FT: Rise of renewables adds to need for gas power

Something odd is happening at Europe’s big energy companies. They have stopped complaining so much about renewable energy subsidies.

Not that long ago barely a month passed without someone from France’s GDF Suez or Germany’s Eon grumbling that unaffordable support for green energy was eating into the profits of their fossil fuel plants – or increasing the risk of the lights going out.

It was easy to see why. Those subsidies helped to nearly triple the amount of EU wind and solar generating capacity being installed in the space of six years. Renewables accounted for a quarter of Germany’s electricity production last year, up from 7 per cent in 2000 – an extraordinary shift in one of the world’s largest and most advanced industrialised economies. Even the UK got 15 per cent of its power from renewables last year, up from 11 per cent in 2012.
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