EU Commission confirms EEG's success

Feed-in regulations such as the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) are the most effective and cheapest way to promote an increased generation of electricity from renewable energy sources. This is the result of a study by the EU Commission that was presented in Brussels today. The Commission made positive mention of Germany, Denmark, Finland and Spain with regard to the European targets for increasing the use of renewable energies. Federal Environment Minister Gabriel said: "With this, the EU Commission confirms that we are on the right track. We will continue with the expansion of renewable energies."

The EU Commission studied the Member States' regulations for the promotion of renewable energies and compared their effects. 16 of the 25 EU Member States already follow the example of the German EEG and promote the increased use of renewable energies by means of feed-in tariffs. In most cases, the countries employing such feed-in regulations have the highest growth rate. This is especially true for wind energy, but also for biogas and photovoltaics.

At the same time the costs for promoting ecological energy is considerably lower in these countries than in countries using quota systems or corresponding certificates. For example, Belgium, Italy and the UK support a kilowatt-hour of electricity from wind energy with well above 10 cent in some cases. According to EU information, Germany supports electricity from wind energy with about 8 cent per kilowatt-hour although the actual costs for the generation are no higher in the three countries referred to than in Germany. The collected data shows that the lack of investment security of other promotion systems results in notably higher costs. Furthermore, the expansion rate in Germany and other comparable countries is four times higher than in countries using a quota system.

Please note: The EU Commission's press release and the cited report are available on the Internet at http://europa.eu