Germany to Install Record Solar Panels This Year, DIHK Says

[kristopher]

This is the reality:

Germany to Install Record Solar Panels This Year, DIHK Says
By Stefan Nicola - Mar 9, 2012 6:00 AM GMT-0500

Germany will probably install a record amount of solar panels this year even as the world’s biggest market for the industry plans to cut subsidies, according to the DIHK national industry and trade chambers.

The DIHK expects 8 gigawatts of installations this year, which would result in subsidy costs of 20 billion euros ($26 billion) in the next two decades, Martin Wansleben, managing director, said by e-mail today. Germany added 7.5 gigawatts last year, double the government’s target. More will be installed this year as module prices drop to levels ensuring favorable returns even with lower subsidies, he said....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/germany-to-install-record-solar-panels-this-year-dihk-says.html

And the next article is the right wing spin that is pushed by Merkel's procoal, pronuclear government. Note the author is famous for his "climate skepticism" (aka re-branded "climate denial&quot .

Goodnight Sunshine
Germany is cutting solar-power subsidies because they are expensive and inefficient.
By Bjørn Lomborg|Posted Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012, at 7:30 AM ET

Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?

Subsidizing green technology is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.

According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/germany-to-install-record-solar-panels-this-year-dihk-says.html

[FBaggins]

1. They really expect installs to go UP after the FIT is cut?

They're not currently on pace to hit 8GW and they haven't run out of incentives yet.

On edit - Ah... I note that the article is somewhat stale.

[kristopher]

2. Your right wing inspired ideas are the only thing that is stale.

The values behind your "vision" of how the world should be regarding energy are congruent with those of the right wing Baggins. You may have positions on other matters that bring you to the Progressive camp, but on the issue of energy you are pushing the corporate right wing agenda and message. This anti-renewable crusade you are on isn't even popular with most rank and file conservatives, it is straight out of the corporate messaging machine.

More from the first article:

...“This government doesn’t want the energy transformation,” Baerbel Hoehn, a lawmaker with the opposition Green Party, said today in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. “It wants to keep the market open for the big utilities.”

Bloomberg New Energy Finance revised upward its German installation forecast for the year (from) 5 gigawatts to 7 gigawatts after the delay to subsidy cuts became public, with possible first-half additions of 5 gigawatts....