The cuts will be implemented April 1 and will be as high as 29 percent, depending on the size of the installation. If the solar capacity in Germany expands any further, beyond the government's goal of 2.5 to 3.5 gigawatts (GW) per year, the cuts will be even deeper. Among those sitting in the German parliament, 305 voted for these measures, while 235 were against it. The Free Democrats voted unanimously for the EEG ammendments while the Social Democrats, Greens and the Left party rejected it.
An arbitration commitee was expected to be called by the states as previously reported. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led states were to call for this arbitration commitee in parliament together with the opposition. This was however not done. Local media reports that this was avoided due to the re-election politics of the Federal Environment Minister who is also a CDU member.
Nevertheless, not all members of the CDU party endorsed the cuts. Josef Göppel for example stated that the actual ammendment to the EEG consists of cuts that are not associated with the further conceptual development of solar power generation. He added, "There is no incentive for storage in the ammendment, that links the self-consumption to the grid-controlled storage possibilities." The Green party's Hans-Josef fell accused the government of driving even more photovoltaic companies into bankruptcy due to their decision. The called the new ammendment and law "a severe blow to the innovative solar industry".
Meanwhile, the statistics for installed capacity thus far for 2012 is still expected to show a massive increase in a bid to beat the deadlines that have now been made confirmed.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.