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Comment by teraku | Hacker News Reader

But most subsidies are towards coal and gas. They even stopped wind subsidies, because windenergy was too flexible and pushed coal out of the market, since coal is not flexible enough. So now we have to wait until more power plants get shut down before they pick up on building more wind energy again. Until then, they are powering the existing wind energy platforms up.

The "stated end-goal" and what is actually done is very divergent in modern day Germany.

Just saying that right now you pay on average 0,25€/kWh here. Although the market price is almost naught.

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> But most subsidies are towards coal and gas.

Germany has/had extensive coal production (complete exit by 2038 IIRC) with lots of employment tied to it; of course that has subsidies.

> They even stopped wind subsidies, because windenergy was too flexible and pushed coal out of the market, since coal is not flexible enough

That sounds more like a conspiracy theory. You don't stop stuff for being "too flexible" but because of other problem, e.g. offshore vs. onshore, transmission to the south, environmental concerns, wanting a different mix of renewables etc. .

> The "stated end-goal" and what is actually done is very divergent in modern day Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

There are more and more people employed in these industries. Production capacities went up etc. . Seems to be doing what it says on the tin.

> Just saying that right now you pay on average 0,25€/kWh here. Although the market price is almost naught.

Yeah, so? Consumer electricity prices were never even mentioned in the "end-goal"?

>Germany has/had extensive coal production (complete exit by 2038 IIRC) with lots of employment tied to it; of course that has subsidies.

I get that and I am glad it happened, it's just way too late for my liking. At least it's done, I can agree on that.

>That sounds more like a conspiracy theory. You don't stop stuff for being "too flexible" but because of other problem, e.g. offshore vs. onshore, transmission to the south, environmental concerns, wanting a different mix of renewables etc. .

You can't have energy produced disappear. So if you overproduce, it has to go somewhere and you need to stop production to not fry your energy grid. If you overproduce, and your coal energy can't shut down, so your network becomes more green/clean, the obvious choice is to shut down the flexible generator, i.e. wind energy.

>Yeah, so? Consumer electricity prices were never even mentioned in the "end-goal"?

That is true, but the EEG is making renewable energies more expensive for end-consumers. And I think that is the main point of this article.

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