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So on one hand the increasing price of energy will move the use of products and materials in the "right" direction, but on the other hand there will be considerable dislocation across the economy.
The Economist article about the energy situation in Germany is interesting. (Requires registration.) http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4113477
Basically, the regulatory environment in Germany makes power both expensive and difficult to source from other countries. Nuclear power is not currently an option, and despite massive wind power generation it's not nearly enough to support heavy industry.
Really it's just another example of how the world does not have a sensible energy plan in place.
The problem, all agree, is rocketing energy prices, more marked in Germany than in the rest of Europe and beyond. Higher oil prices have been abetted by under-capacity, tough green laws on renewable energy, the phase-out of nuclear power and a transmission grid unable to cope with the biggest collection of wind farms in the world. All this is combined with imperfect price competition: the market is dominated by four major producers, two of which also control a large part of the grid. Setting up a European Energy Exchange (EEX) in Leipzig was a nice idea, but producers have an information advantage and liquidity is scarce.
And your right about the windpower.
That leaves Germany facing a long-term capacity shortage that will not be solved by renewable energy. Dena, a government-sponsored energy think-tank, calculates that wind-power will replace only 6%of Germany's conventional energy needs. Meanwhile, power companies such as Vattenfall Europe are working on developing cleaner thermal plants.
Renewables are now respectable power source and their use is steadily coming more and more common. Give it a decade or two and then we'll see entirely different picture from now (making the EU's energy outlooks look outmoded).
