Germany’s transition to renewable energy may cost up to 1 trillion euros ($1.34 trillion) in the next two decades, the environment minister said on Wednesday, piling pressure on his opponents to back plans to cap power price rises before the election. --
Reuters, 20 February 2013
Bulgaria’s government has announced it is resigning after nationwide protests against high electricity prices and austerity, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov has said. “I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people,” Mr Borisov told parliament. Tens of thousands have protested across Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, against high electricity bills. --
BBC News, 20 February 2013
Environment Minister Peter Altmaier believes that Germany's CO2 emissions rose again last year, for the first time in many years, preliminary results indicate. —
Focus Magazin, 20 February 2013
Opposition from Germany’s powerful environmental lobby is dimming prospects for shale gas and sparking fears that major industries in Europe’s largest economy will lose out to American rivals tapping cheaper energy. --
EurActiv, 19 February 2013
If the lights do go out, history will be harsh on a posturing political class that – in order to burnish its ‘green credentials’ – has left Britain at the mercy of foreign powers for heat and light. In a sane world, ministers would immediately suspend their green edicts, scrap green taxes on energy bills and keep open existing coal power stations until we are producing enough clean power to stand on our own two feet. -- Editorial,
Daily Mail, 20 February 2013
Britain is now paying the price of the green lobby persuading governments to rip up decades of energy policy and start again. Today energy policy is framed with only one factor in mind: satisfying the green lobby. It is, to be blunt, mad. There is no starker example of the disconnect between the political classes and the rest of us. For the political classes – all three main parties are as one over this – the only thing that matters is signing treaties on global warming. --Stephen Pollard,
Daily Express, 20 February 2013
In the pre-crash world the green obsession might, just, have been manageable if we actually wanted to throw money away on inefficient and unnecessarily expensive energy supplies. But in today’s world it is economic madness. --Stephen Pollard,
Daily Express, 20 February 2013
