Foreword
The time has come for an immediate change to 100% renewable energy sources on a global scale.
Even though renewable energy is currently on everyone’s mind, this was not always the case. Or was it? In earlier times renewable energy was also explored. Examples of this are the 1939 Spanish solar stocks and Rudolf Diesel’s first diesel engine that ran on cold-squeezed vegetable oil. Also, as early as the 19th century there were tens of thousands of wind energy systems watering agricultural fields. Even Werner von Siemens was convinced that photovoltaics would conquer the world.
However, cheap oil, together with coal and later gas and uranium, increasingly replaced the utilization of renewable energy sources with the following disastrous consequences:
- Huge areas of Japan, White Russia, and Russia are permanently destroyed by radioactivity.
- The global mean temperature has been increasing in – as seen from a history of the earth point of view – a breath taking velocity above 0.8°C compared to the preindustrial level. The consequences are already disastrous: droughts and crop failures, flash floods and rising sea levels, hurricanes, typhoons, and tornados. All in all these have already left a deadly path on a large scale. Global warming has already destroyed lives and resulted in the flow of refugees. The global loss of species has reached an unacceptable level. A further warming up to 2°C – only an additional 1.2°C to the above mentioned value – cannot be tolerated, even if many do not believe it to be reachable.
- The global economy is increasingly being challenged. The state of indebtedness for many is on the rise, not only because of increasing subsidies for fossil energy systems, but also due to the ever-increasing burden of rising fossil energy prices. In one year alone, from 2010 to 2011, the European oil bill increased from 280 to 400 billion US$. And from 2009 to 2010, in order to keep energy prices at a reasonable level for the end users, the global subsidies for fossil energy increased from 312 to 409 billion US$.
- Exceeding the global maximum oil extraction (peak oil) not only leads to a dramatic increase in the price of oil, but also to conflicts over ever diminishing fossil fuel resources. That is why civil wars mainly occur in oil rich countries such as Nigeria, the Sudan, and Venezuela. It is not surprising, therefore, that the oil rich region in the Middle East became a tinderbox that disrupted global peace. The two wars in Iraq, among others, were also fought for oil.
- Even as oil company profits are increasing immeasurably due to rising oil prices, poverty is increasing in the world.
Renewable energy can, and must, make a major contribution towards positive global solutions that address these crises. Renewable energies are decentralized and create jobs that provide earnings for billions of people and not for only a few companies. They relieve energy users from the ever-increasing price of energy raw materials. They make a major contribution to global peace simply because a war will not be fought over sunrays or wind. They are able to stop global warming because they are emission free, or emission neutral in the case of sustainable growth of bioenergy. Together with active carbon sinks, with safely stored atmospheric carbon as “humus” in the upper levels of soil, one can even organize a cooling effect for the earth.
This global change towards 100% renewable energies could evolve quickly if politicians and financial managers create appropriate framework conditions. If private capital was profitably oriented towards renewable energies instead of climate destroying fossil energies, there would be massive investments in them. This was demonstrated in the year 2000 with the feed-in tariff of the renewable Sources Act in Germany. In only one decade employment in the renewable energy sector in Germany increased from 30,000 in 1998 to 380,000 in 2012. This was a crucial contribution to the strong economy of Germany. In the same decade there was an increase for PV to the electricity supply from 0.01 to 8% in the industrialized country of Bavaria, with a still-growing investment velocity. What is possible in Bavaria is also feasible globally. This is even more so because solar electricity as well as electricity from wind and hydropower costs less to produce today compared with new conventional power plants.
The industrial revolution for information technology was initiated at the California universities of Stanford and UC Davis. In less than 30 years personal computers have conquered the world, even though in 1988 the head of IBM still believed that there would be no personal computers at all. At the same universities a global plan was developed which showed that a complete change of the global energy supply to 100% renewable energies by the year 2030 is industrially and technologically feasible. Furthermore, scientists Jacobsen and DeLucchi demonstrated that this would be considerably less expensive compared to persisting with the conventional energy supply.
There will be losers in this process such as the conventional economy based on oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy. However, the global community should no longer consider their economic interests. The fight against poverty, the empowerment of economic development instead of state bankruptcies, and the securement of global peace and effective climate protection are much more important than the profit interests of the oil, nuclear, and coal industries. A global change towards 100% renewable energies is possible, giving mankind the chance to quickly change any ruinous developments for the better.
Former Member of the German Parliament,
Former spokesperson for energy and technology for the party
“Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen”
Vice president of Eurosolar
December 2013