WhatFinger


Merkel’s Green Shift Backfires As German CO2 Emissions Jump

Green Energy Disaster Sinks Siemens CEO



Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company, has lost patience with its CEO after Peter Loescher’s expansion into green energy and expensive acquisitions led to a fifth profit-forecast cut. Supervisory board officials have asked for the 55-year-old Austrian native to be ousted. A key element of Loescher’s growth strategy was the 2009 announcement that he would transform Siemens into a “green infrastructure giant”, heralding a drive into solar technology to promote Siemens as a partner for companies and governments keen to use more renewable energies. At the 2010 annual general meeting, he wore a green tie and called for a “green revolution.” Since Loescher took over in July 2007, the shares have declined 22 percent. --Alex Webb, Bloomberg, 29 July 2013

Support Canada Free Press


German engineering giant Siemens has confirmed it is completely winding down its solar business. The involvement ended in a disaster, costing Siemens about one billion euros. Plans to sell off its solar business had come to nothing, Siemens admitted Monday in confirming a report in the German newspaper “Handelsblatt”. The involvement ended in a disaster, costing Siemens about one billion euros ($1.3 billion). --Deutsche Welle, 17 June 2013 Germany's exit from nuclear power could cost the country as much as 1.7 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion) by 2030, or two thirds of the country's GDP in 2011, according to Siemens, which built all of Germany's 17 nuclear plants. "This will either be paid by energy customers or taxpayers," Siemens board member Michael Suess, in charge of the company's Energy Sector, told Reuters. "As an industry, Germany has always reached its goals. Now the whole world is looking at us. If the energy shift should fail ... it would undermine Germany's credibility as an industry nation," Suess said. --Christoph Steitz, Reuters, 17 January 2012 Germany’s rise in CO2 emissions is set to worsen for a second year, the first back-to-back increase since at least the 1980s, after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to shut nuclear plants led utilities to burn more coal. Utilities boosted hard coal imports 25 percent in the first quarter to 10 million metric tons. With elections due in September, the move is a blow to Merkel, a former environment minister who helped negotiate the 1997 Kyoto accord curbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. “The trend of rising German CO2 emissions is alarming,” said Claudia Kemfert, who heads the energy unit at the Berlin-based DIW. “Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said on June 10. --Stefan Nicola, Bloomberg, 29 July 2013


View Comments

Guest Column Dr. Benny Peiser -- Bio and Archives

Items of notes and interest from the web.


Sponsored