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If Germany Can Do it … A Big ‘If”
Monday, August 27, 2012 5:51
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All eyes are on Germany these days as Greece, Spain and Italy await their fiscal fate.
But it isn’t just the great Euro- question for which answers are sought in Germany. For, in much the same way that La Toynbee harps continually about the Swedish model of social policy, so many a Green offers us the Teutonic approach as the paragon of energy policy.
Decisively scrapping nuclear generation; generously subsidising wind and solar power; dramatically meeting nearly half its electricity needs from solar in May of this year: Utopia-am-Rhein has already been built ! You see, they chorus, and if Germany can do it …
Not so fast, my little green chums. Here’s your summer reading project on German energy.
- coal-burning rising by 13.5%
- CO2 emissions up
- big investment programme in new coal plants
- grid unstable
- policy in chaos
Let’s leave the final word to Günther Oettinger (German!), the EC’s Energie-Kommissar (sic):
Germany has the second highest electricity prices in Europe – mainly because of high taxes and the renewable energy levy. This can not go on, because we will overwhelm the consumer and harm the economy
Well said, that man.
ND
2012-08-27 05:49:59
Source: http://www.cityunslicker.com/2012/08/if-germany-can-do-it-big-if.html
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