Often regarded as 'father of the feed-in tariff', Dr Hermann Scheer was a pioneer in renewable energy and the news of his death, which was confirmed this morning, will shock many in the renewable energy sector and beyond.

Hermann Scheer was able to see beyond the energy status quo and envisage a different energy future. A Social Democrat member of the German parliament since 1980, Scheer was instrumental in introducing Germany’s solar roof programmes and Renewable Energy Law (which included the feed-in tariff).

A true “thought-leader”, Hermann Scheer campaigned — with enormous personal energy — not only through his political work but also through his writings (books such as The Solar Manifesto and The Solar Economy) and his film (The Fourth Revolution — Energy Autonomy), as well as by pushing for the establishment of organisations to give renewable energy a greater status:  not least Eurosolar and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), for which Scheer fought many years to establish.

As a figure on the international stage, Hermann Scheer took his innovative thinking throughout and beyond Europe, not only as a speaker at many renewable energy events but in the offices of political leaders.

Hermann Scheer 29 April 1944 — 14 October 2010