Der Spiegel Reports On Germany’s “Setting Sun” – The Collapse Of The Solar Industry

Countries like the USA who have been seduced by German socialists and Greens into thinking that solar energy and green energy feed-in schemes are a job creator and an engine to prosperity ought to think again. Der Spiegel reports.

 

Eastern Germany Hit Hard by Decline of Solar
By Charles Hawley

The global solar industry has entered a brutal phase of consolidation and nowhere are the effects as dramatic as in eastern Germany. Several companies have already declared bankruptcy, leaving towns and cities in the region struggling with job losses and tax revenue shortfalls. The future bodes ill.

The sun, it was said, was going to save Frankfurt an der Oder, a city of 60,000 on the Polish border. After years of post-reunification economic doldrums, whose nadir came with the 2003 failure of a much-ballyhooed microchip factory project, the burgeoning German solar industry took an interest in the down-on-its-luck city.

In 2006, solar-panel manufacturer Conergy moved into the never-used computer chip factory, joining Odersun, already headquartered in the city. In 2007, the United States solar giant First Solar opened a factory as well, followed by a second one last year.

Now, though, the future suddenly looks decidedly dark. Odersun declared bankruptcy in March and Conergy, while pledging to return to profit this year, has seen its share price lose 99.6 percent of its value in the last five years. Many doubt the company will survive. Worst of all, however, was the announcement earlier this month that First Solar was closing both of its factories in Frankfurt an der Oder; 1,200 people will soon be jobless as a result.”

Keep reading…

It is indeed strange how so little of the mainstream media is reporting on one of the greatest industrial failures ever in Germany.

Even worse, solar industry has become a huge burden on the rest of the country due to the astronomically high cost of the energy and its sporadic supply.  More on that tomorrow. What a mess.

Readers in Vermont please send the Spiegel link to your drugged-up-on-green political leaders with the slim hope it’ll sober a few up.

 

4 responses to “Der Spiegel Reports On Germany’s “Setting Sun” – The Collapse Of The Solar Industry”

  1. BargHumer

    All these reports and articles seem to be lacking the one thing that I try to find in them. That is – It would be good to see that the collapse of these industries is connected to a realisation that the climate change hysteria has ended. They don’t, and instead it is just about economics.

    1. DirkH

      Economic angle? Our journalists wouldn’t know an economic argument if it flew up their nose and died there. I have yet to see a German mainstream journalist making the connection between the abysmal economic performance of the entire Eurozone and the idiotic EU wide energy policy. Witness the 2008 Spain PV boom or the ludicrously expensive attempts at building offshore wind parks in UK and Germany; or the 30 bn EUR of slush funds used to build wind turbines in Ireland (the plan being, technocracy-style, to transmit this energy with a European supergrid to where it’s needed…)

      Julian Simon didn’t call energy the master resource for nothing but German journalists would probably ask you whether he was the guy who wrote “Bridge over troubled water”.

    2. Casper

      I’m afraid the green hysteria will never end, because the decision is up to politician e.i. if Chinese air lines will not pay CO2 tax within the EU, the European car owners will do it instead. There is no way out. In any case we will pay for it.

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