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Solar subsidies cost German consumers billions of dollars a year and are widely regarded as inefficient. Even environmentalists are concerned that Berlin's focus on solar comes at the detriment of other renewables. But the solar industry has a powerful lobby, and politicians have proven powerless to resist.

"DIRECT ACTION is often perceived as an exercise in keeping up appearances: a fig-leaf policy from a government that has expressed little enthusiasm for serious action on climate change. But with the possible neutering of the Renewable Energy Target, Direct Action subsidies are set to be the main pillar of Australia's climate change mitigation effort as well as a new drain on our scarce fiscal resources."

"In 2008, the City of Yarra set a target to be carbon neutral by 2020. Not just council headquarters - the entire inner-city municipality. But how does a whole district go carbon neutral? It can't rely on government subsidies, or an unforeseen technological breakthrough, says Alex Fearnside, chief executive of Yarra Energy Foundation, the organisation established in 2010 to make it happen."

"A new report released by the United Nations calls on world governments to change the way they do business, end fossil fuel subsidies and factor in social and environmental costs into the measurement of economic activity. It notes that the standard method of calculating economic growth through measures such as GDP ignores the impacts on the planet and food and water resources."

"Australian energy utility Origin Energy is under the SQHQ microscope this week readers. More specifically their claim that the carbon tax and subsidies for green schemes are the chief cause of the rise in the average electricity bill. Your correspondent received his bill from Origin on Thursday. While never a pleasant experience this was made worse by a clear message situated prominently on the lower right side of the document in big red letters. NSW Govt estimates that the Federal carbon tax and green energy schemes add about $332 a year to a typical 6.5MWh household bill. Sounds nasty readers but is it true?"

"Wind power is now the cheapest electricity to produce in both Germany and the U.K., even without government subsidies, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). It's the first time that threshold has been crossed by a G7 economy.1 But that's less interesting than what just happened in the U.S."