Germany's energy policy came with a very high price. The policy is called energiewende, or energy transition, a move from fossil fuels and nuclear power to much-increased reliance on "renewables," primarily wind and solar.
In 2011, eight of their 17 nuclear power plants were just switched off (a huge capital investment drain in itself). The remaining nine plants will be phased out from 2015 to 2022. "Ironically, since shutting down some of their older nuclear plants in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, they now have to import nuclear power from France and the Czech Republic."
To pay for subsidizing those renewables, German households pay about 3 times as much for electricity as Americans do. About 300,000 households have to cope with power shut-offs per year due to unpaid bills.
Is it all worth the effort and the price the German people have had to pay? One of the founders of Germany's environmentalist movement, Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, says the alarm raised by the U.N. committee on climate change was wildly exaggerated.
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