The end of easy green money | Presseurop – English

Europa continues to be carried away by ideological inertia: at the Cancún climate change summit, it will pound its fists on the table and throw its own virtue in the world’s teeth. But under the surface there is a groundswell of realism bent on redefining targets and strategies based on the realisation that not all energy sources are equal, and not all of them merit cost-blind incentives.

The green energy sector should react to the market signals and meet demand in a more structured way. Perhaps subsidies for biofuels should be recast, for example, to reward technologies capable of producing biofuels at competitive prices and using marginal land. We should probably confine wind farming to windy areas and give up on the pretence of the artificially sustainability of windmills that only run 1000 or 1500 hours a year.