Wednesday 29 January 2014

German solar energy losing its shine: Jobs more than halved in two years - 55% less capacity installed last year

Solar module on German Autobahn (wiki)

In spite of being heavily subsidized, German solar energy is losing its shine:

The number of jobs in the German solar energy industry has more than halved in two years, figures released by the government on Tuesday revealed.
Unable to keep up with competition with Chinese producers, big solar producers such as Conergy, Solon and Q-Cells have all registered for insolvency over the past few years.
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With their demise came job losses. Figures from the Federal Office for Statistics, seen by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), revealed a huge drop.
Since the beginning of 2012, more than half of the then 10,200 solar energy jobs in Germany have been cut.
For the first time in nearly half a decade, the number of Germans working in the solar business stood at under 5,000 in 2014.

And that's not all:

The German Solar Industry Association is telling us that 55% less solar power capacity was installed in 2013 than the year before ....

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