Solar grid parity in 2020: Thats great, we can stop subsidizing and mandating alternative energy because it will achieve success in the marketplace on its own. And logically, we should hold off on installing today's solar technology cause it will be a lot better in just a few years ... why invest now, when better and cheaper will be available soon?
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I recall this from previous posts:
...
As Bjorn Lomborg (a firm believer in AGW) reports, GERMANY led the world in putting up SOLAR panels, funded by €47 billion in subsidies. The lasting legacy is a massive debt and lots of inefficient SOLAR technology sitting on rooftops throughout a fairly cloudy country, delivering a trivial 0.1% of its total energy supply. Denmark's wind industry is almost completely dependent on taxpayer subsidies, and Danes pay the highest electricity rates of any industrialized nation. Spain has finally discontinued its SOLAR subsidies as too costly; as Prof. Gabriel Calzada reports, the program actually caused a net loss of jobs.
Having successfully exploited domestic subsidies, Europeans are now looking at the United States as the new "land of opportunity." A recent example (described in the Wall Street Journal of Oct. 26, 2010) is the world's largest solar-thermal power plant, on 7,000 acres of Federal land in the desert of southern California. The $6-billion project is a venture by two German companies, and it may be eligible for a cash subsidy of nearly one billion dollars in taxpayer money. Even after these subsidies, the cost of the electricity generated will be 30 to 70 percent more expensive than electricity generated by natural gas, the dominant electricity-generating fuel in California.
In addition to direct subsidies, the companies are seeking federal loan guarantees and, no doubt, an array of benefits from the State of California. SOLAR Trust of America, a joint venture between Germany's SOLAR Millennium AG and privately held (mostly by Arab oil money) Ferrostaal AG, is awaiting approval from the Energy Department for a federal loan guarantee for the first two of its four planned units. Deutsche Bank AG and Citigroup Inc. are working with SOLAR Trust to obtain project-equity and tax-equity investment.
The White House claims that the federal cash subsidy will create three hundred permanent jobs (at about $3 million per job!). The nature of the jobs is not specified, but one may assume that there will be much need for sweepers to remove dust and dirt from about 7,000 acres of SOLAR mirrors. Not exactly "high-tech," is it?"
americanthinker.com
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The German electricity grid faces instability because of too much SOLAR power, an expert said.
Thanks to a generous feed-in tariff, the installation of rooftop SOLAR panels and large-scale photovoltaic plants has exploded in GERMANY.
Stephan Kohler, chairman of the DENA agency, an energy adviser to the government, has warned that the green boom could turn into a disaster for Germany's aging power grid.
"The network is facing a congestion due to SOLAR power," Kohler told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "That's why the expansion of SOLAR power has to be cut back quickly and drastically."
Experts have long called for an overhaul of the European power grid to integrate the fluctuating renewable energy sources such as SOLAR and wind power.
Experts forecast between 8 gigawatts and 10 GW of SOLAR power capacity to be installed this year -- the equivalent of roughly 10 large coal-fired power plants. In 2009, only 4 GW were installed.
Well aware that the industry is maturing more quickly than anticipated, Berlin this year agreed to reduce subsidies for rooftop panels by 16 percent.
The decision helped the German industry to a first-half sales boom, as private customers ordered panels in droves to beat feed-in-tariff reductions set for this summer.
Strong sales have continued until now, however, with experts forecasting a similarly strong 2011 when it comes to new installations. If the current trends continue, GERMANY would have a SOLAR power capacity of nearly 50 GW by 2013.
"That would be a catastrophe for the grids," Kohler said, urging the German government to cap the installation of new SOLAR panels at 1 GW per year. "Then we could reach the manageable benchmark of 30 GW in 2020," he said.
The German government through the Renewable Energy Law, or EEG, regulates the feed-in-tariff aimed at boosting power production from renewable energy sources. Paid by German taxpayers via their electricity bill and guaranteed for 20 years, the levies vary from 21 cents per kilowatt-hour for offshore wind turbines to 46 cents per kw/h for roof-mounted SOLAR panels.
Berlin has vowed to gradually reduce subsidies but EEG-related costs will nevertheless rise significantly over the coming years, experts have warned.
The German consumer association VZBV claims that the SOLAR panels installed in 2010 will result in additional costs of $36 billion during the next 20 years.
The German government has so far not voiced plans to limit SOLAR power installations; an overhaul of the EEG isn't planned until 2012.
upi.com
Message 26908555 solar
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GERMANY Talks SOLAR, But Goes Coal.
Posted on January 1, 2011 by hauntingthelibrary
I’m sure you’ve all seen the news articles condemning the energy policies of your country, and comparing them unfavourably to the shining green energy future being built in GERMANY. According to these articles, GERMANY is pretty much going SOLAR for its power from now on, in a determined bid to cut its carbon emissions.
The only thing is, that story just isn’t true. GERMANY is powered by coal and, away from the climate summits and the international Earth Day junkets, is arguing powerfully to maintain subsidies on coal! Let’s take a look at what Germany’s real energy policy is.
In the German media, the national energy policy is an open secret. As Der Spiegel reported back in 2007:
Everyone in GERMANY is talking about climate protection — everyone, that is, except for energy companies. They’re planning to build dozens of new coal-fired power plants — with the support of the governing coalition in Berlin.
spiegel.de
That’s right – dozens of new, massive coal-fired power stations, including many that will purely burn lignite, known as ‘brown coal’ and the dirtiest source of power that there is. As Der Spiegel pointed out, “German politicians are explicitly encouraging them to do so”. The scale of this planned investment in coal-fired power stations is impressive, and gives the lie to Germany’s place as the green man of Europe:
A total of 12 plants are being planned or built in North Rhine-Westphalia alone. If they were all to be connected to the electricity grid, they would produce an annual 68 million tons of emissions, according to calculations by North Rhine-Westphalia’s Green Party — more than Switzerland’s total annual emissions.
That’s just for one region of GERMANY alone, remember. Add in the other regions, and it makes a mockery of the UK’s monstrously expensive efforts to reduce its own Co2 emissions. People in the UK will be freezing to death as the wind turbines freeze up, whilst Germans will be warming themselves with cheap, plentiful coal.
How do we know that Germany’s coal will be cheap? Because we’re helping to pay for it, that’s why. Yes, you’ve guessed it – GERMANY has just recently won its battle in the European Parliament to get other countries to help subsidize their coal, as Reuters reports:
(Reuters) GERMANY and other coal-mining nations secured an extension of coal subsidies until 2018 after a months long battle with environmentalists.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive, had proposed in July that the coal mining industry should only get four more years of state aid before subsidies are phased out in 2014, the sixth such extension of state aid since 1965.
But with thousands of jobs on the line, GERMANY led other coal-mining countries such as Spain in pushing hard to extend subsidies to 2018, to fit around Berlin’s own national laws.
reuters.com
That’s right – not only GERMANY, but Spain as well, are getting their coal extraction subsidized by other, dumber nations.
But what about Germany’s much vaunted SOLAR power revolution? Well, as The Economist reported recently, “Germany’s support for SOLAR power is getting ever harder to afford” (perhaps because the rest of Europe isn’t subsidizing it). It observes that the German government is actually cutting support for SOLAR power, and not planning to ramp up production of SOLAR panels.
And how much of Germay’s electricity does the SOLAR miracle currently provide? The Economist article reports that:
SOLAR modules are now thought to furnish close to 2% of Germany’s electricity, up from about 1% in 2008
economist.com
But don’t worry, the Germans aren’t stupid. They have “dozens” of massive coal-fired power stations in the works, ready to supply cheap, reliable electricity for years and years to come. How about the country you live in?
hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com
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You Couldn’t Make It Up: Sierra Club Sues California’s Green Gov to STOP SOLAR Power Plant
I've said before greens would oppose SOLAR and wind power if it ever became industrial scale .... and they ARE PROVING THIS RIGHT!
Posted on January 18, 2011 by hauntingthelibrary
Like everything else, the eco-mentalists love the idea of renewable energy, as long as it’s situated next to poor people, not in their pristine back yard.
A Reuters news wire of 6th January 2011 reports that the Sierra Club is using its vast fortune to take California’s energy Commission to court over its decision to allow a new SOLAR power plant to be built:
The suit, obtained by Reuters, charges that regulators failed to fully mitigate the project’s impact on rare plant and animal species, and asks the court to void approval and permits for the plant.
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of suits targeting planned SOLAR plants, potentially setting back the development of SOLAR energy and derailing state and federal commitments to lessening dependence on fossil fuels
Reuters. Sierra Club Sues over California SOLAR Plant
The irony is almost perfect, isn’t it? California, the uber-green state is being sued by the Sierra Club because it granted permission for a SOLAR power plant. What is it these guys want anyway? (Hat tip: the always-excellent Notrickszone of GERMANY.)
As a further report from Reuters details, the biggest obstacle to SOLAR power in California is not global warming sceptics, Republicans or big oil money-funded conspiracies, but environmental groups who are banding together to oppose building SOLAR power plants:
Groups ranging from the Audubon Society to the Defenders of Wildlife to the Natural Resources Defense Council are also lobbing out objections against other projects.
About half of all plants in development now are having issues concerning plant and animal habitat, culture sites, or water demand, Hersey estimates. Many of those could end up in court. And just the threat of litigation seems likely to affect the scale of SOLAR, analysts say. Developers could cut back the size of future proposed plants, and think more carefully about where they should go — and that’s the point, environmentalists counter.
Reuters. Special Report: With SOLAR Power, it’s Green Vs Green.
California’s uber-green government must be reeling. Here they are having done exactly what all the eco-mentalists have been demanding and what thanks and praise do they get from them? None. Instead, they get torrents of criticism and law suits that will cost the state (and therefore the taxpayer) millions of dollars. If it wasn’t so tragic you’d have to laugh.
The involvement of the big environmental groups follows on the heels of Democratic do-gooder Senator Diane Feinstein who did her bit for global warming hypocrisy by putting the kybosh on renewable energy installations in her back yard of the Mojave:
AMBOY, Calif. — Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big SOLAR plants and wind farms planned for the region.
New York Times. Desert Vistas Vs SOLAR Power
This is, of course, perfectly normal behaviour for the eco-mentalists, who demand more renewable energy, but react with horror when that SOLAR or wind or tidal power might be built in their back yard. Global warming hypocrite, George “four-bedrooms” Monbiot regularly demands more renewable energy, but when the Welsh government announced plans for wind farm near his large farmhouse in rural Wales he launched a stinging offensive against the idea, saying the country was “saturated” with wind farms:
Welsh energy policy has been strongly criticised by leading environmental campaigner George Monbiot.
Monbiot said he was not singling out Wales, as the UK as a whole was behind in the fight against global warming.
But at the Hay Festival he urged an end to windfarms on land and said a Severn Barrage would cause too much damage.
BBC. Monbiot Attacks Welsh Energy Plan.
Green versus green – you really couldn’t make it up.
hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com
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Austerity pulling plug on Europe's green subsidies
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. While it didn’t change the tariff, it retroactively limited the number of production hours that PV plants could qualify for the subsidies.
Spain’s SOLAR industry lobby group, the Asociacion Empresarial Fotovoltaica, estimated that the second decree would effectively reduce tariffs received by PV plants by 30 per cent, forcing many of the PV companies to default on their debt. Infrastructure Investor magazine called the second decree “the Christmas Eve massacre.”
Other European countries are also taking a long, hard look at their renewable energy sector and wondering whether it’s affordable. In December, the French government unveiled a plan for a three-month moratorium on new SOLAR projects that are eligible for subsidized tariffs. The goal was to prevent a speculative PV bubble while it mulls new regulations for renewable energy.
There is no doubt the replacement regime will be less generous. CRE, the independent regulator of the French energy and natural gas markets, recently estimated that taxes on electricity would have to almost triple to meet the rising costs of renewable energy. The question, of course, is whether rising energy taxes could kill more jobs than those created by renewable energy expansion.
GERMANY is scaling back subsidies, too, and revealed another reduction a few days ago to households that generate electricity with their own SOLAR panels. In the United States, where the incentives generally come in the form of tax credits instead of subsidized tariffs, the appetite for long-term support seems to be waning, partly because of the natural gas glut. Ditto in Canada. In Ontario last year, the average price for power was 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour. The feed-in tariff for SOLAR installations ranged from 44 cents to 80 cents, that is, up to 20 times the market rate. (Ontario revised that higher end of the range downward to 64.2 cents last summer.) Watch the next Ontario government drain the renewable energy slush fund.
Renewable energy is fraught with difficulties. In less-sunny climates, PV panels make little sense, though that hasn’t stopped GERMANY and Britain from installing them on rooftops everywhere. Wind power is becoming hugely popular in some parts of the world. But since the wind doesn’t always blow, backup power has to be installed. That means consumers have to pay for the capacity twice and the backup power is usually of the fossil-fuel variety. Denmark, which has a reputation as the cleanest of the clean countries, actually generates about half its electricity from coal, the grubbiest fuel. That proportion hasn’t varied in a decade in spite of the country’s relentless pursuit of wind power.
The austerity programs have piled on additional difficulties in the form of subsidy reductions. No government would announce “temporary” subsidies, for fear of scaring off investment in renewable energy. Still, that’s exactly what the subsidies are turning out to be. Investors everywhere are going to get slaughtered as debt-swamped governments trim or eliminate the freebies. The ailing share prices of renewable energy companies such as Spain’s Iberdrola Renovables gives you an idea of the (waning) investor sentiment.
The renewable energy bubble was inflated by government subsidies. Those same governments are now deflating them. Turns out the subsidies were too good to be true.
theglobeandmail.com
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GERMANY to shovel climate fund dollars into coal plants
Posted on July 13, 2011 by Ryan Maue
Less than a month after the failed Bonn UN climate confab, GERMANY has announced a most audacious energy policy: in order to shutter nuclear plants (but not completely scuttle their economy), the German government will direct climate fund cash to building coal and natural gas plants. You can’t make this stuff up.
GERMANY plans to dump nuclear power by 2022 but clearly needs to meet burgeoning electricity demand especially for a still powerful manufacturing economy dependent upon exports. SOLAR panels at their latitude and windmills are not going to suffice, so the solution is more coal. The environmental movement must be apoplectic with so many politically correct wires crossing at once.
With yesterday’s story of “wide blackouts” expected to affect Europe (during winter, no less) due to Germany’s anti-nuclear decision by Chancellor Merkel, GERMANY has decided not to freeze during the winter by relying on renewable energy resources:
The plan has come under stiff criticism, but the Ministry of Economics and Technology defended the idea. A spokeswoman said it was necessary as the government switches from nuclear to other renewable energy sources and added that the money would promote the most efficient plants possible.
Will Merkel cave or shovel climate fund cash into coal burners?
wattsupwiththat.com |
