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Comment by fivea | Hacker News Reader

> In Germany, the previous government has done a lot to stall further builtup of renewable energies.

I find this assertion hard to believe. Merkel has been in charge of Germany's federal government for the past two decades, and throughout this period Germany's energy production from renewable sources has skyrocketed from virtually none to the leading energy source, with a share of over 60% of the nation's energy production.

In fact, if anything, Germany's production from renewables has been accelerating.

https://vizzlo.com/gallery/time-series-graph/example/power-g...

Could you provide any source that supports your assertion that the previous government has been stalling renewables?

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Well, for one, I don't understand it either, why Merkel didn't see the change through. It was, however, started by the red-green government before Merkel. They set up the system which guaranteed a price for any renewable energy producted (initiall very high, decreasing for later installations).

The production did indeed skyrocket, with the peak of over 50% renewable power in 2020. But in the last 3 years the built-up of new wind generators has stalled. Hitting a peak of 5GW/year in 2017, it went down to below 1 in 2019. This was due to several changes by the government. On the one side they replaced the flat fee which was paid for electricity produced to a complex auction schema, on the other side there were more and more restrictions about where one could build wind generators. Also the amound of solar power was even capped. It seems that the situation has improved somewhat, the build-up of renewables was a bit higher in 2020 than in 2019, but hasn't reached the past peaks again yet.

> On the one side they replaced the flat fee which was paid for electricity produced to a complex auction schema (...)

Aren't you referring to the initial subsidized program where private companies were enticed to invest their own cash in renewable energy sources in exchange for assured profitability during the initial period?

Well, the new distance requirements for wind parks are stricter, than for a garbage burning plant, for example. And there are still villages being removed, because of coal - so it is far from 100% support, but overall I would not agree, that the previous government was stalling renewables. But there was and is lots of general movement into renewables, so maybe there would have been a wind and solar boom, despite governments efforts.

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