Posted on 11/10/2013 5:07:27 AM PST by reaganaut1
ObamaCare isn't the only policy train wreck in progress. Like Mao urging peasants to melt down their pots, pans and farm tools to turn China into a steel-producing superpower overnight, Germany dished out subsidies to encourage homeowners and farmers to install solar panels and windmills and sell energy back to the power company at inflated prices. Success—Germany now gets 25% of its power from renewables—has turned out to be a disaster.
As Germans rush to grab this easy money, carbon dioxide output has risen, not fallen, because money-strapped utilities have switched to burning cheap American coal to provide the necessary standby power when wind and sun fail.
Because the sun and wind are intermittent and the power grid is poorly arranged to accommodate them, brownouts and blackouts threaten this winter.
Because the bills are paid by households and businesses, electricity rates are triple those in the United States. An immediate panic is jobs, as prized industries head to the U.S. for cheaper energy unleashed by the shale revolution. Europe's top energy official now speaks frankly of the "deindustrialization in Germany."
In Britain, where policy has been nearly as generous to renewables, "It's fine being very, very green, but not if you're interested in manufacturing," complains a prominent CEO.
Democracy's great virtue is that it doesn't follow schemes off a cliff, but the normal adjustment mechanisms are hampered by the fact that Europe's energy disaster implicates the entire political spectrum.
Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labour Party, set the theme for next year's British election when he recently promised to freeze energy prices if elected. But Labour isn't about to disown the solar and wind subsidies it created. It wants to soldier on, shifting the cost to business.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
China burns coal; the EU burns cash.
Where is that Simpson's character pointing and shouting "Ha! Ha!"?
Well that was predictable and didn’t take long —
BWAAAAAHHAAAAAHHAAAAAAA.
Couldn’t see that coming.
I’ll have to add it to my list of why alternative energy and recycling is nothing but a feel good inititative and has no economic benefits.
Germany does have something in common with Spain, a failed green energy policy subsidized by the taxpayers and consumers.
America is not far behind, thanks to Obama.
The last time that was done it required thousand bomber raids flying over the Reich. This way of getting the Germans to do it to themselves is much easier.
Oh, that will work out well. Not.
This will continue until we stop accepting the argument that man-made global warming is an established fact rather than junk science.
Who knew?
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