Opinions
Green energy: Don’t envy Germany
According to Frondel, things haven't worked out as Germany's politicians and environmentalists said they would. Rather than bringing economic benefits in terms of lower cost energy and green energy jobs, Frondel found that implementing wind and solar power raised household energy rates by 7.5 percent. While greenhouse gas emissions were abated, the cost was astonishingly high.
April 23, 2011
by Kenneth P. Green
in The American
Germany's promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed as setting a standard for the rest of the world. It is instead a cautionary tale.
I recently studied the question of whether the whole "green energy leads to green jobs" paradigm has any merit, by studying how things have worked out in Europe, where it has been tested extensively. In this article, we focus on Germany (I've previously covered the Netherlands and the United Kingdom).
Germany's foray into renewable energy started in earnest in 1997, when the European Union adopted a goal of generating 12 percent of its electricity from... [continue via Web link]
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