The split between Angela Merkel’s two potential junior coalition parties over Germany’s green energy disaster seems to be unsolvable. That could mean that the days of Angela Merkel may be numbered, and those of the Energiewende as well.
Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government with the opposition SPD socialist party took a massive beating in last Sunday’s election, with both her CDU/CSU party and the coalition partner SPD socialist party coming in at post-war historic lows.
Since then the SPD has announced it is no longer interested in continuing the grand coalition and instead will take the helm as the opposition force. The comfy, low-opposition government is over. This has got Merkel scrambling to find new partners to form a new government. Her only option available: forming a coalition with the business-friendly FDP free democrats – and the environmentalist Greens. That is not going to be easy by any means.
Merkel potential coalition partner cold on subsidies for renewables
Merkel of course would have no problems governing together with the greens, and the massive state media apparatus is already promoting it with abandon.
But there are wide chasms of difference between the potential coalition parties on a number of issues, especially on issue of renewable energy subsidies.
Yesterday at the leftist, Berlin-based Tagesspiegel here, FDP party boss Christian Lindner left a commentary where he “demands the end of the EEG feed-in reform act“. According to Lindner, Germany’s focus has been “religiously excessive” on climate protection “instead of on price and supply stability“. For too long have the consumers and industry been sacrificed at the alter of Climatism, and done so with no results.
“Green energies have failed”
According to Lindner:
The project of the century Energiewende [transition to green energies] has failed. None of the agreed targets will be reached. Climate protection is stalled, energy prices are rising and they are burdening us as electricity consumers, just as they are the industry and middle class. And not least of all it is becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee a secure power supply during the winter months.”
Worse than former communist East Germany
Lindner adds that even Communist East Germany could not have designed the system to be worse. Lindner then blasted the country’s high electricity prices and their detrimental impact on German competitiveness, writing that many companies have left the country. Moreover conventional power plants that are forced to run part time are no longer profitable, Prices he says, will continue to rise and that there is no end in sight.
24 billion euro annual burden, time to pull the plug
Lindner also claims that government reforms to the feed-in act have “gone out of control” and that this is burdening the German consumers to the tune of 24 billion euros annually, or more than 300 euros a year for a family of four.
Lindner is calling for scrapping the current feed-in act and replacing it altogether from scratch, saying what is needed is a Europe-wide energy policy and power grid. Secondly he says that renewable energies must stop being subsidized and that Europe should take its time to reduce CO2.
According to Lindner:
The EEG [feed-in act] no longer works and it is time to pull the plug.
To the contrary, the Greens are demanding that green energies be expanded even more rapidly and that diesel engines be banned by 2030. The split between the two potential junior coalition parties seems unsolvable, so much so that German flagship daily Die Welt here wrote that Lindner has even poured cold water on the idea of a CDU/CSU/Green/FDP coalition government. That could mean that the days of Angela Merkel may be numbered, and those of the Energiewende as well.