Der Spiegel’s English mirror presents an interesting compilation of interviews and analysis regarding just what exactly is stealing the wind of the sails of the renewable energy revolution, die Energiewende: namely subsidies (Subventionen).
Governmental support programmes (in Germany and elsewhere) for alternative power are being curtailed due to budget priorities, sometimes as a sort of inside-out Trojan Horse promising consumers that the policy redirection will help stifle rising home utilities prices. Such changes are enough to make investors, who would champion the building of new infrastructure and fund research skittish—though a really winning idea would succeed with or without government imposed controls, and probably in spite of bureaucratic support. The handicapping for wind turbines, however, is compounded by government subsidies geared in the opposite direction, meant to help wind-down the conventional powerhouses: support for coal and nuclear energy. The emergent and experimental technologies cannot compete and the markets react unkindly to these cross-currents.
