{"id":87,"date":"2013-10-29T11:13:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T11:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/?p=87"},"modified":"2013-10-29T11:14:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-29T11:14:37","slug":"an-energy-shambles-in-deutschland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/news\/an-energy-shambles-in-deutschland","title":{"rendered":"An Energy Shambles in Deutschland"},"content":{"rendered":"

German companies now have to pay almost three times as much for electricity as their American competitors, according to a Siemens study. One reason is that there\u2019s no supply in Europe of cheap shale gas. Another is the cost of huge subsidies given to producers of wind, solar and biomass power.<\/p>\n

Because of lack of a national grid, too much of that power is generated in the North, yet isn\u2019t available where it\u2019s needed, in the South. And because those supplies are so erratic, polluting coal-fired plants have to be used to make up the difference, increasingly being fuelled by imports from the US.<\/p>\n

The German government has shut half the nation\u2019s nuclear power production, and planned to close the rest. It\u2019s committed to sourcing 80 per cent of its electricity from renewables by the year 2050. Subsidies for wind and solar power are now costing $23 billion a year, and forecast to total $735 billion by 2050.<\/p>\n

Most of these extra costs are being loaded on consumers, with the pain greatest for those least able to afford them. More than 300,000 households are having their power shut off for lack of payment as winter approaches.<\/p>\n

One consequence of the chaotic policymaking is that Germany\u2019s emissions of greenhouse gases are actually rising, with older \u201cdirty\u201d power stations being reopened.<\/p>\n

Energy policy, known in German as Energiewende (energy turnaround), is an \u201cunholy mess,\u201d says FT editor Tony Barber.
\nCopyRight \u2013 OnTarget 2013 by Martin Spring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German companies now have to pay almost three times as much for electricity as their American competitors, according to a Siemens study. One reason is that there\u2019s no supply in Europe of cheap shale gas. Another is the cost of huge subsidies given to producers of wind, solar and biomass power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,135,3,1],"tags":[190,137,136,194],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-environment","category-featured","category-news","tag-business","tag-deutschland","tag-energy","tag-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalbuzz.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}