Re: http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/half-germany-was-powered-solar.html
And the U.S. is waiting for….what? The quick answer is that solar costs too much and pollutes too much. Be very careful what you ask for. In any case, that treehugger headline is very deceptive. It was a one day spike in solar output and only midday in a very good German day.
According to figures released by a German water and energy trade association, solar photovoltaic systems produced 10 percent of Germany’s total electricity consumption for the month of May. “Every single one of our [German Environmental Ministry] brochures mentions that we intend to obtain 35 percent of our electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020.”
But the cost of this “success”, to taxpayers and electricity users alike, has risen to astronomical levels. “An average family will then have to pay some €50 more for electricity every year, not to mention the additional costs for the power networks.” “The German government was quick to approve a phase-out of nuclear power in the country after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Now the costs of moving toward renewable energy are just being realized, and low-income consumers are paying the price.”
“Electricity prices in Germany have risen by more than 10 percent…Approximately every tenth household currently has problems paying for rising energy costs,” says Holger Krawinkel at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. “About 200,000 recipients of Hartz IV, Germany’s benefits program for the long-term unemployed, had their power cut off last year because of unpaid bills…” Some 56% of green-energy subsidies in Germany goes to solar even though solar plants produce only 21% of all subsidized energy. The cost to German consumers of all solar subsidy commitments already tops €100 billion.
And you thought Solyndra was expensive.
Not only is it expensive, it is also ineffective. Fritz Vaherenholt, a founder of Germany’s environmental movement who headed the renewable energy division of the country’s second largest utility company, has recently coauthored a new book titled “The Cold Sun: Why the Climate Disaster Won’t Happen.” He charges the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with gross incompetence and dishonesty, most particularly regarding fear-mongering exaggeration of known climate influence of human CO2 emissions.
Furthermore…solar power as the technology exists today is now recognized to produce more real pollution and more greenhouse effect that CO2…more than 10,000 times more.
budbromley 