Germany should cap aid to clean-energy developers at no more than €0.089/kWh for new renewable units, reduce aid in accordance with capacity additions in order to cut costs of country's planned switch to renewable energy, says policy adviser

Allison Oesterle

BERLIN , October 10, 2013 (Bloomberg LP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s third-term government should cap aid to clean-energy developers to cut the costs of the country’s plan to shutter nuclear reactors and expand renewables, a policy adviser said.

Germany should “radically simplify” its clean-energy subsidy system by paying no more than 8.9 euro cents (12 cents) a kilowatt-hour in aid to new renewable units, Agora Energiewende, a group owned by the Stiftung Mercator public- policy group and the European Climate Foundation, said today in a statement. Aid should decrease in line with capacity additions, it said.

The plan would favor onshore wind and solar plants over offshore wind, biomass and geothermal units to “avoid unnecessary costs for power consumers,” Agora said. New generators sized 1 megawatt or larger should be forced to sell power on the market, it said.

--Editors: Alex Devine, Stephen Cunningham

To contact the reporter on this story: Stefan Nicola in Berlin at snicola2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.