A New Focal Point In the first part of this “Road to 2020” series of posts, I looked at how the pro-nuclear & renewable-sceptical center-right federal government of Germany made a 180° turnaround in terms of energy policy back in 2011. While this was good news, it’s of course … [continued]
I can’t remember where I ran across these — I think a reader shared them with me — but I started going through a bunch of old drafts of articles I wanted to write but never got to last night (Spring cleaning, I guess) and ran across them again. … [continued]
Political Fallout In the summer of 2011, the conservative federal government of Germany passed a law that will phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022, and they proclaimed the so-called “Energiewende.” This announcement was made with a lot of pathos and was accompanied by even more talk about the … [continued]
Earlier this year reports were released that 3 GW of new solar power were installed in Germany during the month of December alone. This marked a new record for solar capacity installed in a single month in Germany and doubts were cast on the accuracy of the news. Many craftsmen … [continued]
Solar energy policies in Germany have resulted in a jobs boom and have driven down the price of power on the EPEX Power Exchange. More people work in Germany’s solar energy sector than in its coal and nuclear sectors combined. (Don’t tell this year’s GOP candidates — they somehow … [continued]
No doubt, you’ve heard about Germany’s likely decision to quickly and severely cut its solar PV feed-in tariff policy, a world-leading solar policy that has made Germany a solar power hero of sorts. A friend recently shared a story by Bjørn Lomborg on these cuts with me and asked me for … [continued]
Ernst & Young released its quarterly Country Attractiveness Indices report (CAI) for renewable energy today. There are some quite interesting observations regarding the state of and projections for renewable energy (and specific renewable energy sectors) within the report, but the ranking of the top countries in the index remains the same: … [continued]
How about the U.S.? (OK, let’s not go there today.) The news: A new study Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), Volle Kraft aus Hochseewind (“Full power from offshore wind”), has found that Germany will have a not-so-tiny 33,000 jobs in the offshore wind power sector by 2021! That’s 18,000 more than in 2010. … [continued]
New inverter technology for ‘utility-scale’ solar projects can reportedly help (big-time) in stabilizing the electric grid 24/7. “A new inverter technology allows inverters to act as phase-shift oscillators, thereby providing the grid with reactive power from solar plants even overnight – and lowering the cost of grid expansion considerably … [continued]
I spend much of my time studying carbon pollution trends, analyzing growing evidence of global warming, and assessing the impacts of a warmer climate. Thus, I recently found myself in agreement with scientists when they moved the symbolic doomsday clock closer to midnight (planetary catastrophe) in part because of global inaction on climate change. At the same time, I remain optimistic about our collective ability to face the crisis. Why? Because even as we’re racing against time to combat climate change, we’re also moving forward in the clean energy race.
