James Delingpole, Breitbart.com
Spain was one of the first countries to buy heavily into the "clean
energy" chimera and - from the mid-90s attracted billions of dollars'
worth of local and foreign "investment" from rent-seekers attracted by
the guaranteed 14 per cent per annum rate of return offered on solar
park projects and the similarly huge subsidies for wind farms.
But there was a problem. As should have been obvious from the start
"clean energy" is - and almost certainly always will be - unviable in a
free market. The limited energy it produces is next to worthless because
it is only available when the wind blows or the sun shines - which is
not necessarily when it is actually needed. Hence the need for all those
government subsidies, without which not a single one of those renewable
energy projects exist.
By the time the Spanish government woke up to the problem, the damage
was done. Green energy projects have cost it a staggering 200 billion
Euros in subsidies, 56 billion Euros of which it has paid out, another
143 billion Euros it still owes but which its hard-pressed coffers
cannot possibly spare. Successive administrations have tried to reduce
the cost by drastically reducing subsidies - causing a wave of
bankruptcies among local businesses foolish enough to have leapt aboard
the green bandwagon. But this has only exposed the Spanish government to
costly lawsuits by the various foreign investors which piled in to take
advantage of the green energy scam."
No comments:
Post a Comment