German Chemical Firms Call for Curbs on Renewable Energy Aid

The committee of small and medium-sized enterprises within the German chemical industry association Verband der chemischen Industrie (VCI) has joined the swelling chorus of voices from business and industry pleading for revision of the country's renewable energy sources law known as EEG.

Just ahead of national elections scheduled for Sept. 22, the grouping presented in Berlin a memorandum with 200 signatures of chemical SMEs that calls for a stop to the escalating cost of supporting renewable energy at the expense of conventional sources.

The EEG has turned out to be a "dangerous cost avalanche" threatening not only energy-intensive small businesses but consumers as well, said the VCI committee's chairman, Reinhold von Eben-Worlée. Unless the next government turns the rudder around and ends its financial support for new renewable energy plants, the transition away from nuclear power and toward sun- and wind energy will fail, he asserted.

The continuous rise in the cost of the levy used to finance the energy turnaround devours resources that chemicals producers need to finance innovation and capital investment, Eben-Worlée added. The entrepreneurs also have appealed to the future German government not to abolish the hardship clause awarding price relief for energy-intensive manufacturing companies.