The amount of money flowing into European green energy from governments and the private sector collapsed from $132 billion in 2011 to $58 billion last year.
A report, published Tuesday by a British auditing firm, blames government cutbacks of subsidies and the failure of green energy to meet reliability and cost goals as a reason for declining investment. The cutbacks largely occurred for cost reasons.
As recently as 2010, Europe made up 45 percent of the world’s investment in green energy, but that has plunged to 18 percent, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
“Whenever subsidies or mandates are lowered, interrupted, or ended, then investment in renewable energy projects disappears,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The same thing has happened repeatedly in the U. S. when federal tax credits for wind and solar power have lapsed. The reason is obvious: despite decades of promises that these technologies will soon be commercially viable, they still cannot compete in the market against conventional sources of electricity.”
The U.K was routinely the top place to invest in green energy due to lucrative subsidies, mandates and tax incentives during the mid-2000s, but now it has fallen to 13th place, according to the report.
These subsidies and tax incentives were enormously costly. Brits paid a whopping 54 percent more for electricity than Americans in 2014 while energy taxes cost residents roughly $6.6 billion every year. Green energy subsidies in the U.K regularly exceed spending caps and account for roughly 7 percent of British energy bills, according to a government study released last July.
Europe had a similar experience with green energy. The continent poured $1.2 trillion into the green energy industry to fight global warming, but its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and power bills just keep rising.
Between 2005, when Europe create pro-green energy policies, and 2014, residential electricity rates on the continent increased by 63 percent, according to a study published in March by The Manhattan Institute. Over the same period, residential rates in the U.S. rose by 32 percent. Germany, Spain and the U.K, which intervened the most in the energy markets, saw its electricity bills rise the fastest, according to the study.
The average European spent 26.9 cents per kilowatt-hour on electricity, while the average American only spent 10.4 cents, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of power prices. These rising power bills hit Europe’s poor the hardest, hurting them 1.4 to four times more than they hurt the rich, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller
Misleading info from CFACT.
Check this out about Germany’s Energiewende:
http://blog.rmi.org/separating_fact_from_fiction_in_accounts_of_germanys_renewables_revolution
Thanks for giving us a link to a whole other page without giving us any hint what you’re referring too. You may as well reference the whole IPCC report, as many warmists do, and get it over and done with.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear. Referring to the idea we shouldn’t write Green energy’s obituary just yet.
Germany’s Energiewende doing quite well, actually.
It’s a complete failure. You get all your news from DeSmog Blog?
Nope. I use quite a number of credible sources.
Ahh “credible”. So DeSmog Blog, Realclimate, Open Mind, NASA, Robert Scribbler, Climate of Doom, Carbon Brief, Greenpeace etc. I see.
I don’t think you do see.
Tell me: in your opinion, what makes CFACT a credible source of info?
It’s better to go by the merits of the arguments, than the reputation of those making them. Argument from authority is not how science is done.
Well Follett loses doubly then!
No authority and no science.
Somehow i think what Follett is presenting here is an economic opinion piece.
A rather uninformed one in my
view.
Li D Australia
Your narrow green view of course.
The mechanism that this is all founded on, C02, has never been satisfactorily explained by folk who understand it. If you are unable to explain it how can you claim to understand?
I’m sorry, you can’t just call NASA “credible”. NASA is an organization whose mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.” They are scientists. Period. A NASA scientist is the smartest person in the room, whatever room he or she is in. They study, they research, and they tell us what is going on. That’s it. To suggest they have some kind of evil agenda is beneath, well, not you apparently, but it is truly distasteful. If you don’t want people looking at you with a mix of disgust and pity, I suggest you remove the organization from your list, Mr. Tinfoil Hat.
Wow, you truly have faith in the scientific establishment. You don;t know how many scientists have to skew their research findings in order maintain funding. Not only is science not more trustworthy than other vocations, it is far less trustworthy than used car salesman.
A degree in science and a job at NASA do not give anyone special status not to be questioned. being lectured by you that science is done by authority is ludicrous.
Excellent point. Every penny of NASA’s funding comes from Congress. During all these decades NASA has had to get their funding from Congresses that believe in man made climate change, Congresses that believe the planet is warming because God loves us and is just hugging the planet too tight, and every kind of Congress in between. In fact, a year ago, Congress destroyed NASA’s climate change budget. And yet, knowing full well the message that will get them paid best, NASA hasn’t really changed its story. Climate change is real. It’s man made. It’s going to make the world uninhabitable for humans. We need to do something now. So, by all means, question authority. But don’t just assume that because they are the authority (or more likely because you don’t like what they say) that they must be liars.
The article is from 2013!
Solar and wind power harvesting are complete failure$– keep flushing money down the crapper to make ourselves feel good
Solar doubling every ~22 months, wind similar.
Fail-yer, ya’ll!
Best,
D
Doubling in size or cost? Where doe th power come from on a cloudy day or a calm day? These two power sources can not pay for themselves…Ever
Doubling in installations (in mW).
And the market disagrees with you on These two power sources can not pay for themselves…Ever. Too bad the world didn’t ask you before it embarked on this course, eh?
Best,
D
Nonsense green energy is produced at 10 times the cost when it’s least required.. Currently the EU are legislating to reduce the EU load by killing off the toaster and electric kettle. cleaners and clothes washing machines already targeted along with refrigerators that are non serviceable throw away units. Reducing the load this way will only postpone the brown out failure.
This Summer coal plant is reduced to conserve limited operating hours, the whole is already a load balancing nightmare, just talk to those engineers in the generating industry instead of repeating greenie mantras. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Sure, sure.
Best,
D
Standard misleading headline.
Denmark got 40% of its electricity from wind in 2015. An increase.
Best,
D
At night in February no doubt? Explain how load and demand might be balanced, or is that above your pay grade?
The entire year. Educate yourself.
Best,
D