Billions burned in German solar debacle

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Just last year the German solar power industry was predicting good times.

A year ago, as this impressive growth forecast out to 2029 shows, the German solar thermal power industry was predicting good times. Today, it’s nearly dead. The German solar industry association Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW Solar) officially presented its Roadmap for Solar Heat at Intersolar Europe in June 2012. The roadmap describes scenarios for developing solar thermal power in Germany and shows the policies needed to implement them. While the roadmap’s outlook was criticised for sounding too optimistic, one of the authors, Matthias Reitzenstein, emphasised that the paper was not meant to be a prediction of what would happen but rather a guide about what needed to be done.
Not only wasn’t it a prediction, wasn’t it a short-lived prediction!

Large German companies such as Siemens and Bosch are abandoning the solar industry. Their strategies resulted in debacles – their investments in solar power companies cost them billions. Compared to what investors have lost as a result of their investments in solar stocks, however, these sums are almost negligible amounts. The former stars at the stock exchange, SolarWorld and Q-Cells, have destroyed tens of billions of capital. –Thiemo Heeg, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 June 2013

via latest newsletter from the Global Warming Policy Foundation – h/t Benny Peiser at the GWPF.

The following is adapted from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Large German companies such as Siemens and Bosch are abandoning the solar industry. Their strategies resulted in debacles – their investments in solar power companies cost them billions. Continue Reading →

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