Power Line Ahead of Time

A week ago we warned about how the economic troubles in Spain were threatening to reignite the Eurozone crisis, and Thursday of this week Time got round to noticing in “Spain’s Death Spiral and the Hypocrisy of the Euro”:

Anyone out there who thinks the euro zone debt crisis is over – and you know who you are – should take a good look at what’s going on in Spain. If Italy represented the biggest threat to the euro in 2011, then Spain will be the big story of 2012. Whatever numbers you look at, Spain is in a death spiral, a self-defeating circle of recession and austerity that is sending one of Europe’s most important members into an economic dark ages. Spain today represents all of the failings of the monetary union, from its misconceived inception to its misguided approach to the debt crisis.

Just remember: Power Line was there ahead of Time.

Meanwhile, remember how Obama told us back in 2009 that Spain was the model for how investment in green energy was the path to the future?  Well, this headline will be a bummer in the White House: “Spain Imposes ‘Temporary’ Halt to New Renewable Energy and Co-generation Projects.”  I like the way the headline writers put “Temporary” in scare quotes; I think even the cheerleaders at the Renewable Energy World website know the party is over for good.

The body of the story has some shocking details not usually mentioned by green energy cheerleaders over here:

For over a decade, the Spanish government has prevented utilities from charging consumers the true costs of electricity. In other words, the final price paid by both large and small electricity buyers has been kept artificially low, in an arguably misguided attempt to contain inflation, protect consumers, and maintain the competitiveness of Spanish industry.

To keep costs low requires subsidies to electric utilities.  The true cost of this subsidy?  More than €5 billion some years.  Come on greenies: where’s that favorite word of yours—you know the one: unsustainable.

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