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Germans cough up for solar subsidies
Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.
July 5, 2012
by Alexander Neubacher and Catalina Schröder
in Spiegel Online
Germany's new environment minister Peter Altmaier had only been in office a week before he traveled to Bonn for an urgent appointment. Important representatives from the German renewable energy industry were expecting him, including Frank Asbeck, CEO of the Bonn based Solarworld AG. And they were not to be put off. They wanted to know from Altmaier, who assumed his office in May, what was going to happen with solar industry subsidies.
The results of those closed-door negotiations will soon be passed on to the general public via their electricity bills, which are once again about to go up -- even... [continue via Web link]
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