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Redstate
Sprechen
Sie “Green Energy”? ˇNo
Más!
Throw another shrimp on the
parabolic solar reflector, mate.
By Steve Maley
July
18th, 2013
As
President Obama doubles down on
his green energy initiative, maybe it’s time to look around the world
and see
how the foray into the future of rainbows and unicorn farts is working
out for
our more progressive and forward-thinking allies. We’ll visit Spain,
Germany
and Australia and see how their campaigns to replace fossil fuels and
nuclear
energy in favor of wind and solar energy are working out for their
economies.
Spain
is regretting its green
energy adventure, restructuring generous subsidies which …
…
have been wildly successful at
encouraging solar and wind farm construction. They have utterly failed,
though,
to help build profitable industries. Now the Spanish central government
is
dealing with a residual tariff deficit of €4.5 billion [$5.9 billion]
for this
year alone. That’s the difference between the amount Spanish consumers
pay for
electricity and the cost of producing it.
Not
surprisingly, industry groups
are outraged over the move, which will cost solar and wind companies
€2.7
billion [$3.6 billion] per year in subsidies and hike consumer rates by
3.2
percent. ["Spain Cuts Green Energy Losses", The American Interest,
July 15, 2013.]
How
go things in Deutschland, after
its knee-jerk decision to shut down nuclear power generation,
post-Fukushima
earthquake? Not that anyone could have foreseen problems with that * …
Amid
talk of a trade war with China
over cheap imported solar panels, the giant German engineering firm
Siemens
shuttered its solar division after hemorrhaging more than a billion
dollars in
just two years. … [Two] of the country’s biggest solar firms, Conenergy
and
Gehrlicher Solar, both filed for insolvency last week. Another
engineering
titan, Bosch, has also decided to get out of the solar market.
Meanwhile,
the country’s other
major green energy project—off-shore windfarms in the Baltic and North
Sea—is
also threatening to turn into a boondoggle. The massive projects off
the
northern coast of Germany are supposed to supply 9% of the country’s
energy
needs by 2023 and were a cornerstone of the government’s plan to
abandon
nuclear power. Yet engineering challenges, uncertainty around future
energy
prices and NIMBYs who object to overhead high-tension wires passing
through
their neighborhoods all threaten to make the project a dangerous white
elephant. ["Germans Re-Thinking 'Turn' to Green Energy",The American
Interest,
July 13, 2013.]
Just
how weary are the Germans of
their new green energy utopia?
“[Wind
energy is] all an enormous
swindle,” says Besigheim-based auditor Walter Müller...
Read
the rest of the article at
Redstate
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