Germany has long been the test bed for renewable energy policy. It led the way both in supporting renewables through feed-in tariffs, and innovations to change them without killing the market and integrate projects better into the power system.

Last week, however, the country demonstrated that nowhere is insulated from the highly politicised debate over the cost of renewables – and that even in Europe’s economic heavyweight, investors can wake up to headlines about sudden cuts and new taxes.

That was one of the proposals put forward last week by the environment minister Peter Altmaier, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel in her conservative Christian Democratic Union party, as he brought the impact of renewables on energy bills into centre stage for Germany’s election year. “It is not acceptable that electricity consumers should keep bearing all the risk of the future costs on their own,” Altmaier said. He advocates capping the surcharge that consumers pay and suspending feed-in tariffs temporarily, as well as a voluntary ‘solidarity tax’ on existing projects and altering industry exemptions.

The plans are unlikely to get through parliament but they are a fine bit of politicking by Altmaier. They outflank economics minister Philipp Rösler, who leads the opposition Free Democratic Party, by stealing a possible campaign line ahead of elections in September.

If Germany made a gesture in the same direction as countries like the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Spain that have brought in retroactive penalties on renewable investors in recent years, Spain went a step further last week. The country approved new measures on Friday to lower the indexation level for existing feed-in tariffs and other power system costs, reducing the amount paid out to renewable power generators, a move that the government said would save up to EUR 800m (USD 1.1bn) this year. The country has already introduced additional taxes on electricity generators as it seeks to plug its power sector tariff deficit, which widened to about EUR 4.1bn in the first 11 months of 2012.

There were brighter points in Europe with a handful of clean energy deals. France’s Theolia agreed to buy German wind farm operator Breeze Two, giving it 337MW of operating wind farms in Germany and France. Full details of the transaction are unknown but Theolia paid EUR 35.5m (USD 47.8m) for a portion of Breeze Two’s debt.

Continuing the neighbourly acquisitions in Europe, Sweden’s Arise bought a 130MW wind farm in Norway from Havgul, without disclosing terms. In the UK, renewables developer Blue Energy bought RidgeWind and its portfolio of UK wind farms for GBP 250m (USD 395m) from HgCapital.

Alstom said it paid Rolls-Royce “less than GBP 50m” (USD 79m) for Tidal Generation, giving it a 1MW test turbine in Scotland. Meanwhile, Scotland weighed into the debate over a 2030 decarbonisation target for the UK’s power sector by setting one of its own.

In the US, there were several developments on the biofuels front last week. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a renewable fuel standard amounting to 16.55bn gallons in 2013, up 1.35bn gallons on last year, in line with a target set by Congress. The proposals also include third-party audits to verify credits, after a number of high profile fraud cases.

The renewable fuel standard includes 14m gallons of next-generation cellulosic biofuels – comfortably within Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s in-house forecast of 22.9m gallons. However, a federal appeals court in Washington last week threw out the EPA’s 2012 mandate for cellulosic biofuels (8.65m gallons) after producers failed to make any commercial supplies.

Meanwhile, US CO2 emissions have dropped to 1994 levels, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that was commissioned by the Business Council on Sustainable Energy. That came after the US had a record year for new-build renewable energy capacity, adding at least 17GW in 2012, mostly onshore wind (13.2GW). However, it was still overshadowed in wind by China, which installed 15.9GW last year, amounting to 35% of all new onshore wind capacity worldwide.

There was harmony between the two countries last week over the buy-out of electric vehicle battery maker A123 Systems. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US gave Wanxiang, China’s biggest auto-parts maker, the go-ahead to acquire most of bankrupt A123’s assets for USD 256.6m.

While the two great powers slug it out on the world stage, a number of emerging economies continue to escalate their renewable energy investments. There was a lot going on in Chile last week. E.CL got environmental approval for the second stage of a 309.5MW wind farm near Calama that will have a total cost of USD 685m. Pacific Solar applied for permission to build a USD 108m, 54MW PV plant in Chile’s northern commune of Maria Elena. And MEMC Electronic Materials’ SunEdison unit agreed to build a 100MW solar plant in the Atacama Desert with Cap, Chile’s largest iron-ore miner. A bit further north, Atlantic Wind got permission for two USD 150m PV plants in Ecuador that will have over 58MW capacity.

In a different part of the world, Saudi Arabia is also stepping up its solar plans. Riyadh-based ACWA Power last week said it was the preferred bidder for a 100MW project near Mecca. Meanwhile, the country gained its biggest PV project with the completion of a 3.5MW plant in Riyadh by Germany’s Phoenix Solar. It comprises 12,684 modules from China’s Suntech Power and inverters from Germany’s SMA. With global flows like these, remote Azerbaijan’s new ambition to raise renewables capacity by 2GW to 20% of power demand by 2020, and attract USD 7bn investment in the process, does not look so remote.