Whether they like it or not, Germans currently have to pay a 3 percent surcharge on their monthly electricity bill as part of a state-endorsed campaign to promote the generation of solar energy.

Solar energy production has risen from 1.3 billion kilowatt hours in 2005 to over 5 billion now, with photo-voltaic installations mushrooming all over the country - not least on the roofs of private homes. Half of all solar panels produced word-wide currently end up on German roofs.

Those who feed solar energy into the national grid are paid a fixed sum per kilowatt hour, with end consumers footing the bill eventually for subsidies that are above those for any other form of energy generation.

Sunny times over for solar industry?

There are few restrictions on the installation of photo-voltaic units, and so the total subsidy has risen sharply with the number of units. Pro-consumer activists have for some time been calling for a drastic reduction in the subsidies.

"I assume that some companies in the field want to maintain high subsidy levels just to make sure that even their older and inefficient technology still yields profits," says Holger Krawinkel, an energy expert with the Federation of German Consumer Organizations.

In its coalition agreement last year, the new German government of Christian Democrats and Liberals agreed to reduce solar subsidies by more than the 9 percent annual decrease that already applies.

Now, at a meeting in the Environment Ministry on Wednesday, leading German companies such as Solarworld and Q-Cells said they would in principle agree to an additional 5 percent cut per year. Legislation to this effect will be prepared in the ministry in the weeks ahead.

The solar industry association BSW said that, as a result, electricity from your roof would become as cheap as energy from the socket over the next four years or so.

But BSW managing director Carsten Koenig hastened to add that his organization didn't feel under pressure from consumers.

"According to a survey, 71 percent of German households would even agree to pay more for the promotion of solar energy through their monthly electricity bill," Koenig said.

Go reduce subsidies somewhere else!

Pro-consumer organizations who've been calling for an even speedier reduction in subsidies for solar energy have been criticized by Greenpeace.

Greenpeace spokesman Andree Boehling said the subsidies were justified to push an environmentally clean technology. He argued that the priorities for savings were to be found elsewhere, and he added that every year German taxpayers pay out about 30 billion euros in subsidies for climate killers such as coal or aviation fuel.

hg/AP/dpa
Editor: Michael Lawton