Mutiny in the Land of Wind Turbines;

The question is: How many forests must be sacrificed, how many horizons dotted with wind turbines, to meet Germany’s new energy targets? Where is the line between thoughtful activism and excessive zeal? At what point is taxpayer money simply being thrown away?
The wrangling over these issues has led many in Germany’s Green Party to question what their party really stands for. Enoch zu Guttenberg, a founding member of Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), noisily left the association last year because of its support for wind power. Since then, he has felt a “panicky need” to warn humanity about the “giant totems of the cult of unlimited energy.”
[…]
These disputes come at a very awkward time for the wind-power industry. The country is expecting to see many thousands of new wind turbines up and running in the near future. But, at the moment, orders are few and far between.
For a long time, the companies grew fat on feed-in tariffs, which provide guaranteed prices for green energy at above-market prices subsidized by the government via surcharges on consumers’ power bills. Indeed, an entire industrial sector developed into a subsidy giant. The result? Bloated firms with excess capacity.
International markets are also collapsing, which makes things even worse for the industry. The two most important countries for wind power have both reigned in further construction projects. The United States is instead going for cheaper “fracking,” the controversial method of using hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas. China, on the other hand, has problems with its power grids, which is dampening its enthusiasm for wind turbines.
Stephan Weil, the governor of the northwestern state of Lower Saxony, recently warned that 10,000 jobs in the state’s wind industry were at risk. The Danish manufacturer Vestas has already been forced to cut some 1,400 positions.
The mood is correspondingly tense. The CEO of WeserWind says that a “regulating hand” is nowhere to be found, leaving everything in “total chaos.”

It’s a long piece. Forward it to your MP and MLA. (h/t Bob H)

“The wheels are falling off of Germany’s green energy bandwagon.”

While Germans gleefully embraced the “Nuclear Power? No Thanks!” movement and global greens pointed to Germany as the future of the Green Economy, the sheen is starting to come off the German revolution. The last few months have been a slaughter for the German solar energy. Amid talk of a trade war with China over cheap imported solar panels, the giant German engineering firm Siemens shuttered its solar division after hemorrhaging more than a billion dollars in just two years.
Now Forbes reports that the rest of the German solar industry isn’t following far behind: two of the country’s biggest solar firms, Conenergy and Gehrlicher Solar, both filed for insolvency last week. Another engineering titan, Bosch, has also decided to get out of the solar market.
[…]
German consumers haven’t been happy with their skyrocketing energy rates, while German industries have struggled to remain competitive while paying much more for electricity than overseas competition. As green jobs have been disappearing in Germany–employment in the solar sector fell to 87,000 in 2012 from 110,900 a year earlier–German leaders have slashed many of its flagship green programs.

Let them burn wood.