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Before the Obama administration charges blindly into a European-style feed-in act to promote renewable energies, they may want to look at what experts in Europe are saying about how well their own feed-in efforts are actually doing.

All pain and no gain – certified flop

An independent committee of expert advisors to the German government is recommending in a report that the country’s once highly ballyhooed EEG renewable energy feed-in act be scrapped altogether because it is 1) “not doing anything for the climate”, 2) “not promoting inn0vation” and 3) driving up the cost of energy.

The report will be officially presented to the government today.

In summary, the once highly touted German EEG renewable energy feed-in act has been all pain and no gain, and the experts see no reason to continue it.

$30 billion a year…yet “does not provide more climate protection”

According to the online Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting (FAZ) here, the Research and Innovation commission of experts assigned by the German government says in its report that “there is no longer any justification for continuing the EEG Act.”

The experts cite “additional costs of 22 billion euros [$30 billion] per year” and conclude that the renewable energies have an “exaggerated impact on climate change“. Also the reports says the Act has not measurably boosted innovation.

“No measureable impact on innovation”

The results of the experts’ report are damning in the harshest terms. The FAZ writes, quoting the report:

The conclusion of the expert commission is devastating: ‘The EEG act in its current form is not justifiable from an innovation-political view.”

The report also writes that “there has been no measureable impact on innovation“.

Well, why innovate if profits are guaranteed by massive subsidies?

The most damning text in the FAZ article probably is (my emphasis):

That’s why the EEG’s initiated expansion of renewable energies has led to no additional avoidance of CO2 emissions across Europe, rather they have only been shifted elsewhere. ‘The EEG Act thus does not produce more climate protection, rather it just makes it considerably more expensive.'”

Green energy proponents and lobbyists will certainly move quickly to ferociously attack and dismiss the report. The FAZ writes, however, that the expert recommendation is the latest in a series of expert reports that have reached the same conclusion. But the FAZ does not expect the government to follow the recommendations.

But the pressure on the German government to radically scale back the EEG act is mounting as citizens struggle with skyrocketing electricity prices. Germany has also come under heavy fire from other European countries who accuse the German government of misusing the feed-in act in ways to provide competitive advantages to certain companies.