Hopefully this German media report is true: "European Union is seriously jeopardizing its global climate leadership role"

German Der Spiegel reports that the European Union "is seriously jeopardizing its global leadership role":

The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process.

The climate between Brussels and Berlin is polluted, something European Commission officials attribute, among other things, to the "reckless" way German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked stricter exhaust emissions during her re-election campaign to placate domestic automotive manufacturers like Daimler and BMW. This kind of blatant self-interest, officials complained at the time, is poisoning the climate.

But now it seems that the climate is no longer of much importance to the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, either. Commission sources have long been hinting that the body intends to move away from ambitious climate protection goals. On Tuesday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported as much.

At the request of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, EU member states are no longer to receive specific guidelines for the development of renewable energy. The stated aim of increasing the share of green energy across the EU to up to 27 percent will hold. But how seriously countries tackle this project will no longer be regulated within the plan. As of 2020 at the latest -- when the current commitment to further increase the share of green energy expires -- climate protection in the EU will apparently be pursued on a voluntary basis.--

In addition, the authority wants to pave the way in the EU for the controversial practice of fracking, according to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The report says the Commission does not intend to establish strict rules for the extraction of shale gas, but only minimum health and environmental standards.

One can only hope that what the German media report turns out to be true. In that case the European Union could be on its way to real economic - and even environmental - leadership.

The true costs of the wind industry revealed in the UK

Ineffective, bird killing, landscape destroying wind turbines are are extremely expensive
 for the taxpayers, and  create just a handful jobs.
(image wikipedia)

Wind turbines are a bonanza for the owners, but extremely expensive for the taxpayers. A new analysis of government and industry figures shows that every job in the UK wind farm industry is subsidised to the extent of £100,000 (157,000 USD) per year:

The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for the wind industry, which claims it is an economically dynamic sector that creates jobs. It was described by critics as proof the sector was not economically viable, with one calling it evidence of “soft jobs” that depended on the taxpayer.

The subsidy was disclosed in a new analysis of official figures, which showed that:

The level of support from subsidies in some cases is so high that jobs are effectively supported to the extent of £1.3million each --

Among the examples of extremely high subsidies effectively for job creation is Greater Gabbard, a scheme of 140 turbines 12 miles off the Suffolk coast.

It received £129million in consumer subsidy in the 12 months to the end of February, double the £65million it received for the electricity it produced. It employs 100 people at its headquarters in Lowestoft, receiving, in effect, £1.3million for every member of staff. --

The London Array, Britain’s biggest wind farm, with 175 turbines, employs 90 people at its base in Ramsgate, Kent. The array, which is 12 miles offshore, became fully operational in the spring. The foundation predicts its Renewables Obligation subsidy in its first year of full operation will be £160million — effectively £1.77million per job. --

Campaigners also warn that turbines do not generate power when the wind is too low or too high, and cannot store it, meaning conventional generation is needed as a backup.

Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, said: “Subsidies can create some soft jobs in the wind power industry but will destroy real jobs and reduce wages in other sectors, in the UK’s case because the subsidies cause higher electricity prices for industrial and commercial consumers. The extravagant subsidy cost per wind power job is an indication of the scale of that problem.”

He added: “Truly productive energy industries — gas, coal, oil, for example — create jobs indirectly by providing cheap energy that allows other businesses to prosper, but the subsidy-dependent renewables sector is a long way from this goal; it’s still much too expensive.”

Read the entire article here

PS

It is, of course, the same story in other countries. Without huge subsidies, there would not be a wind industry to speak of. The landscape destroying, bird killing and ineffective wind turbines are an expensive monument to stupidy everywhere.

CEO of Atlanta-based Southern Co about renewables: “What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine?”

Tom Fanning, CEO of the Atlanta-based energy company Southern Co, gives the facts about renewable energy in a nutshell:

But as Southern moves toward less reliance on coal because of looming federal regulation of carbon emissions, most of the shift in its portfolio is going toward natural gas.

Fanning said renewable sources of energy like wind and solar tend to be available in sparsely populated areas, requiring expensive transmission lines to distribute the electricity.

Renewables rely heavily on federal tax credits, making the industry vulnerable if those go away, he said.

Fanning said renewable energy also is intermittent by nature.

“What do you do when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine?” he said.

Read the entire article here.

Angela Merkel's most important energy transition allies are deserting her: “The entire energy switch has derailed"

Angela Merkel's most important energy allies are deserting her failed energy  transition  project.

It is now clear that Angela Merkel's flagship energy transition project - "die Energiewende" - has derailed. Two of the Merkel's most important allies, energy utility operators EON and RWE are deserting the sinking ship: 

Chancellor Angela Merkel is losing support from her two biggest allies in the utilities industry as their mounting debt prompts a retreat from renewable-power expansion, undermining her $700 billion program to reshape Germany’s energy market.

EON SE and RWE AG are reducing clean-power spending for the first time since 2009 to cut a combined 69 billion euros ($88 billion) in debt and curb costs. That limits funds for offshore wind energy, the centerpiece of Merkel’s plan to replace all atomic reactors by 2022 and triple renewables’ share by 2050.

With consumer power bills increasing and Merkel facing elections in September, Germany’s energy policy is rising on the political agenda. The cost of developing wind farms in the North Sea has surged following construction glitches and delays in linking turbines to the grid.

“The entire energy switch has derailed,” Marc Nettelbeck, an analyst at DZ Bank AG, said this week by phone from Frankfurt. “The difficulties connecting offshore wind farms to the power grid reduces their profitability and renders the original investment calculations of utilities invalid.”

The problem for the Germans is that the main opposition parties are even more under the spell of the great green hoax. Thus a new government after the September elections would in reality mean a change from bad to worse. Although the German economy is still fairly strong, the future is not looking great, unless the failed energy transition policy is reversed.  

The rise and fall of the solar power industry: Even the Chinese solar panel industry is beginning to crumble

We have seen major manufacturers of solar panels file for bankruptcy in the U.S. , as well as in Europe. Politicians and solar industry lobbyists have blamed Chinese cheap solar panel manufacturers for the failures. But soon there is no-one left to blame: Even China's government supported solar panel industry is beginning to crumble. The collapse of Suntech Power, one of the world's largest manufacturers, is just the beginning: 

One of the world’s largest manufacturers of solar panels, Suntech Power, has nearly run out of cash and is poised to be taken over partly or entirely by the municipal government’s holding company in its hometown, Wuxi, China, solar industry executives and a Wuxi official said Wednesday.

The collapse of Suntech is a milestone in the precipitous decline of China’s green energy industry in the last four years. More than any other country, China had bet heavily on renewable energy as the answer to its related problems of severe air pollution and heavy dependence on energy imports from politically unstable countries in the Middle East and Africa.

So far the solar and wind power producers (as well as panel and turbine manufacturers) have been able to reap windfall profits thanks to government and state support and subsidies. But all over the world the trend is against artificially supporting these ineffective and expensive forms of energy production. Indeed, why on earth should taxpayers enrich the people behind failed technologies, when there is more than enough cheap and clean shale gas and oil around!:

With the advent of US shale production, the domestic supply of natural gas is in such abundance that when adjusted for inflation it’s practically as cheap as it was back in 1999. As a result, gas-fired power is far cheaper than anything else on the wholesale market, with the exception of especially efficient hydro facilities. Even nuclear plants–with their extremely stable fuel costs–can’t always compete, as plans to shut down a small plant in Wisconsin and a larger but problem-plagued facility in Florida demonstrate.

"Germany is dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy"

Howard Rich, writing in Forbes, explains why Germany's green energy disaster is a cautionary tale for other countries: 

In 2000 Germany passed a major green initiative which forced providers to purchase renewable energy at exorbitant fixed prices and feed that power through their grids for a period of twenty years. Promulgated by a Socialist-Green coalition government – this initiative has since been embraced by Germany’s Conservative-Liberal majority, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact Merkel has doubled down on Germany’s renewable energy push in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan – ramping up government’s plan to phase in renewables while taking the country’s nuclear power industry offline. --

The basic problem? Wind farms are notoriously unreliable as a power source. Not only that, they take up vast amounts of space and kill tens of thousands of birds annually.

“Generating energy with wind involves extreme fluctuations because it depends on the weather and includes periods without any recognizable capacity for days, or suddenly occurring supply peaks that push the grid to its limits,” a 2012 report from Germany energy expert Dr. Guenter Keil notes. “There is a threat of power outages over large areas, mainly in wintertime when the demand is high and less (power) gets delivered from abroad.”  --

Because renewable power sources have been so unreliable, Germany has been forced to construct numerous new coal plants in an effort to replace the nuclear energy it has taken offline. In fact the country will build more coal-fired facilities this year than at any time in the past two decades – bringing an estimated 5,300 megawatts of new capacity online. Most of these facilities will burn lignite, too, which is strip-mined and emits nearly 30 percent more carbon dioxide than hard coal.

In other words Germany is dirtying the planet in the name of clean energy – and sticking its citizens with an ever-escalating tab so it can subsidize an energy source which will never generate sufficient power.

This is the cautionary tale of command energy economics – one other nations would be wise to heed.

And this failure is going to cost German taxpayers around one trillion euros by the end of the 2030s, according to Germany' environment minister Peter Altmaier! 

Germany returns to reality: Merkel wants to cap subsidies to renewable energy producers

Merkel begins to see the light.

Upcoming elections sometimes have a beneficial effect on politics. Germany is a case in point: Chancellor Angela Merkel is now prepared to scale down the disastrous and huge subsidies to wind and solar energy producers. 

Merkel's environment minister Peter Altmeier this week announced a plan that he described as a "paradigm shift":

In a surprise announcement on Monday, he said he would draft legislation to cap subsidies to renewable energy producers in order to stop the recent sharp increase in electricity bills caused by those subsidies -- a potentially popular move in an election year.

"It is not acceptable that electricity consumers should keep bearing all the risk of the future costs on their own," Altmaier told a news conference.

The current system works like this: Germany wants to boost its power generation from wind, solar and biogas plants, but the electricity they produce remains more expensive than coal and nuclear power. To encourage investment in renewables, the government allows operators of such plants to sell their electricity at a guaranteed fixed price or feed-in tariff that is above the market price. Energy consumers pay the difference via a renewable power surcharge on their electricity bills. To date, there has been no upper limit on Germany's subsidies for renewables, which means that the more solar panels and wind turbines go into operation, the higher the surcharge that consumers have to pay.

The guaranteed high return has led to a boom in investment in renewable energy in recent years. This has boosted the surcharge to a record 5.28 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity this year, up almost 50 percent from 2012 and up from just 0.88 cents in 2006. An average German household currently pays €180 ($242) per year to subsidize renewable energy. -

Altmaier wants the legislation to be passed by Aug. 1. However, it has yet to be approved by Economics Minister Philipp Rösler, chairman of the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), junior partner to Merkel's conservatives in the center-right coalition. Rösler praised the plan on Monday but stopped short of giving it his blessing. And even if Altmaier gets the go-ahead from the FDP, the law could be blocked by the opposition Social Democrats and Greens who have a majority in the Bundesrat, Germany's upper legislative chamber.

The new plan could according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung "end up stopping the expansion of renewables." If that is true, Merkel and Altmaier should be congratulated for finally returning to reality with regard to energy policy. 

Merkel will certainly get the votes of those hundreds of thousands of Germans, who cannot afford to heat their houses and flats, because of the steeply growing energy prices. 

Merkel's energy transition policy is turning Germans into thieves

Angela Merkel's energy transition policy, with spiraling electricity and gas prices, is turning Germans into thieves:

With energy costs escalating, more Germans are turning to wood burning stoves for heat. That, though, has also led to a rise in tree theft in the country's forests. Woodsmen have become more watchful.
- -

The problem has been compounded this winter by rising energy costs. The Germany's Renters Association estimates the heating costs will go up 22 percent this winter alone. A side effect is an increasing number of people turning to wood-burning stoves for warmth. Germans bought 400,000 such stoves in 2011, the German magazine FOCUS reported this week. It marks the continuation of a trend: The number of Germans buying heating devices that burn wood and coal has grown steadily since 2005, according to consumer research company GfK Group.

That increase in demand has now also boosted prices for wood, leading many to fuel their fires with theft.
--
About 10 percent of the firewood that comes out of Brandenburg's forest every year is stolen, resulting in losses of about €500,000, Rosenthal estimates. In the southern German state of Bavaria some 5 percent is absconded with annually says Hans Bauer, head of the state's forest owners association.

Read the entire article here

Merkel's senseless energy transition policy is hurting poor people, small businesses - and neighboring countries

Merkel's senseless energy transition policy is seriously hurting poor people and small businesses in Germany.

Germans are beginning to understand what chancellor Angela Merkel's energy transition policy means in practice. Last year electricity prices rose by a record 12 % - which means an additional cost of 125 euros for an average household - and the rise in the prices of electricity and gas is expected to continue. No wonder then that thousands of poor, mostly elderly people, are forced to live in unheated apartments, because they are unable to pay for the energy.

At the same time taxpayers last year paid in excess of 20 billion euros in subsidies to owners of inefficient wind turbines and other renewable energy producers.

In addition, taxpayers are also paying large sums as compensation for companies, which suffer because of fluctuations in the power grid caused by unreliable wind energy: 

Wind being an inconsistent source of energy, Germany's heavy reliance on it causes fluctuations in the power grid that, in turn, can force companies to shut down production for fear of a blackout.Such companies are financially compensated at the taxpayers' expense - up to 20,000 euros per megawatt per year when analysts say 2,000 euros would be a perfectly reasonable figure. The total cost of Germany's green-energy project thus rises by the millions.

The senseless energy transition policy is not only hurting taxpayers, and particularly poor and elderly people. It is also hurting Germany's small businesses, which unlike large companies are unable to avoid paying the "green" surcharges: 

Additionally, businesses can apply to be exempt from paying a surcharge that finances green-energy subsidies when it would inhibit their ability to compete globally. But it's not just multinationals that are granted such exempt status. Weekly Der Spiegel reports that among the more than 1,500 companies that are able to escape paying the tax this year are chocolate factories, poultry farms and slaughterhouses. It quotes energy expert Andreas Löschel as warning that if the policy isn't reversed, "only the stupid ones will not be freed from the surcharge." Even many midsize companies can prove some sort of international competition, so the tax burden falls disproportionately on small businesses.

And the negative effects of Merkel's Energiewende are hurting even Germany's neighbors:

Germany's green-energy push nevertheless remains fairly popular at home, but not abroad. Neighboring countries like the Czech Republic and Poland, which are tied to the same electricity grid as Germany, have been compelled to absorb the fluctuations that stem from its wind-energy production. These countries now intend to build security switches on their borders to prevent overloads and blackouts.

The conservative German newspaper Die Welt has little sympathy for its own government, arguing the Czechs and the Poles cannot be blamed for acting in what it calls "self-defense." Rather, Merkel's administration was "blinded" by its lofty ambitions, the paper editorialized last month, and used the grids of neighboring countries without even asking their permission, let alone paying for it.

Die Welt recognizes that the Czech Republic's and Poland's decision fragments the European energy market and "makes Germany the electric island in the European energy network."

Germany may meet its goal of boosting renewable energy production significantly to wane itself of coal, natural gas and nuclear, but that achievement will come at a price: literally for the German consumer, who will be paying a higher electricity rate than his European counterparts, but more importantly to the European single market which is now one bit less integrated.

Read the entire article here

Germans are hard working and law abiding people, which is why they so far have been prepared to pay for Merkel's energy madness, without complaining too much. But it is most likely that their patience will run thin in the not too distant future, forcing Merkel - or her successor - to make another Energiewende, reversing the entire policy. 

Francois Hollande's empty "global warming" speech

French President Francois Hollande,again today showed why he is a lightweight at a time when his country is in need of a real leader. 

The French economy is in free fall, with record high unemployment (25%) and a shocking deterioration of competitiveness. But instead of addressing these urgent real problems, Hollande today found time for grandstanding at one of the many useless international gatherings, where "world leaders" give empty speeches about "renewable energy" and "global warming" (This time the event, which was sponsored by Abu Dhabi oil money, was called "The World Future Energy Summit"). 

This was Hollande's message:
"If we do not act ... you can be very sure we will have a catastrophe very soon," he said.

Mr Hollande said governments needed to unite in cutting greenhouse emissions and avoid climate change.

Failure to spend in developing renewable energy will increase demand
for fossil energy and "make its prices unaffordable," besides
increasing risks of global warming, he said.

And in order to avoid the "catastrophe", Hollande - suprise, surprise - called for yet another (useless) international mega conference!:

He reiterated France's offer to host the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015 – the deadline set for world governments to sign a new global treaty on reducing emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

With regard to energy, Hollande has himself done his best in order to make prices "unaffordable" by supporting France's incredibly unwise ban on shale gas exploration. 

PS

The military intervention in Mali is another serious mistake by Hollande, who more and more looks like an emperor without clothes. 

Oxford ecologist: "Renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change"

Oxford ecologist Clime Humbler has written a must read article on the shocking environmental costs of renewable energy. Wind farms particularly are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, but for ideological reasons environmentalists prefer to ignore the carnage:

Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.

I’m a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a zoologist, I’ve worked as an environmental consultant — conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link — and I now teach ecology and conservation. Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages. The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.

My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.

Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

-

 A recent study in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research showed that bats killed by German turbines may have come from places 1,000 or more miles away. This would suggest that German turbines — which an earlier study claims kill more than 200,000 bats a year — may be depressing populations across the entire northeastern portion of Europe. Some studies in the US have put the death toll as high as 70 bats per installed megawatt per year: with 40,000 MW of turbines currently installed in the US and Canada. This would give an annual death toll of up to three -million.

Why is the public not more aware of this carnage? First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent of burying the corpses of victims. Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries. Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.

Read the entire Spectator article here

The EU's senseless renewable energy and climate change policies are seriously weakening manufacturing industries

The crisis-ridden European Union's senseless renewable energy and climate change policies are seriously weakening the competitiveness of European companies, which increasingly are moving their production facilities to countries with cheaper energy costs:

High energy costs are emerging as an issue in Europe that is prompting debate, including questioning of the Continent’s clean energy initiatives. Over the past few years, Europe has spent tens of billions of euros in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The bulk of the spending has gone into low-carbon energy sources like wind and solar power that have needed special tariffs or other subsidies to be commercially viable.

“We embarked on a big transition to a low-carbon economy without taking into account the cost and without factoring in the competitive impact,” says Fabien Roques, head of European power and carbon at the energy consulting firm IHS CERA in Paris. “I think there will be a critical review of some of these policies in the next few years.”

Both consumers and the industry are upset about high energy costs. Energy-intensive industries like chemicals and steel are, if not closing European plants outright, looking toward places like the United States that have lower energy costs as they pursue new investments.

BASF, the German chemical giant, has been outspoken about the consequences of energy costs for competitiveness and is building a new plant in Louisiana.

“We Europeans are currently paying up to four or five times more for natural gas than the Americans,” Harald Schwager, a member of the executive board at BASF, said last month. “Energy efficiency alone will not allow us to compensate for this. Of course, that means increased competition for all the European manufacturing sites.”

--

Current European energy policies were mostly shaped when the European economy was booming. In the grim economic climate of today, spending big money on renewables can seem like a luxury. Spain — once a strong supporter of renewables — has sharply cut funding.

The British government, another big backer of clean energy, recently struck a compromise. It promised to soak consumers for billions of pounds of subsidies for renewables like wind power and even new nuclear power plants, but it also gave a cautious green light to shale gas drilling in hopes of finding a cheaper source of natural gas.

A British consumer advocacy group called Which? recently pegged the costs to British consumers of decarbonization and new energy infrastructure at more than £100 billion, or $161 billion, and said that “persistently rising energy prices” were putting “intense financial pressures” on the public. In Germany, renewables subsidies are already adding 10 percent to 15 percent to bills, according to IHS.

Europeans cannot help noticing that the United States has managed, through the shale gas boom, not only to slash natural gas prices but also to cut carbon dioxide emissions to a 20-year low as utilities have shifted from coal to natural gas, which produces much less carbon dioxide.

Read the entire article here

Renewable energy success stories

There have recently been quite a few stories about wind and solar industry failures in a number of countries. But we should not loose sight of the fact that renewable energy also has its fair share of successes. Subsidized wind energy has for example been a hit among Sicily's mafia gangs, who are working hard in order to modernize and diversify their traditional business model. 

Now we hear that illegal marijuana growers in the U.S. are wholeheartedly embracing solar power:

Illegal marijuana growers are increasingly using solar power to operate large-scale operations in an attempt to remain off the grid and avoid detection from law enforcement agents, authorities said.

In isolated regions of the country, law enforcement agencies say they are finding more growers going green and trying to be self-sufficient by drawing power directly from the sun.

New Mexico State Police recently busted up a marijuana operation around the Four Corners region that used solar panels to pump water. And authorities in California have stepped up enforcement against solar panel thefts from vineyards that they believe were headed to illegal growers.

“We’re definitely seeing more and more of it,” said New Mexico State Police Lt. Robert McDonald. “I think since the cartels down in Mexico are now having such a hard time getting their product up here that some growers are trying to grow it themselves and to (stop) us from finding them by using solar. It definitely makes it harder.”

During last month’s bust in New Mexico, agents raided a solar-operated facility and seized around 250 marijuana plants that were between six- to eight-feet tall in an isolated area of Rio Arriba County.

In 2010, police in Socorro, N.M., pulled more than 1,500 plants from three locations in a marijuana operation that detectives called “very elaborate and sophisticated.” Police said the operation use solar panels, water pumps, batteries and hundreds of yards of hose that functioned on timers.

The use of expensive solar panels allows illegal marijuana operations to avoid the need for massive power consumption from nearby power companies, tipping off local and federal authorities, investigators say.

The use also has sparked the demand of solar panels that has resulted in thefts of panels from homes and businesses.

In California’s Napa Valley, wineries and vineyards two years ago reported a rash of solar panel thefts that authorities believe were linked to a ring that sold the panels to illegal growers.

Michael Honig, president of Honig Vineyard and Winery in Rutherford, Calif., said after installing 819 solar panels, thieves took off with around 40 panels. “Around 10 to 11 wineries were hit,” Honig said. “So was a school.”

It is most likely that there are many other similar renewable energy success stories, which have not yet got the attention they deserve. 

Desertec - another major solar energy project loosing its shine

Desertec - a green pipe dream soon to be deserted.

Another major solar energy project is going down the drain:

As recently as three years ago, many thought that it was only a matter of time before solar thermal plants in North Africa supplied a significant portion of Europe's energy needs. But Desertec has hit a road block. Industrial backers are jumping ship, political will is tepid and a key pilot project has suddenly stalled.

Supporters hailed the Desertec Industrial Initiative as the most ambitious solar energy project ever when it was founded in 2009. Major industrial backers pledged active involvement, politicians saw a win-win proposition and environmentalists fawned over Europe's green energy future. For a projected budget of €400 billion ($560 billion), the venture was to pipe clean solar power from the Sahara Desert through a Mediterranean super-grid to energy-hungry European countries.

Today, a scant three years later, there is still little to show for the project but the ambition.

The list of recent setbacks in daunting. The project has failed to break ground on a single power plant. Spain recently balked at signing a declaration of intent to connect high-voltage lines between Morocco and the rest of Europe. In recent weeks, two of the biggest industrial supporters at the founding of the initiative, Siemens and Bosch, backed out. And perhaps most tellingly, though last week's third annual Desertec conference was held in Berlin's Foreign Ministry, not a single German cabinet minister bothered to attend.

The reasons for the impending failure are clear:

Renewable energy projects remain more expensive than traditional fossil fuel plants and tend to require government subsidies.

-

"The rarest resource in Europe is money," said Michael Kauch, a German parliamentarian who is the environmental spokesman of the business friendly Free Democratic Party. "It's even rarer than energy or rare earth minerals."

The same story everywhere: Solar and wind energy projects, which totally rely on government subsidies, are failing abysmally. There is more than enough of clean and inexpensive shale oil and gas  for the foreseeable future. Why waste taxpayers' money on expensive and completely unrealistic "renewable" energy projects. 

Czech President Klaus on renewable energy, Europe and the welfare state

Klaus on the "profits" from renewable energy: This profit is not an outcome of those energy sources, but an outcome of government subsidies that are paid by taxpayers through high taxes and by consumers through high prices of energy, food and other commodities. The environmental impact is not positive either, even though everything was done supposedly for the sake of the environment. Hundreds of billions of euros, dollars and Czech crowns have been thrown away, not out of the window, but into the pockets of groups and movements that look “idealistic” on the surface, or into the pockets of those who profit from their activities.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who is soon to leave office after two terms, has for the last time spoken on the country's National Day to the Czech people and the diplomatic corps in Prague. As always, also these two addresses were out of the ordinary, containing the kind of wisdom that - sadly - is not to be found in the speeches of any of the other European heads of state or government (or for that matter anywhere else, for the time being):

Over the almost ten years that I have been the President of the Czech Republic I have been given to sign dozens if not hundreds of Bills that inevitably led to increasing our indebtedness and the power of institutions of all kinds. I have returned only a small part of those Bills back to the Chamber of Deputies for renegotiation, usually without any effect.

This was true both of the left-wing governments and of the governments with a prevalence of parties that were, or considered themselves to be, centre-right. The already excessive number of Acts, orders and regulations that harness our lives demotivates us and restricts our freedom. Besides, it does not express the true will of voters. The media help to promote the interests of small, yet powerful and often internationally interconnected pressure and lobby groups hiding under the banner of non-government organisations that have different names. An exemplary illustration of their success is what has been going on with the so called renewable sources of energy, when our legislation made it possible for those who had a better grasp of it than others or for those who may have even had the legislation tailor-made to their needs to gain unjustifiable profit.

This profit is not an outcome of those energy sources, but an outcome of government subsidies that are paid by taxpayers through high taxes and by consumers through high prices of energy, food and other commodities. The environmental impact is not positive either, even though everything was done supposedly for the sake of the environment. Hundreds of billions of euros, dollars and Czech crowns have been thrown away, not out of the window, but into the pockets of groups and movements that look “idealistic” on the surface, or into the pockets of those who profit from their activities.

Although austerity measures have recently been debated in our country almost on a daily basis, our debt still continues to increase. We cannot but clean up public finance and reduce the overall cost of the operation of the state at all levels and also curb our complex and expensive public administration. There are examples of best practice to draw on. When I received the President of the Slovenian Parliament here at the Prague Castle at the beginning of October, he told me that their newly formed government had reduced the number of Ministries from 19 to 12. Let’s attempt at something similar.

Even though it is politically extremely difficult, our welfare system needs to get back to realistic dimensions. This means to limit government mandatory expenditures predetermined by law, that is the money that merely passes through the budget without any government decision-making. Contemplating higher corporate and individual tax as a source of financing the mandatory expenditures is ineffective and it only makes the economic and financial problems deeper.

In his speech to the Czech people, Klaus had this to say about the "Nobel laureates" in Brussels - and the IPCC:

We must not be led to believe that somewhere far beyond the borders of our country there are thousands of eager supranational civil servants and politicians who think about nothing else but how to help us to be better-off, more fortunate and more carefree. We will not have anything save for the things we do ourselves, that we take care of, that we negotiate or fight for with a reasonable degree of confidence. We should wait neither for a modern Messiah nor for the European funds.

We must not be led to believe that our domestic policy is so bad that various non-democratic movements, civil “appeals” or “enlightened individuals” have to come to lead and govern our country. It is not possible without democratic politics.

In his speech to the foreign ambassadors, Klaus's message was clear:

I wish to see Europe as a community of democratic states. States which cooperate with each other, without any hegemon among them or above them. That is why I wish the countries to remain basic entities of our lives, retaining their governments with executive power and parliaments with legislative power, elected by their citizens and accountable to them. That is why I wish European integration to develop on intergovernmental basis in the direction which is and will be initiated and agreed upon by the states participating in it. The current European crisis should be seen as an opportunity for a fundamental systemic change of the European integration model on the one hand and of the European overregulated and paternalistic social and economic system on the other.

It will be a great loss to the Czech people, and free people everywhere, when Klaus leaves office. However, it is reassuring to know that he will continue to speak out about the most important issues in other fora.  

Siemens gets rid of its solar power activities - does not want to become another Solyndra

Another sign of the unraveling of the solar power business - German Siemens does not want to become another Solyndra:

German engineering giant Siemens said Monday that it plans to pull out of solar energy 
where business expectations have not been met and is currently negotiating to sell its activities in this area.

"The company plans to divest its solar business activities and is currently holding talks with potential buyers on this subject. Siemens intends to focus its renewable energy activities on wind and hydro power," the group said in a statement.

"The energy division will be slimmed down and the Solar and Hydro Division will be discontinued," it said, adding that the Solar and Hydro Division generated revenue "in the low triple-digit millions" in the business year ended September 30, 2012 and has "roughly 800 employees."

Siemens explained that the solar business had not been as profitable as hoped.

The next logical step for Siemens is to also get rid of its wind power activities. That is likely to happen when more and more governments begin to reduce subsidies for the ineffective, overexpensive, landscape destroying and bird killing wind turbines. 

"Europe´s Green Energy Capital" Scotland - myth and reality

Scotland´s First Minister Alex Salmond appears to live in his own dream world, in which he is the mighty leader of an independent "Europe´s Green Energy Capital": 

"Scotland has a target of delivering the equivalent of 100% of domestic electricity demand from renewables"

Our wind and seas hold some of the most concentrated potential not only across the UK and Europe, but in the world – our practical offshore renewables resource has been estimated at 206 GW. By harnessing around a third of this resource, installed offshore renewables capacity could reach 68 GW by 2050 – enough to meet Scotland’s own domestic electricity needs seven times. Around 20 per cent of the electricity generated in Scotland is already exported to the rest of the UK and Scotland can go far beyond this to become the green energy capital of Europe.

Salmond is also fantasizing about support for his energy hallucinations from "major international figures". However, the only one lauding his new energy empire seems to be former vice president Al Gore, who is busy cashing in on the global warming fraud in order to become the first carbon billionaire:  

Climate change campaigner and Nobel Laureate Al Gore praised Scotland’s commitment to renewables when he said: "Scotland has not only provided inspiring leadership, you are exploiting one of the greatest resources anywhere on the planet, with wind onshore and particularly offshore, all sorts of variety of windmills - and the new renewable technologies are especially important". So clearly, major international figures think we have the framework right in Scotland.

When Salmond - hopefully soon - wakes up from his green pipe dream, he has to face the real world: 

The number of homes north of the Border in “fuel poverty” is expected to have increased rapidly to 800,000 last year – more than a third of the total – thanks to rising energy bills.

If heating and electricity prices continue to spiral at the same rate, the report found that the “median household” in Scotland will find it difficult to afford their bills from this year.

It is projected that middle-class Scots will be spending 12 per cent of their income paying for electricity and heating by 2015, but the Tories warned the SNP’s focus on expensive wind power would make the situation worse.

Although ministers have focused the efforts on helping people on benefits, the study found that more than a third (38 per cent) of those in fuel poverty are middle class or wealthy.

Fuel poverty is defined as a household spending more than 10 per cent of its income on energy bills. The Scottish Government has promised to eradicate the scourge “as far as is reasonably practical” by 2016.

However, the study suggested this is a forlorn hope, noting that energy bills have risen at the six times the rate of household income in recent years. British Gas, which includes Scottish Gas, recently reported profits of £2 million a day.

Alex Johnstone, Scottish Tory housing spokesman, blamed the SNP’s “obsession with renewables”. He said: “The Scottish Government’s policy of pursuing wind generated electricity is causing household energy bills to rise, intensifying the fuel poverty situation across Scotland as a result.”

And it is getting much worse, if Salmond is allowed to continue with his obsession: 

ELECTRICITY bills will rise by at least 58% if the UK Government is to meet its renewable energy target within the next eight years, according to an industry expert.

Sir Donald Miller, who spent a lifetime as an engineer in the power industry, rising to chair both the South of Scotland Electricity Board and ScottishPower, warned the cost to households would increase by that amount if ministers were to meet their tar-get of 30% or more of electricity coming from renewable sources by 2020. It would mean the average annual electricity bill of £489 for Scottish homes would go up by £283.62 to more than £773 a year within the next eight years.
The more ambitious Scottish Government target of generating the equivalent of 100% of Scotland's own electricity demand from renewable resources by 2020 would mean even greater rises in household bills, he warned. 

The conversion of a believer in "green jobs"

Deborah Sloan is a mechanical engineer and researcher, who after completing her Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford took a "Green Job" with a solar company because believed its potential to create clean and cheaper energy. However, soon she found out that the "green" reality was quite different from the "green" dream: 

Mitt Romney has recently taken fire not only from the Obama campaign but even from some left-leaning Republicans, for his rightful criticism of Obama’s destructive “green jobs” programs.  Not only is Mr. Romney right to criticize these programs -- and his position supported by many economic studies -- but in fact the situation is even worse than anything suggested by these criticisms. Green jobs are destroying the abilities and spirits of a whole generation of engineers. I should know. I was one of those engineers.

In 2008 I completed my Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford and took a “Green Job” with a solar company. Excitingly, it seemed to match the green rhetoric--to have potential to create the incredible value of cleaner, cheaper energy.

Unfortunately, the more I learned about my job and industry, the more I realized they were fundamentally flawed.

Management said we would be competitive with oil and gas once we manufactured panels for $1.00/watt. But as a mechanical engineer, I learned most of solar’s cost is not panels themselves but “balance of system” (BOS) components like DC to AC converters, wiring, and structural mounting, adding about $3.00/watt for a best-case and typically around $4.00/watt. Coal and hydroelectric systems cost as low as $2.10/watt and $1.00/watt, respectively. Ifound no evidence that solar’s BOS costs would decrease meaningfully.

Nor did anyone have a solution to the problem that has plagued solar and wind energy since their inception: intermittency. Solar and wind energy come intermittently, with no means to store it for later use that wouldn’t add considerably to their already-high cost. Thus, the idea of a large scale solar and wind economy is farcical.

If the industry was fundamentally unproductive, so were my colleagues and I. We were wasting a tragic amount of time, talent--and other people's money--making a far inferior form of power when we could have been creating real advances in other, legitimate kinds of energy.

Just as disturbing was what these “jobs” did to people’s spirits. Every high-ranking person in solar or wind must eventually figure out, as I did, that he cannot compete in the market, that his competitive advantages are government subsidies and forced limitations on competitors.

Whatever technical advances we made didn’t solve the intractable problems, so our real victories came in forms such as the Cap and Trade Bill. I learned of the bill’s passage in the House of Representatives while driving home from a day spent on an interesting technical project. I knew my work was trivial in comparison. Our true means of revenue-generation was forcibly limiting carbon emissions, to force consumers into using energy sources like ours.

I had looked forward to beating the competition, but with superior products--and working even harder if we should lose, or if that failed, joining the competition in creating a more energy-rich world. When the goal is not out-producing but crippling of the competition, the goodwill of "May the best man win" becomes "What kills them can only make me stronger."

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Real wealth and jobs are not produced by means of subsidies extracted by force from helpless victims by the Obama administration, but by rational free people acting under their own initiative.  The sooner the government stops forcing green jobs on us, the sooner the rest of America’s wasted green workforce can join me in getting real jobs.

Read the entire article here