Not the great green rip-off, by George–Monbiot has got it wrong: feed-in tariffs are not a waste ...

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/05/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff-benefits

Not the great green rip-off, by George

Monbiot has got it wrong: feed-in tariffs are not a waste of money. They work – just look at the German renewables industry

Alan Simpson
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 March 2010 19.00 GMT

Thank goodness http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/solar-panel-workable-future">Jeremy Leggett stepped in to correct some of the inaccuracies in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff">George Monbiot's piece. The errors, however, are even more extensive than Jeremy highlighted.

It isn't often that Monbiot manages to get the politics, the details and the practicalities of an argument all wrong at the same time. He managed to do so, however, in his attack on the http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/feed-in-tariffs">government's feed-in tariffs proposals for renewable energy.

Germany: FiT for the future

The most startlingly inaccurate of the claims made in his article is that Germany has "decided to sharply reduce the tariff it pays for solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the grounds that it is a waste of money". Ask the Germans. They will tell you that the reduced tariff rates for new installations are simply because the scheme has been a runaway success. In the four years since their introduction, the tariffs have created 300,000 new jobs and driven down the unit cost of solar panels to the point where they were starting to pay for themselves within a period of five to seven years.

The whole purpose of FiTs is to develop a momentum for renewable energy technologies that will quickly turn them from innovations to mature market technologies. Far from being a waste of money, they have become one of the most powerful engines of German economic regeneration. Instead of having energy bills that pay for the import of non-renewable fossil fuels, Germany is now paying its own citizens to produce, install and maintain their own renewable energy systems.

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[NNadir]

1. Electricity prices in Europe:

German energy prices are increasingly controlled by Gazprom, which is not a surprise, since the former German Chancellor worked to destroy German infrastructure in order to secure himself a great 300,000 euro per year job with the Imperial Russian Court.