the, i love it, i love the fact that you can do the choices. what was actually a hasn't made a big impact on me. so that was so, you know, one of the, i can say a life changing the incentive in my life for shot. the how's a good old days of the west, german economic miracle, and the 1950s when the government promised prosperity for 10 years ago, germany was still the world's top exporter but a series of setbacks, the cold in pandemic, the war and ukraine can the energy crisis have left the countries industry, 100 clinic, custom pressure kind of gets back on track. also on the show, green hydrogen po for high solar power via cable, a viable undertaking was making it big in germany.

germany once the economic powerhouse of europe known for quality and innovation. but today the made in germany images of taking a, beating the depth of the log in at which the gym and economy is in a tough position. and we're in another year for section one. so why is this happening, exclusive of the biggest problem right now is the gloomy move to the economy is 80 percent psychology. so what now? we're in the truck right now and things are slowly looking at no cost. one in for jobs here depends on exports, which is a vulnerability when it comes to the economy. a small, if it's low,

next also lagging and that's the key to the gym and economy. almost 40 or 45 percent of our economic outputs, our exports on at the moment, demand is logging on involving a after a peak in 2022 german exports dropped in 2023 and then recovered slightly in 2024. the end compared to global economic growth, germany is floundering in the 3rd quarter of 2024, g d p in the us grew by 2.8 percent. germany's economy is stagnating. francis recovery and springs economy group by 0.8 percent the way. yeah. and that's a quite some time we've seen the structural conditions grow increasingly difficult to deal with. things like a shortage of skilled labor system neglected or crumbling infrastructure too much

bianca. see here mix what we're seeing is that the economic outlook is the peasant mystic economic outlook. host, which is being accompanied by increasing structural problem back against prevent probably germany's mid sized companies have a key role to play. mid sized companies make up about 90 percent of businesses here and employed 55 percent of the working population. germany doesn't only have large industry or mid sized companies form the backbone of our system. a deal. it says there is a heart beat, the post that measures how healthy and robust the german economy is. and whether it can meet the challenges that lie ahead. you seen as in the mid sized sector here is known for innovation flexibility, and it's focus on customer needs. but it's also facing many challenges. mid sized companies are looking for solutions to stay competitive. for example,

when it comes to finding skilled labor practice companies can do a lot in this respect, making themselves attractive as employers offering company benefits which can help attract more workers, more skilled workers in the new what uh, probably fit this test on to think i live with the name of this as a whole companies nature reflect on ways they can future proof that operations become more innovative about that facing increasingly tough competition on especially from asian american companies of bicycle for example, with respect to the digitalization of processes. and that includes both big industry on small or mid sized service enterprises. i mean, labor shortages are crumbling, infrastructure and complicated bureaucracy are increasingly affecting economic competitive this. germany's image on the international stage is also dented. so is the country at an impasse before is to georgia, the german economy. it's still the biggest driver and the european economy was this

was a typo tanker that has a hard time changing course that needs to speed up in order to recover the reputation. it had 10 years ago to one of the into the company b as equal to. yeah. so with some t reforms and a fresh wave of optimism, germany should be able to get its economy coming again. another factor affecting economic performance. is you this? have you ever been unfit to work? not a big deal if you're in germany except the frequency of people taking sick leave is increasing a cause for concern. how big is germany? trains canceled. government offices shut. no school classes and deserted building sites for too many people off sick and to few people to fill in.

in germany. sick leave is on the rise. in 2023 employees average to 15 days off due to illness. without all those sick leave, the german economy is good and have shrunk by 0.3 percent last year. instead of grown by point 5 percent according to an employer's association. labor organizations argue that rising, sickly is due to people feeling over worked and under valued. others blame misguided incentives like being able to just phone in for a sick note. overly lenient doctors and paid sickly in the us were paid sickly visit mandatory far fewer people call in and fit to work with germany. a sick note doesn't require you to stay home. you can go to work if you're not contagious. and then there are,

the bakers says the alon must. she wants to check up on workers who call in sick. a better idea is to improve the work environment. so that everyone feels value. that's been a recipe for success in many companies. this was a good idea. we made ourselves all fossil fuels and switching to hydrogen by daily of the green variety. could the idea of a future powered by hydrogen become reality? for his it's destined to remain just a dream. the green hydrogen made out of renewable energy. it's been touted as a pillar of the energy transition in germany. plants to invest billions into green hydrogen. but how realistic are these ambitious plans? entire fleets of hydrogen powered trains are running

the 1st hydrogen filling stations have already been dismantled. there weren't enough customers. the there are only a handful of hydrogen power train still in operation here. and the diesel powered bosses are slower and often run late officer for the farm, especially the buses in service. but often it's not running on schedule, especially in the morning when we're headed to school and licenses the phone in dc . yeah, this year has been very, very difficult when it comes to best and trained services. the trans basically aren't running and when they do, they're constantly out of service. and you know, mas hall and buddha interested in. as you also tell us, even though the hydrogen trains are brand new, the crucial fuel cells often malfunction the, the trains that are unreliable are taken out of service. the transportation

companies are annoyed that own diesel locomotives and bosses have to be brought back into service. and that there aren't enough spare parts with the hydrogen trains other than just taking the initial technical problems began shortly after the 1st batch of trains were brought into service for bloom on the tongue. and we had a problem with the tank systems which often end up leaking events describing the slides. the 2nd problem involves the fuel cells. so, but this is, that's what we're dealing with right now on the drops for it. and it's also been a variety of problems with the software, the email, including with water links, which then affected the electrical components version of the actual pnl. done the electrician, po tyler until now of stone, the manufacturer for the additional cost. the french company makes the hydrogen trains in germany, and the problem late in fuel cells come from canada. despite the bumping ride else

done wants to stick with hydrogen technology. that's the one thing stop. of course we didn't expect the launch to go the way it did with facing challenges, so we have to find solutions for the value of the losing that we're going to incorporate a new generation of fuel cells in the vehicle sort of thing. then we're confident that when that happens, the vehicle is well off a stable and sustainable service beyond the hydrogen of the strickland. this tractor also use of fuel cells to run on hydrogen. it's make, are sent plants to replace the diesel engines and it's farmed vehicles and machinery with hydrogen motors. the company preferred not to comment on camera, but did say that the technology still needs to be optimized as a skin that has opened. generally speaking, when politics goes all in to promote a technology. so there's, there's always a chance that projects that aren't quite ready, we'll go into service like to,

that's english and this has to be, i, but it's too soon to say that a technology like fuel cells has no future dvd plants. and they've got would be a mistake to help it, how strengths still work to be done stacked, but there's a lot of potential about for you to put in charge of the apex company is one example of how a large scale hydrogen economy might work in this pilot plant green electricity is used to generate hydrogen. they've been optimizing the technology for years. and so far they haven't had any major breakdown. the hydrogen the produce is used in a fleet of $57.00 local service bosses. but this hydrogen production only pays off for the company with state subsidies and an expensive electricity. yeah, so the transportation process will take at least another 10 or 15 years until we have a proper and market ready hydrogen economy. the, we're starting to ramp up right now, so the, getting the next 2 to 3 years, we'll see you sets up the necessary capacities who will supply the hydrogen that

will make this transformation possibly within industry. so me and kind of it's possible that all this is little more than a pipe dream. for the plan to work, hydrogen would need to be transported through a pipeline network to the major consumers, like the steel and segment industries. existing pipelines could be incorporated into the supply network, which would extend over more than 9000 kilometers. europe still has a technological edge, but there's a risk that cheaper hydrogen technology from china could compete with europe as happened with photo voltaic and wind energy technology. that an interview will have a window of 3 years in which year will be competitive when it comes to generating and using green hydrogen. and then we'll be overtaken by other industrial nations. um, hold on, let me see notable establishing hydrogen as an alternative source of energy will be harder than anticipated. but one thing is clear. european countries have their work

cut out for them. the once upon a time, europe had an idea for an alternative source of energy, importing solar power harvested in north africa. the aptly named project. desert tech. sadly, that dream stated with over ambitious scheduling and expectations that major investors backing out transporting solar power over a long distance. this is a daunting challenge. in 2018, straightening entrepreneur david griffin, started a company based on a crazy idea of what if you can generate a lot of solar power in northern australia, which has some of the strongest sunshine in the world. and so it's a single pool which consumes pates of energy purpose and see from fossil fuels. and it's pretty much no space to renewables that make sense, right. and it turns out he's not the 1st person to have this type of idea. there

are a lot of places around the world, but few people, lots of sun and wind that we need to start using to power cities in countries. far away was even the idea to create a kind of global, super, allowing us to shift loads of renewable energy from where it's abundant to where it's needed. and all you really need is a lot of very, very long cables. but something went wrong with christians idea, so let's look into what it was and what it means for this and vicious vision of a well, the sharing it's clean electricity. so rather than only consuming that clean energy within the photos of the country producing it, it might make a lot more sense to spread it around. to share this energy, it needs to go through something called and interconnect, which is a high voltage cable that can transfer power one way, or in some cases back and forth between the 2 locations. if you have an interconnect, uh you can have cleanup and cheaper power coming from a neighboring system, which the neighboring system was have benefits from this was,

that's elizabeth promoted, an energy and climate data analyst. this is a really big deal at this stage of the energy transition. advocates for the shift away from fossil fuels like the international energy agency, say we're getting pretty good at bringing renewable energy sources online fast. but if we cut and move the electricity to where it needs to be, all the new clean energy becomes less useful. there are some groups trying to figure out how we could connect the grids of every country on us. the idea would be to increase regional connections, enough to eventually create a super great, a global network of interconnect is that would let us set electricity to wherever it needs to go. and there's very few better places that australia, when it comes to sol, solved cables and straddling in company that was phones with the purpose of taking a strategy as a bonding weed and sold race souls style. so our market region, that's trogie scape up, remember david griffon, the guy from the beginning until last year she says on the executive leadership team of his company,

some people and the scale of his company's plan was almost beyond belief. the idea was to build a 20 gigawatt solar farm on a massive stretch of land and australia. northern territory. that's almost 6 times more capacity than the current biggest solar farm in the world, according to right. it's. and then that solar farm would fit into a battery system that's world in 13 times bigger than today's biggest. to send the energy from the solar farm and batteries abroad. the company would lay 3 submarine cables along the 4300 kilometer out from top one through engineers, motors to single, meaning they wouldn't even more than 12000 kilometers of high voltage cables. today's long list, existing route is around 750 kilometers. and well, making oldest solar panels and all those batteries would be hard getting all that cable turned out to be even hot. and that's because many of these cable manufacturers, which are mostly based in europe, already too busy supplying major pain market. so to get those thousands of kilometers of cable, some cable decided to just make it themselves finance plans to build their own manufacturing site in tasmania. but making these cables is not easy. and once they

get all that cable, so i have to actually figure out where to put it. busy submarine cable routes have to avoid any odyssey volcanoes or areas more prone to sub marino's quakes that go to avoid shipping. routes with anchors or fishing equipment could damage the cables and the big trenches that would leave the cable of floating gold about not being manufacturing and signing takes a lot of money. the straight your age of housing is estimated to cost the equivalent of $23000000000.00 us dollars. and people familiar with projects like these say the final cost will likely be a lot more. but despite the scale of these problems, some people will starting to make progress in 2019 the company secured, the backing of 2 of us trade is biggest to building their investments. michael, kevin brooks, and andrew, far but in january of 2023 old at progress started to crumble. according to media reports, one of those big investors forest decided he wasn't happy with the direction of the project and clashed with the other investor of a what the company should be doing instead. and soon,

this argument calls into question one of the most fundamental tots fund cable, the cable itself importing a big chunk of your energy from one place rather than producing it yourself makes you dependent on that source for better or worse. and so countries like single, a small islands nation surrounded by much beacon data, it's not scary. well, what is this huge cables going through another countries territory was, was done as well sabotaged. how safe could single feel about switching everything over to a brand new source of energy if it had to rely on a potentially less reliable supply? no, it's not just as a result of the disruption from the supply side, the results, but actually made a motion as active. and so the sky was a problem with energy security. this is robin. this is robin law. according to media reports trying to get around all these concerns made 1st question,

how viable the cable part of son cable would be. he decided it'd be better to use all that solar power in a completely different way by turning it into green hydrogen and ammonia. this is another way of moving renewable energy around. that's getting a lot of attention right now that you convert that clean electricity into fuel that you can ship anywhere in the world without the hassle of building a cable to connect those places. these 2 competing visions of what to do with sun cables, plants, solar farms came to ahead in january 2023. according to media reports, when the company missed 2 of its big milestones, to get the approvals from single pole and intonation needed to start laying these cables far as decided that the cable strategy wasn't going to work. if they wanted, he's money, they'd have to switch everything over to green hydrogen and ammonia, something the other investor can and brooks didn't agree with. the future of the project was in doubt. and without the support of both investors, the company collapsed. but that wasn't the end of the story. eventually, kevin brooks output for us to take ownership of sun cables in 2023 in eastern the age of housing project continues,

but the drama did take its toll. the new plan is to start delivering power in the early 20 thirty's, but only to dollars the capital of the strategies northern territory. the connection to single port is supposed to come a few years after that. if that comes at all, because the company still has to solve the same problems. so convincing all the different players involved from governments to investors, to suppliers. but this idea which has never been done before at the scale, work and be safe. so what does some cable story mean for the vision of a global certificate is putting down the cable between 2 countries. it's such a struggle connecting the entire world seems pretty far off, but it's also not science fiction. so now a global net look does remain a distant dream. but if you think all the geopolitical tensions and power games involved to make it impossible, just consider there's another global network that connects every country on a few things, summer and cables. you're using it right now to watch this video. the incident, transporting electricity around the globe is a bit different than translating data. of course,

internet cables are cheaper and the telecommunication systems that are routed in had been around for much longer. but it can be done the german economy needs talented young people from abroad for eager to get things done, career wise. well, also bringing customs and cultural experiences from back home with them. today we feature a young woman from indonesia who got her started and i t before turning her passion for furniture into a business i arise on march 2016. and my 1st impression was germany was really cold. the people are soul tall and they speak really like quickly as long as you 1st and understand what they say at 1st. the reason behind why i want to go up for is like, i want to know the people are from the other culture. when i went to germany,

i don't know the culture yet. i don't know. deland yet. i don't even speak the language here. so uh through the deputation process. i learned a lot and it's awful shape me. i am why i'm today. rebecca invested in denisia after finishing high school. she did a bachelor's in business administration in germany. after that, she became a manager in the i t sector and found at the luxury company java bell. i started my carrier as a marketing in the i p industry since 2019 currently on virginia pon pon it's a silver house and mainly our clients are people the clients and we are offering a software solution, a platform solution, mainly for the entertain doctorate together with my theme in the sales, we are preparing online and offline campaigns. we are preparing the social media

from fence and we also preparing events. in indonesia, you have to fully respect your bosses. so you have the strong off, here are the cold. but here in germany, you tend to have more flatter here or tea. so if you want to fix on it, and if you want to ask the question, you can go directly to your boss and then discuss it with them. and i feel like you're in germany, you have more room to, to experiments. so along side her job and the i t industry. rebecca founded the high end furniture company java bell. i asked on jennifer val, it's because my grandpa started his with working business in 9th. and this happened fees in sort of out that it's a small city in the central java. and it was a to stream of my grandpa to sell the furniture for life,

and my grandpa possibly on 2022. but history and leave on until now. our clients are what? as apartments and restaurants, the enter, your architect school is design. the furniture based on the client needs. buford, do save, and we ship it by containers. so to see france to germany, what's really make in the nation furniture special is it's not a mass production. so we did it best on the fly and it's, it's not about the furniture only, but also to try to sions. the craftmanship hadn't made at all or furniture are made from our people, back indonesia, in terms of sustainability. i'm also really proud that a lot of innovation productions currently be really trying to minimize the ways the ways from the for his or production. we can use it to create

a complete new pro doc, such as new verse such as state corporation. and we'll find middle of to take part of the declaration. the most important thing to the successful in germany is 1st with down to the cultures. that's the 1st. and the 2nd is to law off your job. because on me, when killed last something you do, you're generating innovation. you generating fresh ideas. i am now around 12000 kilometers to waste from home. so i do feel home sick this the year in germany. i also have acute friends with colleges. i work in a very, very good and fireman, so at least with both and makes me happy. i mean, how much is my 2nd home also? so if i'm in indonesia, i also feel homesickness with the file from his homework. so i am home in indonesia in home,

but that's it for this edition of me looking at germany's economic, wireless and hope and vicious energy transition plans and the challenges involved in transporting solar power over seriously long distance is fine till next time. the

choosing practice primary school, it's now monitoring, imposed on the and it's been hugely popular due to the very real rates as opposed by neighboring russia. poland already has the most liberal gunning rules in the e. u. is this a sign of hope for the future? overall this, the focus on europe in 30 minutes on the w. y have plans as low as almost bedframe practice movie. they close. almost flawless

on the label. how many good, i've been sick, almost done, police police, 40 monthly part of the best. they've got 3 equal payments or the gainesville support, basically, you know, they'll pull it up a little. that's the name of a few items that already got come on, i think the ceiling come with the effect of in 90 minutes on the w, the d. w. travel all over the side, phase 3, food, honest with inside it just, you know, go high, nice. well, let's go to. so when it comes to sustainability information and try and do that. when you travel, you can have it all on executive. it has to check the bags, so you're planning

a trip to make sure you miss nothing about is on the w travel. i hope you enjoy the trip here as much as i did about you. what's your opinion? feel free to write your thoughts and the comments i'm looking for my nephew. he read the city. we don't know what is going on. where is mohammed some of these sites pulled on? we've told him go but the other side, i believe. you know, they didn't get him back. so they was stuck in the middle mohammed set off, fled from north any rock and he became one of hundreds of migrants to vanish every somewhere in the no man's land. the lines between the cleared refugees become pools in

a cruise to your political conflict. missouri, i'm afraid i'll never see him again. when, oh, you last under the start december 18th. on d, w. the business day, the winners lie from berlin, a reckoning in syria, the revel commander says they'll be no pardon for tortures. this comes a spider set fire to the coffin of bashar on the thoughts father established the brutal security apparatus into which thousands of syrians disappeared. meanwhile, curtis syrians also celebrated assad's downfall, while fearing the new leader could help crush their dream of an independent her to stop and south koreans and battles. president jumps of your vows to fight until the very end. he's denying rebellion charges over his decision to declare martial law

and facing a new impeachment.