Across the world, unsustainable subsidies for wind and solar are being cut back.
The Ontario government paints itself in extreme green. It has outlawed coal — the only jurisdiction on the continent to have done so. It boasts the world’s biggest solar plant. It boasts the western world’s biggest subsidies to the renewables industry. And now, it also boasts the western world’s fastest-growing renewables industry.
But Ontario’s new-found status didn’t arise because Ontario newly increased its level of its subsidies. It arose because the world’s other extreme green jurisdictions — to avert the economic and political ruin that comes of unaffordable green power — recently swallowed their pride, slashed their subsidies and backstabbed their renewables industries. Like its extreme green counterparts elsewhere, Ontario will follow suit soon enough.
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France Stops Subsidies for New Solar Projects
The French government is planning to suspend feed-in tariffs for new photovoltaic installations above a capacity of 3 kilowatt hours for a period of four months, according to a draft decree discussed at a government meeting on Thursday. --
ENDS Europe, 7 December 2010
Solar developers are set to abandon France following the government's recent announcement that it will freeze all new projects larger than 3kW in order to prick the “speculative bubble” building up around the industry. --
ReCharge News, 6 December 2010
Spain Slashes Green Energy Subsidies
Bloomberg, 3 December 2010
Spain reduced subsidies paid to solar thermal power plants and some wind farms to limit the cost of electricity for homes and businesses.
The government reduced the subsidies earned by wind-power generators registered under the 2007 Royal Decree 661 by 35 percent until 2013 and eliminated support for solar thermal plants during their first year of operation at a cabinet meeting in Madrid today, the Industry Ministry said in an e-mailed statement. Both technologies will face limits on the number of hours they can earn subsidized rates.
Beware Of Watermelons: Green On Outside, Red Inside
Michael McCarthy,
The Independent, 7 December 2010
Britain needs to go back to old-style central planning of its electricity market, with the Government deciding who builds power stations where, so that it can take on the world’s toughest target to cut its emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming, the independent Committee on Climate Change tells the Government today.
The only way of getting the £150bn worth of new low-carbon energy generating plant – whether offshore windfarms, nuclear power stations or loaw-carbon and gas plants – will be for the Government to offer contracts with guaranteed prices for the electricity, the committee says.
In pursuit of its ultimate goal of slashing carbon dioxide by 80 per cent by 2050, the Government should now set a new, legally-binding interim target of a 60 per cent cut by 2030, the committee says in its latest report – which would be far and away the most demanding emissions target anywhere.
