{"id":7918,"date":"2011-12-16T12:33:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T17:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/?p=7918"},"modified":"2015-11-01T13:59:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T18:59:12","slug":"wsj-solyndra-does-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/2011\/12\/wsj-solyndra-does-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: Solyndra Does Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Germany’s solar power industry is the latest to flop as subsidies ebb.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970204026804577100150091819074.html\">editorializes<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This week Solon became the first publicly traded solar-power company to file for bankruptcy in Germany. Despite cost-cutting and a round of last-minute negotiations, the Berlin-based photovoltaic equipment maker can’t make its deadline to repay \u20ac275 million in loans.<\/p>\n<p>You could call Solon a European version of Solyndra, the California solar-cell maker that filed for bankruptcy in September after blowing through a $535 million loan guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers. But Solon also represents a broader bust in alternative-energy sources that’s been more than a decade in the making.<\/p>\n<p>Germany’s Northern European climate never made it an obvious boom-site for solar power. Nevertheless, since 1990 Germany has been imposing some form of what are now called “feed-in tariffs”\u2014mandates that force utilities to pay above-market prices for wind, solar and other so-called renewable sources of energy. These guaranteed long-term prices deliver renewable-powered electricity at retail prices 46% above conventional sources, according to research by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.<\/p>\n<p>For that premium, Germans bought an electricity market that relies on renewable energy for more than 20% of capacity today, compared to 6.3% in 2000. They have installed more solar panels than any other country in the world. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of photovoltaic installations in Germany increased 76%, according to the German Association of Energy and Water Industries.<\/p>\n<p>As the solar glut grew, the government of Angela Merkel decided it wouldn’t make Germans subsidize high-cost energy forever. Berlin has been ratcheting down the mandated tariffs for the last few years, and in October it said the price-floor for solar power would drop by 15% in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, China continues to produce solar cells and other equipment far more cheaply than its European and American competitors\u2014for which it has earned an anti-dumping investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department. Solon’s bankruptcy comes after months of job cuts and restructuring talks across the German industry.<\/p>\n<p>The only wonder in all this is why anyone is surprised. Spain offered a gloomy precursor to the Solon bust in 2008, when it reduced its own solar giveaways and saw the industry tank. German solar-cell manufacturer Q-Cells is cutting 250 jobs and said in November it expects its full-year operating loss to come to “hundreds of millions” of euros. The same month Bonn-based SolarWorld announced a 30% revenue drop from the year before and continued to trim jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Over in Britain, solar firms SolarCentury and HomeSun remain in court, trying to force their government to abandon its plans to cut feed-in tariffs. If they succeed, they’ll buy themselves a few more years with enough subsidies to keep them off the Solyndra\/Solon path. Maybe they’d be better off dropping the lawyers and adopting a business plan that makes profit less dependent on political favor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Germany’s solar power industry is the latest to flop as subsidies ebb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-energy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6SqJi-23I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/junkscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}