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Solar energy jobs halve in two years

The Local Germany
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Solar energy jobs halve in two years
Photo: DPA

The number of jobs in the German solar energy industry has more than halved in two years, figures released by the government on Tuesday revealed.

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Unable to keep up with competition with Chinese producers, big solar producers such as Conergy, Solon and Q-Cells have all registered for insolvency over the past few years.

With their demise came job losses. Figures from the Federal Office for Statistics, seen by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), revealed a huge drop.

Since the beginning of 2012, more than half of the then 10,200 solar energy jobs in Germany have been cut.

For the first time in nearly half a decade, the number of Germans working in the solar business stood at under 5,000 in 2014.

The number of working hours available to those still with jobs in the sector is 625,000 – compared with 1.4 million at the beginning of 2012.

In an attempt to control the decline, the EU put a protective tax on on imported panels last summer.

This saw lots of Chinese companies raising their costs, but it does not seem to have had much of an effect on homegrown production.

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