Enemy Of Renewable Energy FDP Out Of German Bundestag

Good news from Germany: In yesterday’s election, the FDP failed to clear 5 percent of the vote and will get no seats in the next Bundestag (Parliament).

I’m a former FDP voter, since I liked their position on civil liberties. But more than that I strongly dislike their opposition to renewable energy. They have been trying to brake and disrupt deployment.

With the FDP out, that leaves exactly zero parties in the Bundestag supporting the proposal of replacing the successful feed-in tariff with a renewable portfolio standard, recently floated again by the Monopolkommission. It didn’t have a chance anyway, but this election result makes that point even clearer.

The party I voted for, the Green Party, hasn’t done well either. They lost 2.3 percent compared to the last Bundestag election, receiving 8.4 percent of the vote. Unfortunately, that probably means that Hans-Josef Fell, their leading expert on renewable energy, won’t be reelected. He wrote before the election that the Greens would need to clear about 11.5 percent in Bavaria, and they only got 8.4 percent there.

With the FDP gone, we will probably see another CDU and SPD coalition government. They will need to discuss what to do about the outdated and failed “merit order” electricity market, and which changes to the feed-in tariff will be necessary. I have no idea what the result of these discussions may be.

But having the FDP out of these discussions is a large step forward.