For most of the past winter, Germany’s 1.1 million solar panels have sat idle. Overcast skies and a lack of sunshine mean that the powerful solar-generating system has produced little energy, forcing Germany to import electricity from nuclear power plants in neighbouring France and the Czech Republic.

The high cost of electricity and an ever-diminishing amount of support from the coalition government headed by Chancellor Angela Merkel are threatening to undermine German advances in solar-power generation. Merkel has long touted the sector’s “opportunities for exports, development, technology and jobs,” but she will find the system increasingly difficult to defend when members of her own ruling Christian Democratic Union are calling the system a “money pit.”

Germans pay the second-highest amount for electricity in Europe. The government has given out more than 8 billion in subsidies in 2011 alone to solar farm operators and individuals with small-scale solar plants on their roofs. In total, solar power generated just 3 per cent of the total energy supply Germany needs.

All of this has implications closer to home. Ontario modeled its Green Energy Act on the German FIT system and is currently conducting a mandatory two-year review to deal with similiar problems of growing expenses and unreliable power generation.