Good piece in The Globe today, documenting the retreat from renewable energy subsidies that is currently taking place across Europe. In an era of austerity, governments are pulling back from these wasteful expenditures.
Canadians should look at the European experience long and hard before embarking on similarly ambitious efforts at subsidizing the development of politically favoured”green energy” sources. The Europeans have been at this a while now, and it is telling that after all of these years of subsidies, many of the “green energy” firms that have been benefitting from government largesse are still proving unable to compete on their own. The government created a bubble, and as government support is withdrawn, the bubble is clearly deflating.
This should give pause to Canadians before we accept claims that well-placed green energy subsidies today will produce vibrant, self-sustaining enterprises a few years down the road.
