Green energy will lead to Romania's "sustainable collapse"

The expansion of the global financial crisis over the last few years has revealed the irresponsibility of "development" dependent on cheap credit. One of them is also the promotion of green energy through any means, under the pretense of avoiding an imminent planetary disaster.

Developed countries as well as developing ones did not take too long before they started a race against the clock under the pressure of the powerful green lobby groups.

Researching climate trends has become a one way street, where the opponents' opinions have been constantly ridiculed and kept as far as possible from public debates.

Now that the subsidies available in Western Europe have been depleted, as former "champions" of Green Energy have close to sovereign default, and the sector of renewable energy is collapsing like a game of cards, dragging down tens of thousands of jobs with it.

The major players on this market have been forced to turn to the emerging markets, where the governments are doing everything to be liked by their "older brothers" in the West.

A series of articles in the international financial media show that Romania is like a "magnet" for the wind farms, due to its extremely generous subsidies program, significantly more so than the ones of France or Poland.

One of the main beneficiaries of the wind farm boom in Romania is Danish company Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's largest maker of wind turbines. It would seem that our "market" has remained their only hope to avoid a collapse, as orders coming from Western countries have plummeted.

Shares of Vestas fell on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange over 50% since the beginning of the year, and since the maximum recorded on June 2008, fell over 95% (see chart).

According to an article from MarketWatch, "the high level of debts and unsustainable production costs will force Vestas to do a share capital increase". A few days ago, the shares of VWS jumped significantly after the announcement of talks with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for a "strategic cooperation", according to Bloomberg. But will such a partnership be sufficient, or will the company have to be sold entirely?

A Reuters article in the end of July 2012 showed that Vestas announced a drop in orders since the first half of the year to 1,973 MW, from 2,895 MW in the same period of last year, and the global orders fell 30%, amid the decline in demand in the US and Europe, as well as in the Asia-Pacific region.

Other major companies, such as Siemens or General Electric, benefit from our "generosity", and once established here they will use all of their "persuasion" methods to convince us that we need to do everything to save the planet, but first of all not to cut subsidies, a phenomenon which is not confined to Europe.

Is it not enough that we have our own bankrupt companies, which the authorities are keeping alive due to the social costs and yet are not allowed to receive help from the state budget because it would violate the EU rules?

What would you call a policy to support a sector which is only booming because of the promotion of apocalyptic scenarios concerning global warming? And which also threatens the growth potential of an industrial sector which is faced with the urgent need for a massive restructuring?

The right name for that would be the undermining of the national economy, and enhancing the process of pauperization of the population.

The very high share of the hydroelectric energy already places us among the top countries in Europe when it comes to renewable energy, and the completion of the plant of Cernavodă could lead to the increase in exports and the reduction of the country's overall energy deficit.

A study by Ernst & Young presented in the Romanian press shows that Romania needs cohesive programs for the development of the renewable energy sector and "immediate action" for stimulating long term investments.

The expertise of developed countries shows that on the contrary, these programs will lead to an unjustified increase in the costs of electricity, and these costs will represent an increasingly big burden, for the population as well as for industrial companies.

In a recent article, "Promoting solar energy in Germany: an ongoing disaster", the authors, professors at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Jacobs University of Bremen, show that the subsidizing of renewable energy in Germany was not made according to their long-term potential, but based on the relative lack of competitiveness compared to the traditional energy sector. The conclusion? The programs for promoting the solar energy have led to explosive costs, with insignificant positive aspects for the environment or for the number of newly created jobs.

Lately, Der Spiegel has continued its series of articles concerning the effects of "green" policies in Germany. According to them, industrial companies are frantically looking for solutions to fight fluctuations in the supply of electricity. And accidents are becoming increasingly frequent, as shown by the experience of an aluminum maker in Hamburg, which saw its equipment seriously damaged by a drop in tension for one millisecond.

Amid the worsening of the financial and economic crisis in Europe, whose effects are increasingly felt in Germany as well, the population has not only begun abandoning "the official position", but to even go against it, which is causing concern among the ecologists.

After insisting for many years to mix ethanol with car fuels, the German ecologists recently said on public television ARD that "we have always been against ethanol". It would seem we are closer to an Orwellian dystopia than we thought.

Now, the same ecologists, forced to accept that turning "green" food into fuel is a costly madness which borders on genocide, are proposing obtaining green energy from field flowers.

And yet there is a simple explanation for the irrational boost for green energy, discussed in an interview in Handelsblatt by professor Fritz Vahrenholt, the author of "Cold Sun". Far from denying the need for the development of a new energy source, but without the unprecedented politicizing of the process, the German professor says that there are powerful financial interests behind the promotion of the catastrophic scenarios of these past decades.

It remains to be seen how far those powerful interests can go, considering that the CEO of Unilever Europe said for Financial Times Deutschland that "poverty is returning to Europe".

It is not too late to abandon the benefits of the solar and wind energy in the manner in which it is currently being promoted, because it has no economic justification, aside from faction interests.

This will of course mean the adoption of a diverging attitude, the adoption of a diverging attitude compared to the one promoted by the European authorities and by harsh political confrontations. But perhaps it is time for the Romanian authorities to abandon the behavior they have practiced over the last two decades and to place the nation's interest first.