The current issue of Slate, the pioneering e-magazine launched years ago by Microsoft and now owned by The Washington Post, has an article about "how Germany wasted $130 billion on inefficient solar power subsidies." What makes the article notable is that its author is Bjorn Lomborg, the self-proclaimed "skeptical environmentalist" who has sometimes been remarkably credulous about solar prospects. In his highly controversial book (The Skeptical Environmentalist), Lomborg seemed to think that concerted global action to abate greenhouse gas emissions was unnecessary and ill-advised, partly because photovoltaics would pretty much automatically solve the climate problem (to the extent there is one).
In the article, which seems to be well-argued and well-supported, Lomborg reports that German firms installed 7.5 gigawatts of solar energy last year in response to the federal government's generous subsidies. This capacity growth was twice the level the government considered desirable and so much that the average German's annual electricity bill will rise by $260. Lomborg cites a report in Der Spiegel, Germany's leading news magazine, indicating that government leaders now see the solar subsidy program as a "money pit."
