{"id":349083,"date":"2024-10-27T08:47:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T07:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349083"},"modified":"2024-10-27T08:47:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T07:47:10","slug":"the-country-where-taxpayers-are-charged-billions-when-the-sun-shines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=349083","title":{"rendered":"The Country Where Taxpayers Are Charged Billions When the Sun Shines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Eugyppius<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Climatism in Germany is attended by all manner of na\u00efve ideas and bright pink fairytale slogans. Among the latter is a dubious proverb proclaiming that \u201cThe sun doesn\u2019t send any bills\u201d (in German: \u201cDie Sonne schickt keine Rechnung<\/em>\u201d). Such proverbs always seem initially plausible (is there anything freer and more democratic than sunshine?) while proving to be basically the opposite of the truth. In fact, the energy transition has landed German taxpayers in the position of paying billions of Euros for the sun to shine. It is becoming an unmitigated disaster, and what is worse, the more we expand solar capacity, the more we will have to pay. For something that does not send any bills, sunshine has sure become very expensive here in the Federal Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welt <\/em>calls it \u201cthe solar trap<\/a>\u201d, and it works like this: our Renewable Energy Sources Act<\/a> (EEG) pledges to pay renewables producers fixed tariffs for every kilowatt hour of electricity their installations feed into the grid. Whether you are an ordinary climate-conscious person with solar panels on your house or you run massive solar farms, the EEG entitles you to receive these fixed \u201cfeed-in tariffs\u201d for a period of 20 years. The EEG also requires grid operators to accept your electricity regardless of demand and to sell it on the electricity exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the sun, although it may not charge for its services, turns out to have this naughty habit of shining in many places all at once. When this happens, electricity supply often exceeds electricity demand and exchange prices fall. They can fall all the way to zero, or in extreme situations of excessive sunshine they can even go negative. Negative prices mean that you have to actually pay \u201cbuyers\u201d to take the excess power off your hands. Whether the prices are merely very low, or zero, or negative, the German taxpayer has obligated himself, via the EEG, to pay these producers of unwanted if extremely green and climate-friendly electricity their fixed feed-in tariffs anyway. That is, we are on the hook for the difference between the actual exchange value of excess electricity and the feed-in tariffs promised to producers. In this way we have ended up literally paying for the sun to shine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September alone, Germany paid \u20ac2.6 billion to renewables producers for electricity that had a market value of a mere \u20ac145 million. Our sunny autumn is destroying our already-fragile Government budget. Federal number-crunchers had originally allocated \u20ac10.6 billion for feed-in tariffs in 2024, but already the Government owes \u20ac15 billion and the year is not yet over. Scholz\u2019s Cabinet is thus trying to allocate an additional \u20ac8.8 billion for the rest of the year. The Parliament has yet to approve the additional funds, though, and also the damned sun will just not stop bloody shining, and so probably even this supplementary allocation won\u2019t be enough. We\u2019re bleeding money, all for a sun that doesn\u2019t send any bills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This problem will get worse before it gets better. The more solar panels we install, the greater oversupply we\u2019ll face when the sun shines, and the larger the spread between the fixed feed-in tariffs and the actual market value of this green electricity. In 2024, as I said, the Government projected that feed-in tariffs would cost \u20ac10.6 billion, but they\u2019ll probably end up costing \u20ac20 billion at least. Next year, the costs are projected to be even higher, and the year after that, they will be higher still. As Welt <\/em>reports, the German Government plans to triple our solar capacity to 215 gigawatts over the next six years \u2013 \u201cthe equivalent of 215 nuclear reactors\u201d every time the sun emerges from behind a blessed cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy transitioners know they messed up. The new plan is to change the rules for solar subsidies. When prices go negative, larger producers won\u2019t receive their fixed tariffs, and they\u2019ll also have to sell their electricity themselves. In this way, they will become newly sensitive to market demand and stop overproducing electricity when nobody wants it. It\u2019s almost like creating a blind system totally oblivious to market incentives was a bad idea. Unfortunately, the new rules will apply only to new solar installations. The German Government will still have to honour its insane agreement to pay the operators of older solar plants for years to come. We will burn billions for nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll also note that these new rules only target larger operators. The millions of small operators out there \u2013 all the ordinary people who have bolted solar panels to their roofs \u2013 constitute a serious, ongoing problem for which nobody has any solution at all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the long term, [energy economist and Government adviser] Lion Hirth believes that \u201call electricity producers will have to operate directly on the electricity market\u201d. Even the owners of small rooftop photovoltaic systems would theoretically have to become direct marketers, because only this would provide the economic incentive to take their system off the grid when there is an electricity surplus. \u201cIn principle, I consider the expansion of direct marketing to be the only sensible approach in the long term,\u201d Hirth said. \u2026 Direct marketing, however, is also highly regulated at the bureaucratic level and also expensive, so it is hardly an option for small systems.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hirth notes that rooftop installations also don\u2019t make any economic sense. They are three times more expensive, per unit of capacity, than large solar fields. Yet we can\u2019t get rid of these small operators, because climate change propaganda has generated a whole population of eager-beaver German greenists who want to make a personal contribution to stopping climate change by screwing renewable technology to their roofs. As always, climate politics prioritises individual consumer choices and experiences over pragmatic, system-wide outcomes, because at base the Green voter does not really want to stop CO2<\/sub> emissions. He wants to have the experience<\/em> of stopping CO2<\/sub> emissions, and that is not even nearly the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, all budget planners can do is \u201chope for bad weather\u201d to \u201cdecrease solar power feed-in and cause electricity exchange prices to rise again\u201d. Before our Renewable Energy Sources Act, the sun indeed did not send any bills, but in our desperation to change the weather we have created an artificial system in which it will not stop sending them. Ours is truly one of the dumbest eras in human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article originally appeared <\/a>on Eugyppius\u2019s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climatism in Germany is attended by all manner of na\u00efve ideas and bright pink fairytale slogans. Among the latter is a dubious proverb proclaiming that \u201cThe sun doesn\u2019t send any bills\u201d (in German: \u201cDie Sonne schickt keine Rechnung\u201d). Such proverbs always seem initially plausible (is there anything freer and more democratic than sunshine?) while proving to be basically the opposite of the truth. In fact, the energy transition has landed German taxpayers in the position of paying billions of Euros for the sun to shine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":349086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":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","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819134,691819180,691818051,691818154,691818181,691831125,691818412,691818267,691831124],"class_list":{"0":"post-349083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-alarmism","9":"tag-energy-costs","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-net-zero","12":"tag-renewable-energy","13":"tag-renewable-energy-sources-act-eeg","14":"tag-solar-panels","15":"tag-solar-power","16":"tag-sunshine","18":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/002032_Solarpark_Seesen_opt-1536x767-1-1200x599-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C599&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1sOn","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":323654,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=323654","url_meta":{"origin":349083,"position":0},"title":"US Taxpayers Hit With $425 Billion For Wind & Solar Subsidies Over Next\u00a0Decade","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"26\/04\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The only thing scalable about wind and solar is the subsidies gouged from power consumers and\/or taxpayers. 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