This conversation has been hard to follow but today's WSJ has an interesting editorial: Whistling Past the Wind Farm
Europe abandons country-by-country CO2 emissions targets. 1/23/14 3:49 pm ET
Among other notes:
---On Wednesday the European Commission abandoned country-by-country targets for greenhouse-gas emissions after 2020.
---Take Spain, where financial incentives for renewable energy have driven renewables to as much as 25% of electricity generation. They have also left the country with a $41 billion gap between what energy costs to produce and what utilities can charge for power. Mariano Rajoy's government has been scrambling to scale back the subsidies and close the gap.
--In Germany, Angela Merkel is also seeking to push through cuts in wind and solar subsidies and to cap new installations of renewable capacity going forward. Germany's feed-in tariffs—which guarantee renewable-energy suppliers above-market prices for their power—have helped drive up retail power prices by 17% in the past four years while costing utilities and small businesses billions.
--European leaders are also finally figuring out that America's shale natural gas boom is giving the U.S. a significant energy cost advantage. Many European companies are moving production to the U.S. so they can stay competitive
--Europe's anticarbon policy implosion ought to be a lesson to Americans, though most U.S. media still fail to report it.
