Earth Equity News

Germany Slashes Solar Subsidies. By Jeremy van Loon, Bloomberg News, June 2, 2008. "Germany is slashing the subsidies that built its solar industry up to $8.8 billion in sales and made the country the world's biggest market for panels that capture the sun's energy. Homes and businesses earn a government-guaranteed price of as much as 47 euro cents ($0.74) for each kilowatt-hour of solar power they generate... Almost nine years of subsidized prices have made Germany the largest market for photovoltaic panels with 17 publicly traded solar companies, and about 40,000 employees -- 13 times more than in 2000. While the government says it wants to keep the industry from growing too fast, manufacturers Q-Cells AG and Solarworld AG say that reducing the guaranteed prices will hurt profits and stall the technology's emergence... The German system has become a model for 40 countries, mostly in the E.U.... Spain, the second-largest market in Europe for solar cells, is following Germany in lowering tariffs to steer more money to plant-derived fuels and other alternative energy projects... Without slashing the guaranteed price for solar power, consumers will be forced to spend an extra 120 billion euros ($187 billion) on electricity in the next two decades, and Germany will end up buying most of the world's solar modules, said Joachim Pfeiffer, a lawmaker and energy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats... 'The costs are threatening to explode,' he said."