Posted on 02/07/2011 1:40:50 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Spanish and Germans are doing it. So are the French. The British might have to do it. Austerity-whacked Europe is rolling back subsidies for renewable energy as economic sanity makes a tentative comeback. Green energy is becoming unaffordable and may cost as many jobs as it creates. But the real victims are the investors who bought into the dream of endless, clean energy financed by the taxpayer. They forgot that governments often change their minds.
Spain is famous for its housing bubble, whose bursting drove the national unemployment rate to 20 per cent-plus. Less well known is the renewable energy bubble, inflated by a government bent on shaking down the taxpayer to subsidize clean energy – a social program disguised as a politically correct industrial program.
It worked. Sunny Spain became the world’s top solar power producer. Since 2002, about €23-billion has been invested in Spain’s photovoltaic (PV) industry, which sucked up €2.7-billion in subsidies in 2009 alone, or more than 40 per cent of the freebies doled out to the country’s entire renewables sector.
When the Spanish economy went into the toilet in 2008 and 2009, austerity measures were put into place. At first, it appeared the solar industry would be spared the worst of the cutbacks. That changed a bit, but only a bit, in November, when a royal decree reduced tariffs by up to 45 per cent on new PV plants; existing plants would remain untouched. Then – whammo! – a new royal decree landed with a thud just before Christmas.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
fyi
What about Obama wanting the planet to heal and stopping the rise of the oceans?
What about Nancy Pelosi saying she has a planet to save?
What about Al Gore?
What about all the global warming lectures?
“They forgot that governments often change their minds.”
Wrong!....
Often governments get kicked in the ass by the people.
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The Spanish government were apparently surprised when scammers were producing solar energy even at night and reaping the government subsidies (FIT rates).
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/465409/spanish_nighttime_solar_energy_fraud_unlikely_in_uk.html
I'm thinking of setting up an operation like this in Ontario. Who's with me?
Count me in. I’ve invented a solar panel that produces electricity from dark. We’re gonna be rich!
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Political Junkie
Gee whiz! are these Euro-weenies that selfish? What’s more important than saving the planet from imminent destruction?
LOL!
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rocky2345
California has been subsidizing solar energy for more than three decades and it still cannot stand on its own. Most of the subsidies are born by heavy users under the utility's tiered rate structure (as high as 39 cents / kwh for residential users vs. 12 cents for the lowest tier.)
It's a field that's ripe for ontapanoors. ;^)
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cold air
Breaking news from http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=5136
"The Advisory Committee on Environmental Issues to the German Parliament (Sachverständigenrat für Umweltfragen – SRU) today submitted its special report on ways to achieve a 100% renewable electricity supply to Federal Environment Minister Röttgen. 100% renewable electricity generation is possible by 2050. Subsidies for new PV systems should be capped..."
... and later:
"SRU member Prof. Olav Hohmeyer spoke out in favour of a 1,000 MWp cap in an article to be published by the newspaper Die Zeit on Thursday. The economist, who lectures at the university of Flensburg, said he believed that PV would only play a “miniscule role” in the renewable energy supply of the future..."
Hmmm - so where do you get these reliable renewables:
"...the great storage potential that exists in Norway with its hydro power plants, should be made accessible"
Investments paid for by taxpayers? That a lottery
ticket. No earned value, just confiscated earnings
of productive taxpayers redistributed to “investors”.
The scam has been exposed. Party over. It was
never viable without theft from the taxpayer.
Hey, Texas has the most windmills of any state!
Just ignore the fact that we didn’t have electricity when it was freezing almost all the way to the border.
Thanks, Ernest_at_the_Beach!
The PTB know that green is a hoax and a method of separating the producers of society from their money. And that’s all part of the gorebal climate change hoax.
Smart money does not go green.
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