Renewable Energy Tariffs – Has Their Day Come?

by Paul Gipe The short answer is yes. One doesn't have to look beyond Germany to see their benefits. While the Danes may have created the concept of renewable tariffs, it was the Germans who took the idea to the next level and put the power of the world's third largest industrial economy behind it. No one has made a more profound and consistent commitment to renewable energy than the Germans. And with recent revision of their ground-breaking Renewable Energy Sources Act (Erneuerbare Energien Gesetz, or EEG), they will maintain their momentum–and their leadership–in renewable energy development. Germany's EEG not only explicitly states that renewable power generators have a right to connect to the grid, but also spells out exactly how much they will be paid and for how long. The EEG sets out specific prices for a host of technologies, from wind energy to manure-fired power plants. It's this level of detail that separates what French researcher Bernard Chabot calls Advanced Renewable Tariffs from the Danish system and the earlier German one. For North Americans, the numbers are simply staggering. Since 1991 when their program was launched, the Germans have installed more than 14,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, more […]

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