off-peak power production; the parabolic-trough plants in Andalusia or the Mojave deserts use molten salts stored en masse to assure 24-hour supply, but these technologies, though provided by German companies, cannot be implemented in Germany itself due to the lack of intense sunshine about 6 months out of the year.

And then there’s wind. Wind has all of the drawbacks of solar but the advantage that Germany is at least fairly windy. Wind power has taken off here and the Baltic and North Sea coasts are dotted with enormous wind parks. The costs are still enormous and wind or solar power are still far more expensive than standard sources of power. A May 12, 2008 editorial in the Wall Street Journal stated: "For electricity generation, the EIA concludes thatof it. Germany has had to import its natural gas, some from fairly reliable partners like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom but mostly from an increasingly assertive and authoritarian Russia.

So rather than promote independence in energy, Germany’s green policies are making it ever more dependent on an autocracy. Even under the Soviets, Germany’s wet winters were made more commodious with the pleasant warmth provided by Russian gas. Schroeder and Putin were the best of friends, aided by the fact that Putin spoke fluent German from his time running the KGB station in Dresden, Germany. When Schroeder was fired by the German people he quickly found employment as a lobbyist for Gazprom, the Russian energy titan.

This leaves Germany with a series of problems with no pleasant solution. It