How Scheer determination transformed Germany
In 2005, I attended an international conference in Montreal on the Kyoto Protocol. There, I heard a speech by German parliamentarian Dr. Hermann Scheer. I knew nothing about him, but as I listened to him talk about how Germany had become the world’s leading exporter of wind technology and was on its way to phasing out its nuclear reactors, I was blown away.
Here was a politician who articulated the obvious realities about energy: fossil fuels are finite and will run out; the biggest sources of oil are often in the most politically volatile regions; nuclear energy is also nonrenewable and bequeaths a legacy of radioactive waste for thousands of generations; and the sun provides free, clean energy in abundance to all nations.
I have since come to know this canny, fearless politician who has stayed true to his beliefs for four decades, and has become so popular he doesn’t have to play party politics.
The problem of energy, he told me recently in Berlin, is not technological; it is political in the broadest sense. Once the decision is made to exploit a particular form of energy--nuclear, hydro, fossil fuel, renewable--all kinds of expertise and infrastructure are built up.
So, for example, once the decision is made to use oil, geologists are needed to find the oil, extraction methods must be developed, the crude has to be refined, delivery systems must get the oil to consumers, gas stations must be built, and so on.
All of these levels now have a huge stake in the oil industry, so it’s not surprising that when someone suggests that alternative energy sources like sunlight have many advantages over fossil fuels, the response is “ludicrous”, “impossible”, “it will never contribute more than a fraction of our needs”, “unreliable”, “too expensive”, and on and on. What Scheer means by political, I believe, is the mindset that results from having such a heavy investment in the status quo.
After the OPEC oil embargo in 1973, Scheer, who has a doctorate in economics, realized that energy was a major weakness in Germany’s industrial future. The country didn’t have oil reserves or large rivers for hydroelectric projects and so was generating electricity with nuclear and coal plants. He realized that this made Germany vulnerable to the vagaries of geopolitics and that these were not sustainable forms of energy.
He recognized that the sun radiates more than enough energy and that this energy from the sun or secondary sources like wind, wave, and biomass are sustainable. Even though he was a politician, Scheer founded the nonprofit Eurosolar to encourage renewable-energy initiatives in all sectors of society.
His efforts, which coincided with the rise of the anti-nuclear Green party in Germany, struck a chord. Could renewable energy provide enough energy to shut down all nuclear plants?
Scheer knew it could, even though scientists and other “experts” declared it was impossible for renewables to account for more than a small percentage of the nation’s electricity.
With the Green party holding the balance of power in a left-wing coalition government, Scheer was able to introduce an innovative plan, a feed-in tariff, which commits the country to accept all renewable energy (primarily wind and solar) onto the grid and to guarantee a premium price for that energy for 20 years. That provided a huge incentive for individuals or co-ops to build turbines and install solar panels because banks would not hesitate to provide loans given those conditions.
As a recent article in the Globe and Mail noted, the feed-in tariff, beyond giving Germany more than 20,000 megawatts of clean energy, has also created new economic opportunities. The renewable-energy sector now “generates about $240 billion in annual revenues and employs a quarter-million Germans.
Germany’s wind industry created 8,000 jobs in 2007 alone, and one recent study suggested that the renewable sector could provide more work than the auto industry (currently the nation’s biggest employer) by 2020.
Many people have been calling for a switch to renewable energy. Nobel laureate and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has called on the U.S. to switch to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years. In response, we’ve heard the same old tune from a chorus of stuck-in-the-oil naysayers. Someone should introduce them to Herman Scheer.
Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org/.
Comments
2 Comments
sunnergy
Aug 28, 2008 at 9:38pm
I can confirm virtually all that David Suzuki wrote about the amazing Hermann Scheer; also add some more. When I met him in 1997, barely a decade after he got to concentrate on utilization of solar energy, I had already been impressed by his original book; which led to an exchange of letters. At his invitation, I came to a big conference of his Eurosolar organization in Bonn, then still the seat of the German federal government (from Holland).
At the time, his popularity was hardly as ubiquitous as revealed in this article, not unusual for a bright, straight talking politician determined to straighten not just the talk. When I learned that there was a new , updated version of his book (titled “Sonnen- Strategie”, i.e. Sun Strategy), I tried to get hold of a copy. It was in Aachen, which aspired to be regarded as the most pro-solar German city, but they did not have it at the well stocked city library, or that of the Technology University (which did have the original version). Nor was it for sale in bookstores, but the biggest (Meyersche) ordered two copies for me, none for themselves. I offered the second copy to the city library, which didn't accept it.
When I got back to Vancouver, I tried the Goethe Institute, the cultural centre run by the German government in some foreign cities. The librarians' answer, after consulting higher up, was again negative. No reason was given. Although the Greens were not, Scheer's SPD was in government (while Eurosolar is not party-tied). It surely wasn't personal; I was on good to very good terms with the librarians. They closed their Vancouver institute was closed soon after. So I still have an extra copy. If I were to offer it to the VPL, it ought to be the English translation (titled “The Solar Manifesto”, but I don't know if that is the updated or the original version); and I wouldn't mind doing that.
There also were some indications at that 1997 Eurosolar Conference, which was on financing solar utilization, but there were more general solar related papers, too, not all supportive of solar energy. The USA was well represented among speakers, although it is not really located in Europe (but then, it isn't in Canada either).
I was in on an attempt by one participant to provoke Scheer by implying that his role in solar politics was not comparable to Carter's or Gorbachov's. The relaxed way Scheer (who had waved me over) handled the putdown indicated an emotional make-up that must have helped toward this eventual success, apparently not just in Germany.
While I was aware of his efforts gaining good recognition, it was only after reading the Suzuki article, that I looked at some details. The feed in tariffs for Germany look very high, surely a factor in the greater success compared to that of other European countries that adopted the approach; but can it stand up to backlash, if there is a serious economic downturn? The principle of the feed in law, where everyone can decide to help generate clean sustainable power, clearly beats the (North) American policies, including Schwarzenegger era California's; where private utility companies are to use 20% “renewable” energy by 2010. The only thing normal Californians can do is pay the bills the now deregulated utilility charges.
[to be continued.]
So-lar En-er-gy For-ev-er
sunnergy
Aug 31, 2008 at 4:34am
Continued from earlier part:
The New York Times just had an article (by Matthew L. Wald, revised August 16) reflecting the enthusiastic version of PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric Co) about the size of two solar plants being built for them to enable them to comply with the California state mandated requirement. The flat plate photovoltaic (PV) plants are to cover 12.5 square miles, and the output is supposed to “roughly equal the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant”; at allegedly 800 MW (megawatt), enough to power 800 “large Wal-Mart stores”. This plant size emphasis “can be extrapolated around the world”, e.g. to Germany, with 40 MW from its biggest such facility. The reason for this implied inferiority is not the superior California sunshine, where less centralized solar power designs could long have been competitive with the dirty sources, and much cheaper than the power from PG&E's ridiculous Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
This pretense of the virtue of huge plant size, the term gargantuan is used, as though gargantuan is beautiful, is not plain baloney; it is disinformation baloney. Any economy of scale beyond a size much lower than 40 megawatts, is less than just the waste from increased transmission losses. Among the more important drawbacks of such hugeness are the greater difficulties of raising the large chunk of
capital and the waste generally associated with huge companies; for which it is hard to find a better example than gargantuan PG&E.
During construction of their preposterous Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant right on top of one of California's earthquake faults, they made an expensive mistake in reversing the direction of piping systems; that was repeated here by them or the Times reporter, thus requiring the revision. In the (August 14) original version the sun had to be tracked as it moved from west to east . The revised version reflects the discovery that the sun rises in the east, also in California and New York; where the Times, hardly the worst paper from which others take their cue, may now have to make do with the press releases from powerful, gigantic PG&E. Earlier, they were thought to be in control of the press just in California; and its politicians, through whom they can raise big capital even after formal bankcruptcy.
In practice, it is fortunately also not really true that as much as an 800 MW coal or nuclear plant is supplied by the PV plant; as can be verified by really reading the article with maybe a little thought. It is more like 200-300 MW total from the two plants. There are other dishonest claims that probably cannot be termed outright lies. But it should be clear that what is important is not excessively centralized plant size, but the size of the fraction of total energy use from clean, inexhaustible, unending or renewable sources. Also the retention of some democratic content in political institutions.
On those counts, the German version looks far superior, evidently to a major extent due to what David Suzuki's headline terms the SCHEER determination of the president of Eurosolar, a kind of organization that could not be tolerated in California. Its explicit aim has been to advance the actual utilization of the clean, never-ending, abundant solar sources of energy. As a founding member in 1974 of the Northern California chapter of the Solar Energy Society, I could remain in no doubt that this was also the aim and understanding of (at least the bulk of) its founding membership; rather than just the generation of disinterested, “neutral” papers; from people, like new academics, competing for grants from utility-tied government.
I can't exclude the (theoretical) possibility that PG&E has changed since I last kept up with their anti solar activity (while they always posed as promoter). That was before Schwarzenegger became (solar) governor, but I would be surprised if they did, or if the abstract muscle behind PG&E proved inadequate to deal with the governor's gargantuan biceps.
In Germany, Scheer also had to deal with large regional utility companies. While not on the scale of PG&E, at the time the biggest private utility in the country, there were international ties between all of them. In the US they probably had more power arrayed behind them, notably by the big oil and military industrial sectors. On the whole, it seems odd that so much of what he had concluded and articulated brilliantly, had also ocurred to, and partly written about by me, coming from scientific / technical work on a solar project in a California research lab; which eventually required some political involvent. So when I wrote a sort of primer for a website of mine in response to requests by student readers for literature I'd recommend or specific information, I suggested none more emphatically than Scheer's book, even though the technical aspect most students were most interested in takes little space (but all in the others). Only two more important examples here.
From the first oil shock and boycott in the early 70s, shortly after the first Earth Day, until Sun Day (May 3, 1978), organized by the same people “to usher in the solar age”, a grassroots solar movement developed that showed the best chance that the artificial obstacles could be licked. The way that movement could be stopped abruptly right after that first (and only) Sun Day (at least until very recently) demonstrated the extraordinary reserve power of the enemies of solar power, the cheap way by which loud proponents can be co-opted, and especially the critical importance of such a movement. Notably the latter was also emphasized in Scheer's book (at his request I had written a long [lousy] account of the movement in California for the Eurosolar Yearbook, but then asked not to print it, at least in that state. I later put an abbreviated version in a website).
Scheer made very clear that avoidance of waste (conservation, efficiency) is important by itself but not a solution to our energy problems; as had I, somewhat more strongly, but I had also pulled what should have been real punches, and I am not a politician. It seems to have been the same with Gro Harlem Brundtland when she was Norway's prime minister. After the conversation with Hermann Scheer about it, I turned less gentle; and ought to go further in clarifying Amory Lovins' role now that more of his business relations with the dirty competition are becoming more overt.
To conclude, it doesn't look to me as clear as David Suzuki thinks that Al Gore “ has called on the U.S. to switch to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years” rather than leave the option of (“clean”) nuclear power; as he had in his “Earth in the Balance”. As a past (?) politician, he may have expressed himself deliberately to leave both options open. Googling shows it to have had that effect. Once it becomes established that the non-radioactive, clean solar sources are the predominent source, some nuclear and other obsolete power would presumably be acceptable to most of us; but not while a major tactic of the dirty competition, that solar power is laughable, can be maintained
So-lar En-er-gy For-ev-er
http://members.shaw.ca/illas/pictures/Solar_Power_small.jpg