Italy will move to reduce taxpayer subsidies to its renewable energy sector after last year’s boom in solar power, Industry Minister Corrado Passera says. Some estimates contend the feed-in tariffs paid to photovoltaic user/generators will amount to $59 billion over the next 20 years.
The official said Saturday in Cernobbio, Italy, that taxpayer subsidies doled out to the wind and solar power industries had generated “excessive” investments in the sector, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Italy has important goals to meet and even surpass,” he said, but added, “we need to do so without over-reliance on taxpayer resources.”
The government, Passera said, will in the coming years “realign” the level of its incentives to those of other European countries.
The comments came a day after Paolo Andrea Colombo, chairman of Italian electric utility Enel SpA, said the heavy subsidization of alternative energy was hurting traditional producers such as his company.
“The development of renewables, combined with the stagnation of demand, is making it difficult to cover the production costs of conventional systems, putting at risk the ability to remain in operation,” Colombo said.
The problem, Enel contends, is that that big investments were made in traditional power plants in order to ramp up production at levels that are no longer necessary with the boom in solar and wind, which account for 26 percent of Italy’s electricity production.
Nando Pasquali, the chief of Italy’s GSE energy services operator, said last week that preliminary 2011 estimates of the country’s renewable capacity stood at about 41 gigawatts, with a total output of 84,000 gigawatt hours, the Agenzia Giornalistica Italia reported.
The estimate put the number of active generation plants at 360,000, with incentives totaling $10.7 billion — more than enough to put Italy on target to reach the European Union’s goal of generating 29.4 percent of Italy’s electricity from renewable sources.
Last year saw a huge jump in the installation of solar power capacity — a boom that happened despite the recession, the sovereign debt crisis and the fall of the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Some 9 gigawatts were connected to the country’s grid last year, nearly quadrupling its total capacity and bypassing Germany as Europe’s leader in the regard.
But the solar installation boom has put a burden on Italian ratepayers.
23% on-stream, productive factor? It is unfortunate that the Italians voted in the giveaway folly and this idiocy. Perhaps they should have to pony up the cost and have these so-called leaders on hand to explain it to them. Trouble is, the greenies and the left never take responsibility for blunders.
I just read that the IMF is asking the US for $500 billion more to help bail out European countries. I bet some of this money is or will be used to fund these green projects…