How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy

[marmar]

from truthdig:


How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Posted on Nov 15, 2012
By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law


There is no debate on climate change in Germany. The temperature for the past 10 months has been three degrees above average and we’re again on course for the warmest year on record. There’s no dispute among Germans as to whether this change is man-made, or that we contribute to it and need to stop accelerating the process.

Since 2000, Germany has converted 25 percent of its power grid to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass. The architects of the clean energy movement Energiewende, which translates to “energy transformation,” estimate that from 80 percent to 100 percent of Germany’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2050.

Germans are baffled that the United States has not taken the same path. Not only is the U.S. the wealthiest nation in the world, but it’s also credited with jump-starting Germany’s green movement 40 years ago.

“This is a very American idea,” Arne Jungjohann, a director at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation (HBSF), said at a press conference Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. “We got this from Jimmy Carter.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_germany_is_getting_to_100_percent_renewable_energy_20121115/

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[brer cat]

2. “This is a very American idea,”

Arne Jungjohann, a director at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation (HBSF), said at a press conference Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. “We got this from Jimmy Carter.”

If only we had listened we would be decades ahead on energy policy.

(bold added)

k&r

[Cal33]

3. Oh, many of us listened! But corporations (Big Oil, in this case) fought against it

tooth and nail. And they've won, and are still winning. All for their own profit.

[bananas]

6. "We got this from Jimmy Carter" - and Jimmy Carter was right.

Then Reagan came in and set us back thirty years.

[Hydra]

4. We should be at 100% clean/renewable/safe energy right now

But that would mean no 1%- if we all had access to cheap renewables that we could do ourselves, we wouldn't have to work as much, could be more active in our communities and could be cleaning up the pollution in our environment.

The 1% will do their best to kill us rather than release their stranglehold on information and access to technology.

[jade3000]

5. Obama's energy policy is a disaster

He needs to regroup and refocus on renewables. It's great energy policy and great JOBS policy. My only request is stay out of crops for biofuels (farmland should be for growing food and forests should be for wild animals).

[bananas]

7. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: German nuclear exit delivers economic, environmental benefits

Posted earlier this month: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101646814

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/sp-bgn110112.php

Public release date: 1-Nov-2012

Contact: Katie Baker
[e-mail]
020-732-48719
SAGE Publications

Bulletin: German nuclear exit delivers economic, environmental benefits

Following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2011, the German government took the nation's eight oldest reactors offline immediately and passed legislation that will close the last nuclear power plant by 2022. This nuclear phase-out had overwhelming political support in Germany. Elsewhere, many saw it as "panic politics," and the online business magazine Forbes.com went as far as to ask, in a headline, whether the decision was "Insane -- or Just Plain Stupid."

But a special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, "The German Nuclear Exit," shows that the nuclear shutdown and an accompanying move toward renewable energy are already yielding measurable economic and environmental benefits, with one top expert calling the German phase-out a probable game-changer for the nuclear industry worldwide.

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