The government and the producers may work together in January 2010 to reform the Renewable Energy Act (EEG). The act regulates a gradual annual drop in feed-in tariffs, to reflect a steeper overall slide in costs.
Additional reduction in the state-mandated fees that utilities pay for photovoltaic power would be moderate and designed to prevent damaging a fast-growing sector. “There won’t be any radical changes,” said a senior government official.
“There’s been over-promotion (of solar) in some areas. Some big systems now being set up in fields isn’t really what the law was designed for. We’ll have to take a look. The sector has even come to tell us there’s been too much incentive in some areas.”
Germany’s photovoltaic industry has grown since the EEG was created in 2000. More than half the world’s solar power is produced there and some 80,000 jobs have been created. A record 3 GW of capacity could be added in 2009.
Utilities are obliged to pay 43 cents per kWh of electricity produced for 20 years for systems installed in 2009. That rate has been falling by about 8% per year and will fall about 10% in 2010, or even higher.
“I am confident that we will be able to find a moderate solution that satisfies everyone,” Carsten Koernig, head of Germany’s BSW solar industry association.
“We’ve signalled to political leaders that thanks to rising capacity and technological developments there’s scope for modest adjustments to … tariffs … But it’s important to get the framework right so it won’t be debated or changed every year.”
The solar industry could absorb an additional one-off reduction of around 5% in the feed-in tariffs in mid-2010 and has offered that to the government. “If the sector continues to grow as strongly as it is now, this reduction could be permanent,” Koernig said.
Some senior politicians in the conservative Christian Democrats and their new coalition partners, the Free Democrats, called for steep cuts of up to 30% for the CO2-free energy.
But Conservative leaders in states with major photovoltaic industries — Saxony, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg — voiced opposition, which put the issue on the back burner.
