From Bloomberg:
Shares of German solar-power companies Solarworld AG, Q-Cells SE and Phoenix Solar AG climbed after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s incoming government retreated from threats to cut their subsidies.The government will talk with the solar-energy industry about possible “adjustments” to avoid “excessive subsidies,” according to the coalition contract published Oct. 24. Solar power is an important technology for the future, it said.
“This is a positive surprise,” Daniel Kluge, spokesman for the Berlin-based German Renewable Energy Federation BEE lobby group, said in a phone interview. “After all the tough talk, this is a sensible way to proceed.”
Earlier language drafted by lawmakers for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and her Free Democratic Party allies pointed to reductions in 2010 solar-power subsidies. They wanted “quite an enormous” cut in solar-power prices, Gudrun Kopp, the FDP’s energy spokeswoman, said in an Oct. 15 interview.
Such reductions would have trimmed profits for solar companies such as Solarworld. The coalition is sending “a clear positive signal” on solar energy, Kluge said....MORE
