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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (63533)	5/5/2008 3:34:39 PM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542002

I don't see anything in the story indicating a reason for reducing the subsidies. Only that such a cut has been proposed. Why would we assume that they are not happy with the returns? Maybe they are reaching the point where the subsidies are no longer necessary because they have worked so well. I was about to type out an explanation of my comment, but I'll just take it back. I dont want to get involved into a debate about the semantics of the word "return". OTOH, I would like to understand why Germany is even thinking about cutting the solar subsidy. They have been successful in establishing a solar industry, but it is still tiny when compared to their total power needs....just .5% in '06 going to 3% in 2020. washingtonpost.com Hmmm, this article from last year says that Germany is looking to shift solar subsidies to wind. It seems that they dont generate nearly as much electricty from wind as you'd expect because of their subsidization of solar. thepanelist.com I have to say that the more I read about solar the more I realize that we are still talking about very small numbers. Perhaps the shift will accelerate over the next decade, but if a country with heavy solar subsidies is only aiming for 3% of power generation by 2020, we are going to need to find quite a few other sources besides solar to accomodate our growing needs. Slacker