Another reader summed up the story pretty well:
Starting in 2017 not another worthless on or off shore windmill or solar panel will be installed in Germany for a hundred years....unless we decide to extend the "mandate".....
Original Post/Update
I saw the headline, and said, "say what?" Germany is going broke on renewable energy. Certainly ....
Read the headline, then read the story.
This is truly incredible.
Here's the New York Times headline: Germany moves forward on renewable energy plans.
Regular readers know that Spain went broke investing in renewable energy; Germany came close. Germany did lose its competitive edge due to investing in renewable energy and it will take years to recover. So, when I read the headline that "Germany moves forward on renewable energy plans," I about fell off my Starbucks Lazy-Boy. There had been a thousand previous stories suggesting that Merkel was going to scrap renewable energy.
The article says it all. You might have to read it three or four times to really sort this out. Talk about cognitive dissonance:
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government approved legislation on Tuesday revamping Germany’s sweeping plan to generate more than 40 percent of its energy needs through renewable resources by 2025 by slowing the rapid expansion of solar and wind parks in an effort to hold down spiraling prices.
Already, 25 percent of German energy comes from renewable resources, but that advance has come at a cost to consumers, who have borne the brunt of the surcharges that funded the expansion.
Keeping power prices in check is a key element of the government’s revised policy ....
“Restart means no longer following the illusion that the energy transformation can be achieved by expanding renewable energy as quickly as possible, ...
... an agreement with regulators in Brussels, who had challenged the exemptions on the grounds that they violated competition laws within the European Union.
The broad coalition government of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats from the right and the Social Democrats from the left intends that the revisions will reboot a renewable-energy policy adopted more than a decade ago.
Energy prices have risen each year since 2000 to among the highest in Europe, and the policy could lose its popular support if the prices continue to rise.
While Mr. Gabriel said he could not promise that energy prices would go down, he said the goal of the changes was to put the brakes on further increases by scaling back green subsidies and limiting the expansion of onshore wind and solar capacity. Only 2.5 gigawatts of wind and solar can be added each year, while offshore wind expansion will be capped at 6.5 gigawatts by 2020.
Starting in 2017, the renewables market will be subject to competitiveness, and providers will no longer enjoy the guaranteed prices that have helped to spur the expansion of wind and photovoltaic since 2000.
[And then a lot about environmentalists going nuts.]
After months of wrangling, Brussels and Berlin agreed to a deal that will see some 400 of the previous 2,100 companies forced to relinquish their exemptions.
“If we don’t want to lose jobs, we have to make sure that our companies remain competitive,” Mr. Gabriel said. “This is about hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
A reader sums it up pretty well:
Starting in 2017 not another worthless on or off shore windmill or solar panel will be installed in Germany for a hundred years....unless we decide to extend the "mandate".....
