On Valentine's Day (Friday), the consultation period closes for an EU paper on future energy policy. Feed-in tariffs will be done away with altogether aside from small projects. State aid could still be provided for CCS.

For years, proponents of renewables have praised feed-in tariffs as a policy mechanism, but too often even they have charged that FITs are some kind of start-up support for fledgling technologies. (This website was partly founded on the principle that that argument is specious.)

Now, that line of thinking is coming back to haunt us; if renewables are mature now, we can do away with FITs, right? An EU document that can be commented on until Friday proposes just that. Here is the main passage about the exceptions where FITs would still be allowed:

Member States may grant aid to installations of first commercial scale and to small installations with an electricity generation capacity of less than [1] MW, except for wind energy, where a threshold of [5 MW or 3 generation units] applies...