“Germany’s green revolution has been nothing short of disastrous”

Jonathan Lindsell, 17 June 2013

So argues Dr David Conway, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Civitas, on the Library of Law and Liberty website.

Dr Conway highlights how the German government has resorted to promoting lignite (brown coal), ‘the most unhealthy fossil fuel of all’, to make up for the ‘energy vacuum’ created when Chancellor Merkel announced the end of German nuclear power.

Dr Conway suggests the carbon emissions cap has been side-stepped since the carbon permits market ‘tanked’. He argues that government subsidy of renewable energy is paid for by households through the ‘Umlage’, and as a result electricity prices quadrupled in the last four years.

With mining firms purchasing large areas of ‘ancient forest’ to dig up, Dr Conway highlights not only the potential of ‘fatal illnesses from the pollution’ lignite will cause, but also the danger of unconstitutional nature of the enterprise, as German citizens are ‘forcibly resettled’.

However, Dr Conway doubts the chances of any Constitutional Court challenge. Rather than embrace shale gas fracking and retreat on the green energy front, he suspects that ‘down the line it might be possible for (Germany) to impose similar daft requirements on the rest of the EU and thereby recoup its investment with dividends because of its market lead in the technology.’

The impact of green energy policy on the economy was recently explored in articles by Jeremy Nicholson and John Constable for the latest in the Ideas for Economic Growth series, which can be accessed here.