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Every year 600,000 households (2 million people) are getting their power switched off in Germany because they can’t afford the skyrocketing electric bills. At that rate the country (population 80 million) will become blacked-out like North Korea by 2050.

Renewable energy boom leaves Germans in the dark.

It’s one way of reducing carbon emissions – just catapult your population back to the Stone Age. Online German flagship daily Die Welt has an article on how skyrocketing electricity prices are making electricity unaffordable for a large number of Germans.

Many people in Germany are no longer able to pay their electricity bills. And energy prices continue to climb – rapidly. The president of the VdK social association Ulrike Masche, accuses the German federal government “of having neglected the social dimension of the energy transformation”.

Over 10 years ago Germany enacted the Renewable Energy Feed-In Act (EEG) which requires power companies to pay small producers of renewable energy exorbitant rates for their green power. The power companies in turn simply pass the higher prices on to their customers. Electricity prices rose 10% in 2011 alone!

So far Germany has committed over 100 billion euros to renewable energy, all to be paid for by the consumer. Little wonder that today almost a seventh of Germany’s population is now living in “energy poverty”.

The high costs are hitting the poor and retirees especially hard. Die Welt writes:

Klaus Müller, Chairman of the Consumer Office in North Rhine Westphalia estimates: ‘Ten to fifteen percent of the population are struggling to finance the constantly rising energy costs.” Every year 600,000 households are getting their power cut off.’ ‘Earlier energy poverty was a fringe problem. However in the meantime it has become an every day problem,’ said Müller. According to a survey by the consumer protection group, 600,000 households per year are getting their power cut off because of unpaid electricity bills. Foremost the rapid expansion of renewable energies has led to a 10% rise in electricity prices.”

As utilities are forced to buy the exorbitantly expensive renewable energy, even when they don’t need it, they are forced to increase the prices they charge consumers.

Die Welt writes that the prices are expected to rise unabated and that they likely will even accelerate. The feed-in tariffs will add up to 5.2 cents to the price of each kilowatt-hour.

The greens, the architects of the energy feed-in act, deny they are responsible for the disaster, and blame Germany’s current conservative, liberal-democrat coalition government for the skyrocketing prices. The truth is that all the politicians zealously supported the feed-in tariffs, especially the conservative CDU led by Angela Merkel, who was duped and spurred on by crackpot scientists in Potsdam.

Some leading politicians are beginning to return to their senses, however, and are calling for more coal and gas power plants.

Well, they’d better hurry up. Otherwise expect the pubs and beerhalls to come alive with angry political talk – and soon.

Happy May Day everybody!