Bullet Points: Germany's Transformation into a World Leader for Renewable Energy

GERMANY’S TRANSFORMATION INTO A WORLD LEADER FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY
Mario-Ingo Soos (Counselor on Environment and Energy at the German Embassy); Dr. Jeffrey Michel (Electrical Engineer — International Power Meter Industry)   

Three major challenges to how Germany produces and consumes energy:

• Climate change
• Energy security
• Sustainable economic growth to pay for the changes to the energy infrastructure
  • 65% of the global greenhouse gas emissions are produced from energy consumption
  • The European Union declared it will reduce its emissions 30% by 2020
    • For Germany, compared to 1990 levels, the greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by 20% Key to the Renewable Energy Sources Act? — it’s the law
• Guarantees the feed-in of electricity from renewable energy at a fair and fixed fee
• Gives priority to renewable energy
• Fees are established for each kilowatt hour of electricity, additional costs apportioned to all consumers
• Renewable energies help Germany save about $7 billion per year in avoided import costs
• Number of jobs estimated to increase to 500,000 by 2020 and 800,000 by 2030
• Germany has approximately half a million solar installations
• Germany excavates the equivalent of the Suez Canal every 25 days to generate electricity from domestic lignite to produce a quarter of its electricity
  • 180 million tons of lignite are used every year
    • Surface mining is the cheapest way to get something out of the earth
    • The emissions trading price is on the rise
    • If Germany can’t meet Kyoto targets, the price of lignite will go up, which means it effectively triples the cost of lignite. This is why mining companies are going bankrupt
• In the year 2010, Germany will have 23% nuclear power CO2-free
  • 17% renewable energies, and coal, lignite, and gas generate the rest
  • In 2020, Germany will have almost no nuclear power
    • Renewables will increase to 30%
    • 67% will be taken over by fossil fuels
• The problem with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is that you need more energy to capture the CO2, compress it through a pipeline, and pump it underground
• A CCS power plant must double the water of regular plants — prohibitive for the western part of the US because they don’t have enough cooling water
• Electronic power metering is capable of reporting changes on a real-time basis
  • Starting in 2010, all new and fully renovated homes in Germany have to be equipped with an intelligent power meters
  • Organizations say that even by 2015, only 25% of all households will be equipped in Germany
  • In the US, 80-90% will be metered