German drive to green power too costly for consumers-utilities

German drive to green power too costly for consumers-utilities | Reuters:

(Reuters) - Germany's government must curb the costs of its unhindered expansion of subsidised renewable energy, utility industry group BDEW said on Monday, fearing electricity prices risk becoming too burdensome for consumers.
German household power is among the most expensive in Europe, due to fees passed on to enable payments of above-market prices to producers of green power. This is done via feed-in tariffs, the core element of the subsidising law, called EEG.
"We have to find a way with all participants to dampen the overall cost," said BDEW's managing director Hildegard Mueller.
...
Households face another increase in their power bills for 2014, because the government has postponed the decision to rein in EEG costs until after the election.

The entire article can be read at Reuters

Related original content: Electricity Sector Lessons from Ontario and Germany

Supplemental


I was hoping the German Energy Blog would cover this and ...

BDEW Presents Post Election Demands and Highlights Taxes and Duties on Electricity Bills | German Energy Blog

On the occasion of this year’s annual meeting, the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry (BDEW) presented its energy policy demands for the federal government to be elected in September 2013. It expected taxes and duties on the electricity bills to reach the record sum of EUR 31.6 billion, exceeding a 50% share of the bill for household customers for the first time

I saw 2 big noteworthy pieces of information in this post - which I'll put in bold:

Restructuring of the energy supply system to make it more market-oriented. BDEW pointed out that it had already proposed a so-called “Strategic Reserve Model” (Strategische Reserve) to ensure the security of supply as a first step. Furthermore, a long-term strategy for the market for conventional (non-volatile) power had to be found in view of the growing amount of (volatile) renewable power that receives above market price feed-in tariffs, rendering (the still needed) conventional power plants economically unattractive. BDEW had listed general requirements for “capacity mechanisms”, Mrs Müller said, adding that a strategy had to be found that was focused on keeping up the security of supply;

...
Given the fact that the government wanted to reach almost half of its CO2 emissions saving target in the heat market, greater efforts had to be made. This was worthwhile as the heat market accounted for 40% of the final energy consumption and two-thirds of the CO2 emissions in Germany while two-thirds of the heating systems in building were not state of the art.

I doubt anything will be decided until after the fall's election, but for Ontairians it's worth noting Canada's most recent National Inventory Report (2011)  showed,

• emissions from the generation of "electricity and heat" of 14,800 kt CO2 equivalent (heat here refering to combined heat and power generation)
• emission categorized as "residential of 20,000 kt CO2 equivalent 

Not sure what the German figures were supposed to indicate, but residences in Ontario are now producting more emissions than electricity generation is.