{"id":938,"date":"2009-10-13T15:16:13","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T20:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/?p=938"},"modified":"2009-10-14T17:42:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-14T22:42:37","slug":"solar-power-and-german-ideologues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/2009\/10\/13\/der-spiegel\/solar-power-and-german-ideologues\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Power and German Ideologues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Der Spiegel has provided us <\/a>with another edifying example of the difference between sound public policy and ideological grandstanding. It turns out that the outgoing Social Democratic (SPD) \u201cMinister of the Environment,\u201d Sigmar Gabriel, has saddled the German people with a gift that will keep on giving in the form of a debt of at least 27 billion Euros. It comes in the form of a clause in Germany\u2019s \u201cRenewable Energy Law\u201d that grants a subsidy of 43 Cents per kilowatt-hour to producers of solar power \u2013 five times higher than the cost of conventional power. But wait, it gets better; the subsidy will remain in effect for at least the next 20 years. And, by the way, that\u2019s just for the facilities that were built between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, new facilities are being built hand over fist. About 2000 additional megawatts are expected to come on line in 2009, providing German consumers with another heaping helping of debt to the tune of 9 or 10 billion Euros. This remarkable example of ideological dilettantism has, at least, resulted in the creation of many new jobs \u2013 in China. Following a predictable pattern, German solar cell producers have been ramping down production at home and transferring it to Asia. Meanwhile, as Der Spiegel points out, the subsidies have had such \u201cenvironmentally friendly\u201d effects as <\/p>\n

\u2026keeping the world price of solar panels artificially high. The result: international producers are flooding the German market with solar modules \u2013 and very little is left for other countries, in spite of the fact that a solar facility in Africa could produce substantially more electricity than in rainy Germany.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All this comes at a time when the actual cost of solar modules has been in free fall. Spiegel cites an article in the German trade magazine \u201cPhoton,\u201d according to which, \u201cSolar power can now be produced much more cheaply than the high subsidies would lead one to believe.\u201d <\/p>\n

Judging by the quantitative results, we must assume that wind has been less afflicted by ideological meddling than solar in Germany. Wind facilities currently provide six percent of her power, as opposed to solar\u2019s contribution of less than one percent.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Der Spiegel has provided us with another edifying example of the difference between sound public policy and ideological grandstanding. It turns out that the outgoing Social Democratic (SPD) \u201cMinister of the Environment,\u201d Sigmar Gabriel, has saddled the German people with a gift that will keep on giving in the form of a debt of at … Continue reading “Solar Power and German Ideologues”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,35,37,43,20,52,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-der-spiegel","category-economics","category-energy","category-environment","category-germany","category-global-warming","category-world-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwEq0-f8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helian.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}