Germany not to cut solar feed-in tariffs additionally - report

(ADPnews) - Jun 28, 2011 - The German government gave up its plans to introduce further reductions of the feed-in tariff for photovoltaic (PV) solar energy, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar) said on Tuesday.

According to BSW-Solar, representatives of the coalition government met on Monday evening and decided to follow a recommendation of the Federal Council from June 17 and not lower the subsidies for new solar installations. Such a reduction was considered on top of the existing scheme under which solar feed-in tariffs fall each year in accordance with the growth of the solar market.

The current feed-in tariff ranges from EUR 0.2111 (USD 0.3032) to EUR 0.2874 per kilowatt-hour depending on the type and size of the solar installation. The subsidy has been lowered by 40-50% in the past two and a half years, BSW-Solar said.

The currently applied reduction scheme is already challenging for the solar power sector and additional cuts would have not been sensible, BSW-Solar managing director Carsten Koernig said.

The association once more appealed to the government to keep the financial incentives for households that produce solar energy and consume it themselves.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.436)

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