Stupid, Stupid, Stupid: Greece To Become Centre Of Europe’s Sun Belt
I’M not sure that I’ve actually seen anything quite this stupid for some time:
“Greece could become the showcase of solar development in Europe‘s ‘sun belt’ and that development could become the main driver of Greece’s green economic growth,” said Costas Karayiannis, chief executive of Greece’s only solar energy investment fund, Axeon Navitas. “Germany is the global leader in solar energy and it has a lot less sun than Greece. It makes a lot of sense for it to invest in this type of project here.”
Yes, we know that Greece is bust, yes, we know that the Greek Government has run out of money and yes, we also know that yer average Greek on the Corinth Omnibus hasn’t got any money either.
So what is this drivel about building solar power stations then? Yes, Greece has lots of sunshine but that’s not enough. For, you see, solar power doesn’t actually make any money. In fact, solar power loses money: great whacking gobs of it, more for every extra unit you put up.
Here in England (and also over in Germany) we cover this up by government giving grants to people to put up solar panels. Plus, we all pay more for our electricity so that extra special higher prices can be paid to those people who’ve just got the grants. In Greece the government hasn’t got any money to give anyone any grants and the people don’t have the money to pay the higher prices.
So building solar power plants there just doesn’t sound like a good idea: but then demanding subsidies of a broke government and insisting that poor people pay higher prices isn’t a good idea at any time, is it?
Posted: 7th, October 2011 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
