POWER May 2013 - 52

ENERGY POLICY
man industry, have also surged, on the back of
steadily rising taxes and levies-which today
make up almost 40% of the price of industrial
electricity. The expedited nuclear phaseout
could add another 0.5¢ to 1.5¢/kWh, an
enormous burden for power-intensive industries,
for whom a price hike of around 1¢/
kWh translates into an increase of roughly
20%. The Economics Ministry estimates additional
costs for a large aluminum producer
with a consumption rate of 4,000 GWh, for
example, could surge to €40 million.
That's why, the ministry says, the federal
government agreed with the 2011 Energy
Package to introduce compensatory
arrangements for businesses competing at
a global level, including measures to offset
increases in the price of power stemming
from the EU's carbon emissions trade, and
a cap on their renewables allocation charge.
Cost reductions in 2012 for some 202 German
firms, including steelmakers and those
in the chemicals industry, amounted to €440
million. But that measure, too, is under fire:
The EU Commission this March launched a
formal probe into whether energy price cuts
granted to these energy-intensive consumers
constitutes a breach of anti-trust rules to the
detriment of German consumers because, it
says, the reductions are rolled over to ordinary
Germans' power bills.
According to researchers at the Institute
of Economic Structures Research GWS, a
private consulting firm in Osnabrück that
carried out a cost-benefit analysis of the integration
of renewables in Germany between
2008 and 2011, the benefits apparently
" more or less " outweigh the costs-though,
it cautions, several unresolved questions remain.
It concludes " there is no sign yet of a
final unequivocal judgement about the overall
economic costs and benefits " of a renewable
energy expansion. One plus would be
added jobs: About 382,000 jobs were added
last year to the burgeoning renewables sector
(about 1% of the workforce), and by
2030-when renewables should make up
at least 35% of Germany's power profile-
renewables jobs should increase to 600,000.
Renewables also lower the price of power
during the middle of the day by significant
amounts-but increase household bills via
the EEG surcharge, the group said.
Mounting Opposition
Energiewende's success is deeply rooted
in wide public acceptance, but almost every
facet required to ease the transition has
been opposed by industry, citizen groups,
and environmentalists. A substantial number
of citizen action groups-Wutbürger
(angry citizens)-have fiercely objected to
the construction of new wind parks for noise
and aesthetic reasons, for example. Pumped
storage projects, high-voltage transmission
projects, and carbon storage sites have also
been protested, some successfully, as has
construction of new advanced technology
coal-fired power plants. Renewables, too,
have been targeted by ecologists, who, unsettled
by the effects of the energy transition
across the country, protest clearing of forests
for biomass or the conversion of tracts of
land for solar and wind farms. That conflict
has even driven a wedge within the Greens,
splitting the political party that championed
the nuclear phaseout in the 1980s and rallied
for clean energy through the 1990s into proponents
of the transition and stewards of the
environment.
Rhetoric supporting a wide range of views
backing or opposing facets of Energiewende
has heightened and will likely get increasingly
shrill until the September election at
least. What happens beyond the election is a
lot harder to discern. ■
-Sonal Patel is POWER's senior writer.
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POWER May 2013

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