Berlin  - Germany's parliament passed Friday legislation that trims cross-subsidies for the booming solar-power industry while boosting other methods of cutting carbon emissions when generating electricity.

With an election due next year, the legislation has been controversial because the extra costs will be loaded onto householders' and businesses' electricity bills at a time when German consumers are already glum over soaring fuel costs.

Under a compromise hammered out by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, power companies are to pay less for power fed into the national grid from solar panels on the roofs of homes, but will come under pressure to use more wind power.

The legislation faces its next test in the Bundesrat upper house, where the 16 state governments hold sway.

Tele-heating, where power stations pipe their surplus hot water into homes during Europe's chilly winters, is to be encouraged. By 2020, about a quarter of German electricity stations will use their waste heat this way. About one eighth do so now.

The package of bills also encourages improved insulation so that centrally heated buildings do not lose so much heat through walls, ceilings and windows.

Germany's early enthusiasm for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity, has faded a little, with the emphasis back on wind turbines and geothermal plants that obtain heat from the soil, and sometimes from hot rock deep underground.

Berlin said it hoped the effect would be to double the renewables fraction in German energy use to as much as 30 per cent by 2020.

Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the laws would ensure 10 percentage points of the 40-per-cent emissions reduction which Germany has committed to achieving by 2020. A second package of legislation on emissions is set to be passed in mid-June. (dpa)