fission energy (4.6%), and hydropower (13.7%), and is a global leader in the development of nuclear fusion.
The China Energy Engineering Group Co. (CEEC) plans to replace up to 100 GW of coal-fired power plant capacity with fourth-generation thorium-based molten salt reactors. While a 1,000 MWe coal-fired power plant currently burns around 9,000 metric tons of coal per day, the new nuclear reactors of similar capacity require merely 3 kg of uranium or thorium daily. This clearly illustrates the qualitative difference in the energy density of the two fuels.
Another option for converting coal-fired power plants that is being pursued in China is the pebble bed reactor—a technology that was developed in Jülich, Germany, in the 1970s but could not be implemented in Germany “for political reasons.”
Both reactor types are self-stabilizing and therefore inherently safe, even in a Fukushima scenario—i.e., even in the event of a complete failure of the emergency power generators. No external power supply is required for emergency shutdown, and decay heat can be dissipated passively.[fn_4]
If Minister Reiche really wants to achieve the goal of building a fusion reactor in Germany, as she claims, then the confrontation with China must be abandoned. After all, China is the world leader in the development of high-temperature superconductors for magnets, which are essential for future fusion reactors with high energy-flux density. Just recently, China broke the world record for a constant superconducting magnetic field of 35.1 Tesla, which was maintained for 30 minutes.
What we need is a global alliance for the joint development and use of nuclear fusion.
Endnotes
[fn_1] The maximum population density per unit area depends on the technological level of society, and the per capita energy consumption, as well as the quality of that energy. The addition of “relative” describes the factor of the quality of the land, which can be improved through infrastructure. [back to text from fn_1]
[fn_2] “In a very cynical way, it is a triumph for science, because we have finally stabilized something—namely, estimates of the planet’s carrying capacity, at less than a billion people.” A statement by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, as reported in the March 13, 2009 edition of The New York Times. [back to text from fn_2]
[fn_3] Muller’s fraud was exposed in a July 19, 2023 p by Edward J. Calabrese, titled “Confirmation that Hermann Muller was dishonest in his Nobel Prize.” [back to text from fn_3]
[fn_4] During the construction of the Fukushima reactor, mistakes were made—such as failing to adequately account for the risk of a tsunami-induced flood, and not properly securing the external power supply and emergency back-up generators. [back to text from fn_4]
