Indeed, the wind turbines and solar panels being manufactured and installed in Europe have created new jobs and may slightly ease European dependence on imported gas and other carbon fuels.
But what it is not doing – a fact kept away from publicity – is cutting the amount of CO2 emissions in Europe.
Why? Because EU policies are displacing the carbon emissions from the most industrialized member states to neighboring European countries through the emissions-trading scheme set up by the European Commissions, according to evidence collected by the German Greens and leaked to Spiegel magazine. As things stand now with this “cap and trade” system, ceilings on total CO2 emissions are set on a country-by-country basis for each sector such as utilities, industrial manufacturing etc. So far, these ceilings are not being ratcheted down, no matter how many turbines or solar panels go up. The result is that, as wind power displaces some use of coal-burning power plants in Germany, the utilities which own “emissions certificates” for their energy-generating turbines have permits that they don’t need anymore. They can proceed to sell their unused certificates to countries such as Poland or Romania, enabling them to rely even more heavily on coal-fired plants without breaching their own national emissions ceilings because they have extra permits entitling them to emit more CO2.
Spiegel noted that politicians in Berlin shun any mention of this practice because they want Germany to continue basking in its reputation as the world leader in renewable energy.