On Economic Central Management – Solar Energy Chapter

Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out more than $130 billion to pay citizens to install solar panels.  American Greens and progressives demanded that we do the same.  But now Germany is cutting solar-power subsidies because they are expensive and inefficient.  They will be completely gone in 5 years.

·         Germany’s minister of economics and technology has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”

·         The average German consumer now pays an extra $260 per year for power as a result of this program. 

·         After spending $130 billion to add 1.1 million panels to private homes, Germany gets 0.3% percent of its energy from solar – read it carefully: much less than 1%.

·         Germans pay three times more than Americans for electricity.  German electricity costs are the second-highest in the developed world, exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”.

·         By the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.  Despite all the unrealistically generous assumptions, Germany’s CO2 emissions will be reduced by about 1 percent over the next 20 years.

·         Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced.  The current CO2 price in Europe is $8.  Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels.

·         Because Germany is part of the silly socialist European Union Emissions Trading System – cap and trade, folks – Germany’s solar panels have made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to burn coal.

·         Germany’s solar subsidies have helped to create “green jobs.”  But each job created by green-energy policies costs an average of $175,000.

·         Germans appear to hate nuclear power and the government has announced a complete shutdown of all existing German nuclear plants in the coming years but as a result of solar panels, the country is forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic.

This is what Nancy Pelosi’s 111^th Congress had in mind for America.  If that sounds good, vote for President Obama or if you are a Republican, nominate Rick Santorum, it’s the same thing.

Goodnight Sunshine

By Bjørn Lomborg, Slate Magazine

Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012   http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/project_syndicate/2012/02/why_germany_is_phasing_out_its_solar_power_subsidies