Re your post which included; "... And as for Spain with their Solar Thermal, I seem to recall they have 24% unemployment. ..."
Surely you are not suggesting a link between these two facts. Pre GFC Spain was a tourist mecca. It is a bastion of catholicism & royalty. It has a mountain of infrastructure created in bygone eras that costs a fortune to maintain & operate. It's economy was rocked by cowboy capitalists who went on massive building sprees, creating empires that now lie idle.
Europe in general has to face up to long term issues including political instability, social disadvantage, religious intolerance, archaic infrastructure, insufficient commitment to upskilling its people, base resource exhaustion, population pyramids that are becoming top heavy etc. etc. etc.
It is also home to 'old money' that has become lazy & shifty, studded with tax havens & creative ways of remaining unproductive & opaque.
If the twitter jetset & nouveau riche decide Europe is no longer 'cool' its future will look even bleaker. Yet even Spain, the UK, Germany & France are investing in next generation, innovative approaches to energy supply.
