Renewable Energy’s Eroding Support: Former German Chancellor Schröder “Warns Of Revolt Due To High Electricity Prices”

Renewable energy in Europe has just taken another nail in its coffin.

Thanks to Germany’s infamous EEG energy feed-in act, electricity prices for consumers and industry have long been rising sharply, and now there’s a looming threat of a revolt.

Today the online business magazine Unternehmen Heute quotes former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder’s soon-to-be-published book, which warns of a revolt by consumers and industry. The timing of Schröder’s words could not come at a worse time for renewable energy proponents, and will no doubt act to take a lot of the momentum out of the already ailing renewable energy movement in Europe. A number of countries have announced major scale-backs on green energy subsidies. Unternehmen Heute writes:

Electricity must remain affordable, Bild newspaper (Saturday edition) quotes Schröder’s book ‘Clear Words’, which will appear in mid February.

The support for renewable energy through the electricity price will lead consumers, especially the ones near the bottom of the income scale, to eventually revolt and say: We can’t afford this any more.”

Schröder adds that eventually renewable energies will soon “have to compete on the market by themselves. They should not be permanently subsidized.”

The former Chancellor also thinks that Germany will not shut down its remaining nuclear power plants by the year 2022, as planned, and believes Angela Merkel acted hastily in passing legislation requiring their shutdown in the wake of the Fukushima accident in Japan. Schroder writes in his book:

My impression is that a complete shutdown will not happen that quickly: consumer and industry will revolt and put policymakers under pressure to postpone the shutdown date because of cost reasons.”

Moreover, Schroder writes in his book that German companies are already reconsidering plans to build plants in Germany, and are considering setting up in low-price-energy locations instead.

Schroder’s views are a major blow to renewable energies

Schroder’s views take a lot of wind out of the renewable energy sails and will only add to the mounting pressure that is having policymakers putting the brakes on renewable energies. Nuclear energy in Germany may not be dead after all.

Even chancellor Merkel is adding conditions to the target of achieving 80% renewable energy by 2050. At the 1:15 mark in the video at the end of the Unternehmen Heute story, she says:

With this expansion corridor, we can quite harmoniously reach the expansion target of 80%. However, only if our industry is able to stay competitive globally and electricity remains affordable for all.”

In other words, kiss the 80%-renewable-energy-by-2050 pipedream goodbye. Right now Germany has not even began to scratch the surface when it comes to powering the nation’s transportation system with green energy. Here too biofuels are being roundly rejected and its subsidies cancelled.

In summary, even as Brussels likes to beat its chest over its ambitious plans for green energies, policymakers everywhere in Europe are in reality abandoning their once lofty targets in droves.

Schellnhuber’s The Great Transformation is dying on the vine.

 

14 responses to “Renewable Energy’s Eroding Support: Former German Chancellor Schröder “Warns Of Revolt Due To High Electricity Prices””

  1. Craig Hearn

    Just who was so persuasive that such idiocy is so pervasive?
    Mature leaders of world powers so readily willing to break with world and human history and attempt to not only force a massive paradigm shift virtually overnight and finance such at the costs of all the people but to believe that such a incomprehensible venture is so needed based on a intangible myth.
    A nightmarish, real-life episode of The Twilight Zone that not even Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock could have produced.

  2. Buddy

    “In other words, kiss the 80%-renewable-energy-by-2050 pipedream goodbye.”

    P: We finally agree on something. I too think the 80%-renewable-energy by 2050 will not come true. I think it will happen by 2040.

    It is becomminng increasingly clear that currently….that is the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

    Things are starting to multiply…….:)

    1. DirkH

      “Things are starting to multiply”

      Last I checked, solar panels don’t multiply, even when left alone.
      Before you get too excited: Poland plans 2 new nukes by 2024.
      http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article124359194/Polen-will-jetzt-Atomkraftwerke-bauen.html

    2. Loodt Pretorius

      And pigs are learning to fly…

      Buddy, I personally think you had either too much Dutch coffee or Peruvian Coco tea, these things that multiply, do they talk to you as well, do they whisper in you inner ear: save us, save us?

    3. Papy Boomer

      For those who understand, no explanation is necessary; for those who don’t understand, no explanation is possible.

      This is for you to think about Buddy. How many years, months or days or second to clear your mind depend on you. Start now, because in your case it will take a lot longer than the average person. You don’t start from zero. You have to deprogram first. The CAWG religion is though to get rid of.

  3. alex

    ..and Buddy commanded the solar panels to increase and multiply, but he forgot to command them to produce power cheaply and continuously night and day and during snowstorms too.

  4. PeterF

    Amazing that I need to read an English language blog to learn about important ongoings in Germany! Thank you.

    1. DirkH

      Don’t miss this one, h/t SEPP’s weekly report at WUWT:
      Gone With the Wind: Weak Returns Cripple German Renewables
      (German wind parks don’t pay the promised returns to investors)
      http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/wind-power-investments-in-germany-proving-riskier-than-thought-a-946367.html

  5. Herve

    Green lobbying is another historical populace rally because of years of mediatic lies.
    Media are so much powerful means to fashion public opinion that, in the hands of low intellectual persons, they provide as much harm as Dr Folamour did….
    Europe returns to Midlle Age soon.

  6. Stephen Richards

    Can we ignore this pillock. Called Buddy. He crashes the thread every time. Ignore and like a toothache he will go away.

  7. DirkH

    After decades of false models, scientists have finally found out what makes the arctic sea ice disappear. With a model. This one is the first one that is correct.
    http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/klimawandel-forscher-legen-neue-theorie-zur-arktis-erwaermung-vor-a-950654.html

  8. Edward.

    How is Schroder’s other great ‘child’ going – the EU?

    Why does it take dotage to generate an apologia and for these communist clowns to see the error of their fantasies?

  9. Herve

    ALL climate-sceptic sites are open to blog and discussions, allowing pro-alarmist to freely expose their belief.
    NOT a single alarmist site allows free blog:

    This IS the Difference: one is democratic, the other is totalitarist.

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