Here is a complete opposite veiw about the German investment and echoes some of my own discomfort with subsidising the better off by the less well off with fits
Here is a link to the whole article,its a bit long drawn out,but the German experiment started years before our own, is also pasted below for a more concise summary
Solar PV has failed in Germany and it will fail in the UK | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk
When the German programme began in 2000, it offered index-linked payments of 51 euro cents for every KWh of electricity produced by solar PV. These were guaranteed for 20 years. This is similar to the UK's initial subsidy, of 41p. As in the UK, the solar subsidy was, and remains, massively greater than the payments for other forms of renewable technology.
The real net cost of the solar PV installed in Germany between 2000 and 2008 was €35bn. The paper estimates a further real cost of €18bn in 2009 and 2010: a total of €53bn in ten years. These investments make wonderful sense for the lucky householders who could afford to install the panels, as lucrative returns are guaranteed by taxing the rest of Germany's electricity users. But what has this astonishing spending achieved? By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany's electricity. 0.6% for €35bn. Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.
After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs €716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: €1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes.
The Ruhr University paper comes out against using feed-in tariffs to stimulate wind power as well, but in this case it shows that large-scale wind power in Germany is likely to become cheaper than conventional power by 2022, at which point subsidies will become redundant. It makes no such prediction for solar PV. It reinforces the point I made in my first sally: while Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme, any carbon savings made by feed-in tariffs merely allow polluting industries to raise their emissions. The net saving is zero.
Here is a link to the whole article,its a bit long drawn out,but the German experiment started years before our own, is also pasted below for a more concise summary
Solar PV has failed in Germany and it will fail in the UK | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk
When the German programme began in 2000, it offered index-linked payments of 51 euro cents for every KWh of electricity produced by solar PV. These were guaranteed for 20 years. This is similar to the UK's initial subsidy, of 41p. As in the UK, the solar subsidy was, and remains, massively greater than the payments for other forms of renewable technology.
The real net cost of the solar PV installed in Germany between 2000 and 2008 was €35bn. The paper estimates a further real cost of €18bn in 2009 and 2010: a total of €53bn in ten years. These investments make wonderful sense for the lucky householders who could afford to install the panels, as lucrative returns are guaranteed by taxing the rest of Germany's electricity users. But what has this astonishing spending achieved? By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany's electricity. 0.6% for €35bn. Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.
After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs €716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: €1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes.
The Ruhr University paper comes out against using feed-in tariffs to stimulate wind power as well, but in this case it shows that large-scale wind power in Germany is likely to become cheaper than conventional power by 2022, at which point subsidies will become redundant. It makes no such prediction for solar PV. It reinforces the point I made in my first sally: while Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme, any carbon savings made by feed-in tariffs merely allow polluting industries to raise their emissions. The net saving is zero.
