Thursday, May 23, 2013
Germany’s environment minister Peter Altmaier has unexpectedly proposed cost-sharing measures to lower the consumer burden of the Energiewende. Yet as he's designed it, no one will line up behind the plan. Such politicking will likely backfire in the...
One way or another, Germany of the future will have hushed autobahns traveled by millions of purring electric cars and e-car recharging hubs as ubiquitous as gas stations are today. Yet, of the one million e-cars that Chancellor Merkel insists will be...
Some of the new numbers for 2012 are out and they add emphatically to Germany’s clean energy resume. In fact, they’re a critical affirmation of the doability of the Energiewende, which came under unprecedented attack last year — not least from the ranks...
Chancellor Merkel's government has occupied the term Energiewende (clean energy transition) and made it its own, as if it had coined the moniker in the first place. In fact, its origins go back deep into West Germany’s mass movements and ultimately have...
The EU did more than just about anyone else at the recent UN climate summit in Doha to make progress on an array of issues that could slow global warming. But this praise is consciously faint. The meager steps forward in Qatar — like the formulation of...
The in-progress Doha Climate Change Conference presents the perfect opportunity to read Global Cooling: Strategies for Climate Protection by Hans-Josef Fell. Green parliamentarian Fell is one of the fathers of Germany’s Renewable Energy Law, the seminal...
Most of Germany’s pro-Energiewende voices think that Germany will far exceed its 2020 target of 35% clean energy. The Heinrich Böll Foundation, a Green think tank, is definitely among them. It argues that Germany could — with the right policies — go 100%...
No, and it’s not trying to, either. Under EU direction, all of Europe is undergoing an energy revolution, if at different speeds. The impact of energy policies does not stop at borders–Chernobyl drove that point home. And Germany is by no means trailblazing...
It might sound glib, but one answer to rising energy prices is simply to use less energy. And indeed this is exactly what Germany is saying in the face of higher energy prices. The math of it is easy enough: use less, pay less, and the environment wins,...
Another misunderstanding about Germany’s clean energy shift is the idea that somehow “the state” or green treehuggers are behind it. Well, it ain’t so. For the most part, Germany’s new energy producers are home owners, small and medium-sided businesses,...
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