BONN, Germany — It rains year round in Germany. Clouds cover the skies for about two-thirds of all daylight hours. Yet the country has managed to become the world’s leading solar power generator. Even though millions of Germans flee their damp, dark homeland for holidays in the Mediterranean sun, 55 percent of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) power is generated on solar panels set up between the Baltic Sea and the Black Forest. So far just 3 percent of Germany’s electricity comes from the sun, but the government wants to raise the share of renewables to 27 percent of all energy by 2020 from 13 percent. It is a thriving industry with booming exports that has created tens of thousands of jobs in recent years, posting growth rates that surpassed the optimistic forecasts made by the fathers of a pioneering 2000 renewable energy law. This law, known by the acronym EEG, has helped this cloudy, rainy country on the northern rim of central Europe become a solar giant. ‘The EEG was the single most important vehicle to boost the solar energy market,’ Frank Asbeck, chairman of SolarWorld AG, told Reuters. The law, which offers cash incentives […]