We have created a slew of new charts in the annual update of this website. Today, Craig Morris focuses on two of them concerning power prices and so-called energy poverty. Recently, I had dinner with a group of North Americans who had come to Berlin to see what they could learn from the German energy transition. A Canadian expressed his concern that “Germany has hundreds of thousands of people who cannot pay their power bills.” “The exact number is around 350,000,” I answered, “and we know this because the country’s Network Agency publishes the figure every year.” I then asked the group whether that number was high or low. For instance, how many households in Canada or the US had their power cut off for failing to pay the bills? No one knew. As we pondered the irony of energy experts not knowing statistics about their own countries that they know about Germany, I put the numbers into context. “That’s 0.9 percent of the 39.9 million households in Germany.” Still, how does that performance stack … Continue reading Comparing “energy poverty” in Germany with other countries