Annual Report 2010 - Verein der Kohlenimporteure eV

the necessary investment in solar equipment, there is a
transfer of wealth from poorer consumers to the owners
of solar plants via electricity tariffs.
Renewable Energy Sources Act: Quantities
and Subsidies
TWh Million euro
120,0
100,0
80,0
60,0
40,0
20,0
0,0
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Figure 29: EEG Expenditure
Other Wind Subsidies
25.000
20.000
15.000
10.000
5.000
World up-side-down on the European Energy
Exchange: Negative electricity tariffs
On the European Energy Exchange in Leipzig,
electricity prices slip more and more frequently into
the red, i.e. on the spot market, prices fluctuate in a
negative range. Anyone who purchased at this moment
not only received free electricity, but also a premium for
the end of 2009, electricity prices were negative on 29
days. The reason for this absurd world? The German
with the result that when there is a lot of wind, huge
amounts of renewable electricity are fed into a grid that
has not been developed over the years to transport this
excess electricity to those German regions with high
consumption. If a weak demand for power coincides
with high quantities of electricity from wind, grids
become unstable, prices collapse and power producers
offer customers on the energy exchange money to take
the surplus quantities of electricity.
0
A faster reduction of the subsidies for wind energy
should be called for. A further increase in wind energy
subsidies for “repowering” would be completely wrong
in terms of rational policy, because “repowering”
should just lower the production costs.
BDEW predicts EEG costs for power generation from
renewable energy sources (2009-2015) as follows:
We must now wait to see if the revision of the EEG
in 2011 will again result in only slight corrections. A
subsidy mentality has become deeply rooted in the
renewables industry.
€14 billion Subsidy for EEG Expected in 2011 – The
Trend is Still Upwards
Initial estimates indicate that subsidies will increase in
2011 due to the over-supply of renewable electricity. An
estimated feed-in payment of €19 billion for electricity
with a market value of €4.5 billion points to a subsidy
of probably over €14 billion, to be paid by consumers
through the EEG levy. In the medium-term, i.e. by 2015,
the annual EEG levy will amount to approximately €21
billion.
of €2 Trillion – EEG Subsidies Belong in
The management consultant McKinsey estimates the
additional costs of renewables at more than €2 trillion
– i.e. two thousand billion euros – in a study of the costs
of unilateral actions within the European Union to 2050.
According to the study, even with a common approach
across Europe – which is nowhere near – a radical
transfer to renewable energies from 2020 to 2050 will
cost at least €6.6 trillion. By a co-ordinated development
of renewable energies in Europe and of the necessary
networks, costs however would drop dramatically.
57