LIKE I SAID, EVEN A FLATWORM IS SMART ENOUGH TO TURN AWAY FROM PAIN: Germans Re-Thinking “Turn” to Green Energy.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the German government made the much-heralded decision to close all the country’s nuclear reactors as part of its Energiewende, or “energy revolution.” The “revolution” also included government mandates and massive subsidies for renewable energy.

While Germans gleefully embraced the “Nuclear Power? No Thanks!” movement and global greens pointed to Germany as the future of the Green Economy, the sheen is starting to come off the German revolution. The last few months have been a slaughter for the German solar energy. Amid talk of a trade war with China over cheap imported solar panels, the giant German engineering firm Siemens shuttered its solar division after hemorrhaging more than a billion dollars in just two years.

Now Forbes reports that the rest of the German solar industry isn’t following far behind: two of the country’s biggest solar firms, Conenergy and Gehrlicher Solar, both filed for insolvency last week. Another engineering titan, Bosch, has also decided to get out of the solar market.

Meanwhile, the country’s other major green energy project—off-shore windfarms in the Baltic and North Sea—is also threatening to turn into a boondoggle. The massive projects off the northern coast of Germany are supposed to supply 9% of the country’s energy needs by 2023 and were a cornerstone of the government’s plan to abandon nuclear power. Yet engineering challenges, uncertainty around future energy prices and NIMBYs who object to overhead high-tension wires passing through their neighborhoods all threaten to make the project a dangerous white elephant.

These programs look more like crony capitalism than workable alternative energy.