Power failure!

The data recording of the virtual factory of müller+krahmer shows it: our office in Saalfeld was without power for almost eight hours yesterday and today. And even though it was obviously only a local fault that has already been fixed, a situation like this makes clear how important a stable energy supply is. Without electricity, none of our PCs and none of the bus systems connected to them will run. Without electricity, we cannot reach our customers by phone, email or remote access, and our customers cannot reach us. Our business model implodes without electricity! And that applies to almost every company in this country. Worse still: power failures endanger human lives, in hospitals, in factories, on the roads – wherever we rely on electrically controlled systems.

But even if the horror scenario of a large-scale blackout does not occur – an unstable energy supply means the end of Germany as an industrial location in the medium term. Because industry needs energy, always and everywhere. Industry 1.0, i.e. the beginning of industrialization, was only possible because the steam engine could provide energy anywhere and at any time. Industry 2.0 enabled the transition to mass production thanks to more easily distributable electrical energy. Computerization (Industry 3.0) and finally networking (Industry 4.0) are unthinkable without a stable, permanent energy supply. A stable energy supply is therefore not only the basis of our prosperity, but a prerequisite for the functioning of our society as such.

The stability of our energy supply is too valuable to leave the decisions about it to ideologues without any expertise. It is high time that engineers and economists decide again, and that the market determines whether Russian natural gas or American fracking gas, whether lignite and hard coal from Germany or Australia, whether uranium from Niger or from the Ore Mountains are best suited to supply us permanently and inexpensively with the energy we need.

PS. This post, too, is only available as long as author, platform provider and readers are supplied with energy. And every reaction to it – whether approval or rejection – requires energy.