If you aren't scared by climate chaos predictions, you aren't paying attention. Last month Bill McKibben told us that if we use up fossil fuel reserves we'll overshoot five times over what a livable Earth can withstand. This month climate scientist James Hansen tells us the "grim picture" he painted 25 years ago "was too optimistic."
So, the task of multiplying what is working to keep fossil energy in the ground seems more urgent than ever.
And what is working? Within my lifetime -- i.e. since the 1940s -- the German state, an international pariah silencing citizens and perpetrating mass murder, has become an international hero, showing a path to freedom from fossil fuels that relies on widespread citizen participation.
In the early 1990s, Germany had virtually no renewable energy, so I was astonished to learn that in 2010 Germany -- slightly smaller in area than Montana and hardly a Sunbelt -- generated almost half the world's solar energy.
How could this happen? In part the answer is Germany's innovative public policy called the Feed-in Tariff. It rewards households for becoming renewable energy producers by obligating utilities to buy electricity from installations like a solar panel or small windmill at a price guaranteeing a good return. And the approach is going global.
Germany's rapid expansion of renewable energy reflects not only its state policy but also citizens mobilizing on a large scale. Consider the vision and courage of one Ursula Sladek.
In the Black Forest community of Schönau, Ursula, mother of five, was deeply shaken by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. But instead of just fighting nuclear power, she chose to create an alternative. By 1997, she and neighbors had raised the millions of euros needed to buy out the area's private power grid and turn it into a clean-energy co-op. Now with over 1,000 owners, the co-op uses and supports decentralized renewable power like solar and wind for 120,000 customers, including households and factories. It's shooting for a million customers in three years.
And as of 2011, all of Germany got on board with Ursula, as it joined about a dozen countries that oppose nuclear power.
Something is working in Germany. But why is it working? For me, Germany demonstrates that sane steps to carbon freedom are possible where democracy functions -- where private industry is not in control of public policy.
Consider this: In a recent global study of the effectiveness of laws governing money's role in politics, on a scale of 100 Germany scored highest at 83.
And the U.S.? We tied Tajikistan for the sad score of 29.
Several key elements of the German system reduce the power of concentrated wealth:
Since 1958, political parties have received government funding. Private donations are encouraged as well, in part by tax breaks: Individuals may deduct from taxable income half their donations below €3,000 (twice that for joint returns). Or they may claim a tax credit of €825 (€1,650 for joint returns).
Private and corporate contributions are not limited but transparency laws are strict: Contributions of more than 10,000 euro per year must be disclosed.
Moreover, in Germany, corporations and large private donors (who, if like the U.S., would typically represent corporate interests), don't wield the power over media messages they do here. As in most of Western Europe, Germany prohibits paid political advertising. Citizens learn about issues mainly from media interviews and discussions with politicians because "broadcasters have the mandate to inform the public on political matters...," notes a Library of Congress, Law Library summary.
Over six decades, Germany's political rules have evolved to reduce three conditions -- concentrated power, secrecy, scapegoating -- proven to bring out our species' worst, whether throughout our long history or in lab experiments where we've been the guinea pigs. Rules like those above help to enhance their opposites: dispersion of power, transparency and mutual accountability. Of course, no system is perfect, and democracy has no endpoint anyway. But in this example, and so many others, we have glimpses of what works to create democracy that includes citizen voices.
Bringing the lesson home, we realize that we can and we must place every urgent call to block fossil fuel exploitation and to reward renewable development within the frame of democracy itself.
We can rally each other to credible steps to create real, accountable democracy now -- steps that can succeed in the foreseeable future. Since we can't wait for a Supreme Court majority that grasps that democracy depends on politics freed from corporate dominance, we must move now for legislation enabling public and/or citizen-financed campaigns so that candidates don't have to use any corporate money. The approach has worked for three state legislatures. At the same time, we can vote for those supporting measures that mandate disclosure of the sources of money in political contests: DISCLOSE Act and the Shareholder Protection Act.
Among proposals to enable candidates to run for office un-beholden to corporate funders, I am working to figure out where to put my energies. If you want to know where I land, please e-mail us at infoATsmallplanetDOTorg with "money in politics" as the subject line.
For me, Germany is a powerful reminder of how rapidly positive change can happen. Its dramatic transformation during my lifetime tells me that that solutions, whether to genocide or ecocide, require democracy.
Follow Frances Moore Lappe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/fmlappe
Rose Marie Berger: Why Bill McKibben Is the New Noah
The nuclear phase-out is a mis-step of gigantic proportions in the struggle to avoid climate change that will signficantly increase fossil fuel use, throwing away any possible gains made by wind and solar.
http://www.pennenergy.com/index/power/display/6248646713/articles/pennenergy/power/coal/2012/august/rwe_s-2_200_mw_coal-fired.html
RWE's 2,200 MW coal-fired power station officially begins operations in Germany
The frantic spin on that article to distract from the enormous amount of carbon this facilty - the first of many - will be adding to the atmosphere is almost laughable.
There are thousands of wind turbines along the Autobahns, solar panels everywhere, even the company I visited had the roof of it's production facility covered with solar panels and produces German made quality products largely with renewable energy. The country is clean, the roads are excellent, the public transportation is great! Loved the white-red ICE high speed trains, such a relaxing ride at 200mph.
If I was younger, I'd move there.
So what's the problem?
Big money has 100 times the money to buy congress, so they get 100 times the total breaks.
500M$ per reactor per year for nukes, about the same for clean coal.
But Solyandra was a disaster, right? I mean they only installed 500M$ worth of clean solar electricity, but never mind, they failed. Let's not notice that the CBO estimated 50% of nuke loans will default,. Right?
Solar panels are less than 60 cent per Wpeak now. Wake up dupes. Things have changed.
To the extent that Europe is forging a new response to energy, they become the beacon not just for energy and environmental stewardship, but for democracy.
Don't forget solar thermal energy. Many homes have solar collectors that assist heating and warming water in the winter (and saving natural gas and oil) and can wholly provide warm water in the summer months.
Germany also has state of the art building codes that require newly erected homes to have top thermal insulation and state of the art, very energy efficient heating systems.
Remeber too, that in the wake of the nuclear catastrophe in Japan Germany will shut down ALL its nuclear reactors by 2020.
On the motor front, my VW Golf turbodiesel (170hp) gets a real life 45 to 50 mpg and costs much less than Toyota Prius.
All is not perfect however. While the Minister President of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), David McAllister, is touting his state as a technological leader in renewable energy technology, the Economics MInister, Jörg Bode, still insists that fracking for unconventional natural gas in shale formations underneath the state is necessary for Germany's energy security and that it is safe.
Both claims cannot be further from the truth. That is another story.
To meet this challenge and adapt to a climate-friendly and carbon-neutral Sweden, the government has also adopted another very bold goal. In an interview with the Swedish newspaper Miljöaktuellt, Anna-Karin Hatt claimed that by 2030 the Government wanted Sweden’s vehicle fleet to be completely independent of fossil fuels.
Sweden has already made a good start. Nearly eight years ahead of schedule, we are just 0.2 per cent short of meeting the EU’s 10 per cent target for renewable energy use. Furthermore, according to the Swedish Bioenergy Association (Svebio) bioenergy is now bigger than fossil fuel in Sweden as a proportion of total energy use.
Read more at http://bit.ly/NlwyPz
Second, to reject CO2-free nuclear power because of Chernobyl, a power plant design that was never built outside of Russia, and will never be built again, is too silly for words. Chernobyl killed about as many people as die in the US every day from traffic accidents. Three Mile Island killed nobody. More people die in the US every week from medical malpractice than have died in all the nuclear power plant accidents in history.
The GREENWASHING of Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Transmission by the people we rely on to protect the environment has been the biggest hurdle in implementing EFFECTIVE, AFFORDABLE, NON-DEADLY policies for rooftop, not desert solar and wind. Our legislators routinely hide behind Gang Green's propaganda to hand their donors (Chevron, BP, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Google) their massive tracts of taxpayer land, plus virtually ALL the money to build their deadly boondoggles.
Who pays, then pays then pays again? Taxpayers, ratepayers and previously healthy intact ecosystems. It's the most cynical unholy alliance I have ever seen - Big Government enabling Big Energy, enabling Big Enviros enabling Big Energy enabling Big Government.
Our government is NOT going to help us with FITs, neither are the Big Enviros - they are both working full-time to make sure Big Energy completely dominates a renewable era - this will have to come from US, fighting with one voice, and not giving up. We can do it, but we need to work together, across the political spectrum!
BUT, it must come with a federal law that says that consumer produced electricity must be accepted back into the grid for what the SAME consumer would have been charged for receiving the same amount of electricity, minus a small (regulated) infrastructure fee. We have that here in CA and it means we don't have to size our systems so perfectly, etc.
The sum of money she raised is small in comparison to it's amazing outcome. I know people will
want to follow this model if it is possible. I can raise a good sum from donors and anyone else that is sad about the greedy corporations stealing our choices from us should also try. Don't be sad, get angry and become passionate about it. Who wants to start something in their own community. Ms. Lappe dreams big and it paid off. I will start with gathering infor and maybe Janet Sawin at WWI.
The first is to lobby SUPER hard for german style feed in tariffs for solar
possible through facebook, etc. we can show that their are alternatives. If a small country like Germany and a school teacher can do this then it is more than a possibility.
This philosophy was also exported to Russia after the collapse of the USSR by UK and US economists. The Russians said 'okay then, tell us how to do it'. The western economists basically said just light the blue touch paper of the free market and stand back. Unfortunately the only people who knew how to thrive in this environment were the mafia, black marketeers and ex KGB. Ordinary Russians didn't even know how to pay a power bill. This is why corruption is endemic in Russia today and only a small proportion have become rich, including Putin who may well secretly be the richest person on earth.
In the UK and US our versions of black marketers - the already rich and the corporations they ran - were best disposed to take advantage of the new era of lax regulations
Well, it does.
Even though Germany has made large inroads into renewables, it also imports vast quantities of electricity from nuclear and coal fired power plants outside Germany, notably France (nuclear) Poland and the Netherlands (both coal), not to mention gas from Putin protected Gazprom, with former chancellor Schroeder among its board of directors.
As a matter of fact, Germany's leading power corporation RWE is building two large coal fired power plants in the Netherlands, as we speak. It has been estimated, German industry is short of some 79Mwh of power on an annual basis.
One of the reasons this happens is skipping the CO2 emission rights in Germany, these emission rights must now be paid for by Dutch and Polish tax payers. This is allowed under EU legislation, and yet another ground for increased dissatisfaction among the Dutch for the EU in general.
Another reason is close proximity to the sea. This allows large ocean bulk carriers with coal to discharge at their destinations, and providing those power plants large amounts of cooling water.
These topics are hardly debated in the German press, let alone they make it into the public debate, save from perhaps Die Linke (The Left) party, which is hampered by its East German origins.
As much as Germany's choice for renewables can be applauded , it takes on the role of mythology. And sometimes myths (enter Adam and Jamie) need to be busted.
http://www.germanenergyblog.de/?p=7218
From another source (EIA), Germany generated 594.7 billion kWh of electricity in 2008 and consumed 544.5 billion kWh (exporting some 50.2 billion kWh, or some 9.2% of it's annual consumption). In 2009, exports made up 7.3% of it's annual consumption). While this number is narrowing of late (particularly with nuclear phase out in 2011 and forthcoming transmission additions remaining to be built), they appear to still be a good neighbor in Europe (and contributed to the overall stability of the grid and reliable resource allocation and transmission in general). Perhaps even more so when greater capacity in renewables and balancing reserves come on line over the next several years to decade or more.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=GM
Now explain to me what those RWE built coal fired power plants are doing in my country? (Yes, I also know Sweden's Vattenfall are doing exactly the same)
That has to do with the fact Germany imports the power it exports.
Electricity from power plants is generated at 400kV 50Hz AC. That power is then transformed in Germany into 100kV 50Hz AC, then exported as "German made" power.
It's like importing shoes and shoe laces from China separately, putting the laces into the shoes and resell these as your own product.