On the German love of predictability

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

There is a word in German that, for the life of me, I can’t find any real equivalent for in English. Planungssicherheit is easy enough to translate - it means “planning certainty.” But it doesn’t seem to actually be used in English beyond in some industry magazines.

Not so in German. Planungssicherheit is a word that has achieved an aura that means you can end any argument by deploying it.

That’s certainly the case in the current debate over whether the sale of combustion engines should be banned by the EU after 2035. Germany’s government is trying to block an EU edict to that effect, saying that combustion engines should still be permissible as long as they are powered by environmental ‘e-fuels.’

Now, you can go into the strengths and weaknesses of these synthetic fuels if you want. Some claim that such fuels have a big future. Others say that the energy loss in production is so large that it is “wishful thinking” to believe that they will e…