In Spain, Pop Goes The Magic 'Green' Bubble

ONE of the likely casualty from the Greece led PIIGS debt crisis seems to be "Green" energy.

From Businessweek,

``Spain is lancing an 18 billion-euro ($24 billion) investment bubble in solar energy that has boosted public liabilities, choking off new projects as it works to cut power prices and insulate itself from Greece’s debt crisis...

"Spain is battling on several fronts to revive its economy and convince government bondholders it can avoid getting dragged into a Greek-style debt spiral after Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating April 28. Solar-plant owners including General Electric Co. earn about 12 times what’s paid for power from fossil fuels. Most of that is a subsidy charged to customers

``Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government last cut solar rates in 2008, hitting plants not built at the time. Now it’s weighing reductions for the thousands of installations already making power from the sun, wind and biomass.

‘Excessive Subsidy’

“This is necessary,” said Leon Benelbas, chairman of Atlas Capital Close Brothers investment bank in Madrid. “It’s an excessive subsidy at a time Spain has to gain competitiveness, and the cost of energy is a determining factor.”

``Spain’s fixed-price system for renewable power, which attracted more investment in solar panels in 2008 than the rest of the world put together, boosts the state’s liabilities even though they don’t show up on its balance sheet.

``That’s because the Spanish system delays payments by consumers for part of their electric bills for years. The government guarantees repayment to power suppliers such as Endesa SA and Gas Natural SDG SA. The cost of those unpaid bills rose last year by about 4 billion euros to 16 billion euros.

``Spain intends to revise the clean-energy rates down “to avoid damaging the competitiveness of industry,” Sebastian told the Spanish parliament yesterday."

This only shows that industries that cannot stand on its two feet, that can't compete, but survives mainly on government mandates and subsidies (or crutches), will be subjected to politics and this includes suffering from cuts in spending or support when austerity is required, especially in response to a crisis.

And the impracticality or non-feasibility would be eventually revealed from such retrenchment. In short, "the emperor has no clothes!"

Yet, "green energy" hasn't been proven to be a net positive contributor to the economy.

George Will comments on a study by Professor Calzada on Spain's alternative energy programs,

``Calzada says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies -- wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital. (European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze" -- gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy."

Overall, like typical bubbles, resources spent on these government pet projects only means waste.