Tag Archives: EU

While Europe enters austerity, US spends on Green Energy

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While nations of the European Union are cutting down on spending and rolling back their budgets, the Obama administration is doing the very opposite, and pursuing renewable energy, despite the budget problems facing the US. Barack Obama told reporters yesterday that he will hand out up to 2 billion dollars in grants for the development of clean energy projects, including the construction of one of the largest solar power plants, which will provide energy to 70,000 homes and 1600 jobs. The measure is part of a broader effort that the President says is part of the economic recovery. “We’re fighting to speed up this recovery and keep the economy growing by all means possible,” he said. “It’s going to take months, even years to dig our way out.”

At the same time, European nations highly riddled with debt are increasingly cutting back from the use of alternative power due to the high maintenance. The government of Spain announced that it had reached an agreement to slash subsidies for wind and solar power producers up to 35% starting from 2013. But Spain is not the only nation to feel this trend. Cash-strapped Italy considered scrapping their alternative energy program as a whole, while the Czech Republic and Slovakia are planning large scale cuts to their energy programs. While the US is hoping that deficit spending on renewables will stimulate the ailing economy, European nations are increasingly cutting their programs out of fear of another uncontrollable Greek Crisis.

BusinessWeek Rains on Germany’s Green Energy Parade

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Businessweek has discovered the dirty little secret behind he success of Germany’s renewable energy industry.

Germany’s renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country’s electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year.

But there’s a catch: The climate hasn’t in fact profited from these developments. As astonishing as it may sound, the new wind turbines and solar cells haven’t prohibited the emission of even a single gram of CO2.

Even more surprising, the European Union’s own climate change policies, touted as the most progressive in the world, are to blame. The EU-wide emissions trading system determines the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted by power companies and industries. And this amount doesn’t change – no matter how many wind turbines are erected.

This is a story that we all need to read and understand. The bottom line is did we really save anything? Did we really reduce carbon? Carbon cap-and-trade frameworks will have to be modified as green energy alternatives come online. The citizens of Germany must continue to demand both the development of alternative energies and the immediate reduction of CO2 emissions levels. Otherwise, renewable energy producers are simply making things easier for their carbon producing counterparts, who find the price of CO2 emissions certifications dropping to almost nothing.

What remains unsaid here is that EU’s carbon neutral system, while it won’t save the planet, is still ahead of the US who over the last decade has outsourced much our carbon emissions to China. Whose environmental problems are a whole other story.

What this article reveals is that while the technology to solve our problems is developing, our governments has to step up to the plate and constantly spur further progress through new standards.