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If anyone thinks Germany’s move to renewable energies has been a success, you may want to take a few minutes and read what center-left news weekly Der Spiegel has just written.

Overall Germany’s energy revolution has made the country’s energy unaffordable, unreliable and has ruined its own idyllic landscape, and ravaged rainforests abroad as well.

Spiegel focusses on the costs in its article titled: Cost explosion with electricity, oil, gas: energy poverty in Germany is increasing drastically. The online flagship news weekly writes:

Rising energy costs are becoming a problem for more and more citizens in Germany. Just from 2008 to 20111 the share of energy-poor households in the Federal Republic jumped from 13.8 to 17 percent.”

Energy poverty is defined by the number of households that must pay more than 10% of their net income on energy. All told 6.9 million German households (every 6th household) finds itself in energy poverty, Spiegel writes.

Much of the rapid increase in energy prices is owing to Germany’s growth in expensive wind and solar energy. Ironically, despite more than 20% of Germany’s energy now being supplied by renewables, CO2 emissions have been rising just the same.

Spiegel calls the energy poverty rate “alarming”. However, when it comes to finding the cause for the runaway increase, the German Greens are blaming all the misery on the rising costs of oil and gas, and even hint that just more expensive, unreliable green energy is all that’s needed to get the costs back in line.

Natural gas in Germany costs three times more than it does in USA. The Greens are also demanding that the government pass legislation that would lead to residential units being renovated and better insulated. But critics say such a measure likely would make the situation even worse because landlords would benefit from the subsidies and pass the renovation costs to low income tenants.

The more the greens try to fix the mess, the more they screw it up.