Germany and Spain are backing off on the green-energy subsidies

Time for the US to take the hint from Spain and Germany because we clearly have not gotten the hint from China yet. As our economy continues to sink, the time is now to rethink our wasteful green energy subsidy program. How many bankruptcies last year? Companies that are not healthy enough to compete in a market dominated by the Chinese...

Is it ok to continue to borrow from the Chinese to subsidize companies who are being slaughtered by a Chinese govt. backed green energy industry.

For me, one of the most perplexing moments (out of the many) of President Obama’ State of the Union address last week was when he insisted that “as long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.” So… because China is doing it, we must also relentlessly throw money we do not have at politically favored technologies now so awash in superfluous supply that its all they can do to keep their heads above water?

Germany and Spain have for years fancied themselves forward-thinkers on the green-energy front, and have implemented a bunch of subsidies, standards, and regulations aiming to prop up what it seems environmentalists the world over have deemed to be the holy grails of renewable energy, but the fact that these technologies are not yet pragmatic nor affordable is being made especially stark by Europe’s recession. The fiscal squeeze means that put-upon consumers are rather less willing to finance politicians’ green-energy ambitions than usual, and Germany and Spain are dialing it down in the face of financial reality

Germany subsidizes producers of renewable energy such as solar and wind power in part by imposing a surcharge on household electricity bills. As the industry has grown, demand for the subsidy increased, driving the surcharge higher. …

Fearing a voter backlash from anger over the lopsided financing of green energy, Ms. Merkel’s government on Thursday proposed putting a cap on the green-energy surcharge until the end of 2014 and then restricting any rise in the surcharge after that to no more than 2.5% a year. The government also plans to tighten exemptions, which would force more companies to pay, and achieve a cut in green subsidies of €1.8 billion ($2.42 billion). …

The Spanish parliament took a similar step on Thursday, passing a law that aims to curb rising household electricity costs by cutting aid to the renewable-energy industry. …

Among the changes in the Spanish system, the new law indexes certain subsidies and compensation to an inflation estimate that strips out the effects of energy, food commodities, and tax changes.

hotair.com...

online.wsj.com...

Time to get the hint to cut back instead of betting the nations future in order to pay back political supporters.

reply to post by jibeho


What those articles aren't telling you is that they are backing off the subsidies (at least in Germany) because the programs are beginning to pay for themselves as well as the German utility companies (mainly electricity and nuclear) are losing money because because wind and solar have lowered the price of peak energy demand.

In other words, solar and wind are succeeding and thus less in need of subsidy. Germany's economy is thriving and consumers can (and are perfectly willing) shoulder more of the cost.

Germans Love Their Solar & Wind Power - Myth About Solar Subsidy 'Backlash' Is BS

German media are thus putting the increase in the surcharge into perspective. As the screenshot from a German news broadcast on Friday (below) shows, the price of electricity only Increased over the past 12 months by three percent, Compared to a five percent increase in the cost of natural gas, a nine percent hike in the cost of gasoline, and a 10 percent increase in the cost of heating oil. The three percent increase in electricity prices is thus fairly close to the general inflation rate of two percent in Germany over the past 12 months.

Germany is a rich country with a thriving economy (the unemployment rate is currently at its lowest level since reunification more than two decades ago), so most people can afford the surcharge, Which is expected to cost the average German household with an annual consumption of 1.500 kilowatt-hours around 60 euros Additionally next year - 5 euros per month. In addition, citizenry is behind more than half of investments in renewables, so Germans are Largely paying this money back to themselves rather than to corporations.

Source

Massive failure by the Right and their media mouthpieces here.

reply to post by Kali74


The blue line in the following chart represents the increases in the surcharge billed to the customers that is used to pay for the German Subsidies


www.renewablesinternational.net...

Here is the key takeaway from your article (which was good thank you) Our economy is not thriving...

Germany is a rich country with a thriving economy (the unemployment rate is currently at its lowest level since reunification more than two decades ago), so most people can afford the surcharge,

Then explain the record profits of the German co's. and the 11,000 people that are being laid off per company. That's 22,000 layoffs... How is that for success..

Germany's largest power provider, Eon, posted a net profit of 3.1 billion euros in the first two quarters of this year. Nonetheless, when its CEO Johannes Teyssen expressed concern this year about "energy poverty," he did not announce lower prices for his customers on welfare, but rather called on the government to protect the poor from rising power rates allegedly brought about by renewables.

Despite these profits, Eon and RWE, Germany's second largest power firm, have both announced that they plan to lay off some 11,000 people each, a step that will only increase the number of welfare recipients they claim to be concerned about.

Its quite the conundrum...

Then there are the poor.... The Germans don't seem to track how many of them have had their power turned off

Protecting the poor is a general concern. Unfortunately, Germany does not have any official definition of fuel poverty, nor does it keep any statistics on how many people have had their power switched off because they could not pay their bills, though one estimate put the figure at 200,000 people over the past year.

Complicted??.... Success? doubtful

reply to post by jibeho


Success, yes... no doubt about it. So the better question might be: Is it time to stop subsidizing non renewable energy? The cost of fossil fuels is never ever going to offset... renewables will and are beginning to in places where they have been in use for the past decade or so. Fossil fuel prices as well as subsidies for them will continue to rise.

Then explain the record profits of the German co's. and the 11,000 people that are being laid off per company. That's 22,000 layoffs... How is that for success..

You realize that the companies you're referring to are the non solar non wind companies right? You would have to ask them why despite profits they're laying off (sounds pretty much like what large American Businesses did and do) and why are they charging surcharges and asking government to please subsidize for the poor people.

Johannes Teyssen expressed concern this year about "energy poverty," he did not announce lower prices for his customers on welfare, but rather called on the government to protect the poor from rising power rates allegedly brought about by renewables.

Protecting the poor is a general concern. Unfortunately, Germany does not have any official definition of fuel poverty, nor does it keep any statistics on how many people have had their power switched off because they could not pay their bills, though one estimate put the figure at 200,000 people over the past year. The UK speaks of "fuel poverty" when a household spends more than 10 percent of its income on water heating, lights, appliances and cooking. Germans currently only spend 2.5 percent of their household budgets on electricity on the average, with only 0.3 percent devoted to funding green power.

Source

In reality what the utility (non renewable) companies are doing with this surcharge business is punishing their own customers for the success of solar and wind as well as paying for their own plant overhauls. I'm not sure you fully read or fully understood what the article is saying.

reply to post by Kali74


Seems as though politics have mucked up the waters in Germany as well

Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.

www.spiegel.de...

Then who delivers the power? EON,Germany's largest, is in on the renewable game too!! They are laying off 11,000
www.eon.com...

reply to post by jibeho


I did a thread on Germany's practice of taxing the people to pay for renewables using Spiegel as a source before (can't find it atm) but I didn't understand how Spiegel cherry picked at the time I wrote it. The basic facts remain the people of Germany are happy with wind and solar, their dependence on subsidy is lessening which is why Germany is in fact lessening the subsidies.

Can we subsidize renewables the same way Germany did? Probably not. But, there's obviously a reward and a success story to be had if we do something to move toward replacing fossil fuels. Alternative energy works, our question is how do we make it work here without forcing the economy to implode. The portion of our Energy Budget that is renewable is laughable, meanwhile oil/natgas subsidies are HUGE... so again I have to ask, why cut green instead of black?

reply to post by Kali74


I am not totally opposed to adding renewables as an additional source to supplement fossil fuels. I just think they are going about it in the wrong way. These massive large scale projects that the President and others demand are not the way to do it. Forcing change serves only to slow it down especially in an economy that is stagnating and declining day by day. The numbers are not pretty. Retail numbers are falling, gas prices have reached an all time high for Feb. and driving season has yet to start, grocery prices are skyrocketing, beef, poultry and dairy products are increasing in price and people are earning less thanks to the expiration of Obama's tax holiday (payroll tax).

We dump millions and millions into technology and an industry that is completely dominated by the Chinese. We are closing coal plants and people are losing jobs. At the same time the green energy industry is creating very few jobs by comparison.

Wind and solar farms are only viable in certain parts of the country.... Where do you build the windfarms near the large urban/suburban centers in the country. Focus on small scale integration of renewable generation at the consumer level. I would love to add a small wind turbine to my personal electrical grid to take the demand off of the system during the peak months of electrical use. I use a turbine on my sailboat to generate power and keep my batteries charged without running the diesel generator. It's great. The same technology is available to homeowners at a cost.... I'd rather see that than a massive high maintenance wind farm plopped right in the middle of Lake Erie. The lake where I like to spend my weekends cruising the open waters.

Focus more on piggy backing versus totally elimination. Nothing wrong with clean coal and natural gas

Germany was tricked into loaning money to fund many DOD projects on US soil.

They were also tricked into spending Billions to buy those sub-prime packaged mortgages...and what the Deutsch Bank got was a bunch of stripped homes with all the copper piping/wiring ripped out and they had to spend a fortune getting those homes ready to re-sell....and sold them all at a loss.

Germany's continued to spend their money unwisely and get tricked by Jewish blooded money men.

Germany's been getting owned financially...which is why their Max Planck Society...German Mad Scientists packed up and moved shop into China to do some crazy research. In the end they want to get back at America...

Their Nazi's brought into America have been doing a good job at creating things that have poisoned America and destroyed Americans DNA....so in the end it appears the NAZI's are winning.

They already defeated alllllll the German-American farmers who helped America destroy the "FatherLand"...alllllll those German-American farmers were put out of business after the Nazi's brought into America poisoned every blade of grass in America...which forced the shut down of allllll of America's Dairy Farms ran by those German-Americans....and Powdered Milk had to be imported into America from 3rd world countries.

Nazi's won.