Two more North American companies have moved into the Greek solar market in response to the feed-in tariff and grant program passed there in 2006.

This article demonstrates that the large feed-in tariffs currently guaranteed for solar electricity in Germany constitute a subsidization regime that, if extended to 2020, threatens to reach a level comparable to that of German hard coal production, a notoriously outstanding example of misguided political intervention. Yet, as a consequence of the coexistence of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and theEUEmissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the increased use of renewable energy technologies does not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ETS alone. Similarly disappointing is the net employment balance, which is likely to be negative if one takes into account the opportunity cost of this form of solar photovoltaic support. Along the lines of the International Energy Agency (IEA 2007:77), we therefore recommend the immediate and drastic reduction of the magnitude of the feed-in tariffs granted for solar-based electricity. Ultimately, producing electricity on this basis is among the most expensive greenhouse gas abatement options.

An argument often heard against wind is that it costs a lot in public subsidies for a solution that will always have a limited

impact (because it still produces only a small fraction of overall needs, and because of its unreliability linked to its

intermitten nature). This is an argument worth addressing in detail, especially when it is pointed out, as the graph shows, that

wind is already almost competitive with the other main sources of electricity, which suggests that it might not even need

the subsidies then (and the increase in commodity prices since that graph was prepared using 2004 data, only reinforces that

argument).