From The Local (Germany):
Germany to fund new coal plants with climate change fund cashThis was inevitable:
The German government wants to encourage the construction of new coal and gas power plants with millions of euros from a fund for promoting clean energy and combating climate change.
The plan has come under stiff criticism, but the Ministry of Economics and Technology defended the idea. A spokeswoman said it was necessary as the government switches from nuclear to other renewable energy sources and added that the money would promote the most efficient plants possible.
Funding for the initiative is limited to five percent of the energy and climate change fund’s annual expenditure between 2013 and 2016.
Annual funding for the new plants could total more than €160 million per year between 2013 and 2014 alone, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The fund was first established to encourage nuclear plant operators to develop new, renewable forms of energy production. Now that nuclear power is to be phased out by 2022, the fund will pay for research into reducing carbon dioxide emissions from buildings, developing renewable energy sources and storage technologies for them.
Opposition politicians and environmental groups said the plan was wrong because it would promote what they argued were climate-damaging plants.
The German public wants no nukes. It wants reliable electricity. It wants environmentally clean sources of energy. It wants not to pay too much for energy. These desires are going to have to be balanced out.(via Global Warming Policy Foundation, which calls Germany's plan "Amazing Chuzpah")
3 comments:
An article in the June issue of "Trains" magazine noted that the US is greatly expanding it coal export potential to meet demand for steaming coal from GERMANY and elsewhere.
But you just gotta know that Gazprom is lobbying for this and that a main goal is increased sales of Russian natural gas to Germany.
Just ask Merkel's predecessor, Schroader who now works for Gazprom.
>>> The German public wants no nukes. It wants reliable electricity. It wants environmentally clean sources of energy. It wants not to pay too much for energy.
I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT WAAAAAH WAAAAHHHH WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
Amina hold my breath until I get it!!
WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
Whitehall: You're absolutely right--and Gerhard Schroeder's sellout was outrageous. Even though it was over five years ago, I'm amazed that the German Social Democrats--the main leftest party--has any credibility.
Germany, of course, has the sovereign right to choose to abandon nuclear power. But I still resent it: It's bad enough we have to pay for Europe's defense budget--but now, we're gonna pay their electric bill too, in the form of higher petroleum costs forced by increased German demand.
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