Can We Follow Germany’s Route to Renewable Energy?
Keith Helmuth
In the early 1970’s I attended a conference on long-term agricultural planning at the federal Research Centre in Fredericton where I had a memorable conversation with a soil scientist from Ottawa. He was as frustrated with the conference as I was but for a somewhat different reason.
I was stymied by an almost contemptuous dismissal of organic agriculture. He was out of sync with his fellow professionals on long term planning because, as he put it, “All they want to talk about is how to increase production in the next five or ten years, and I want to talk about how we are going to feed ourselves when we can no longer feed our combine-harvesters.”
This man already knew something about the end of the road for oil and the crisis it portends for industrial civilization. The science and practice of organic farming has come a long way since then, but, unfortunately, the governments of Canada and the US have not yet taken seriously what it will mean for the energy source on which our economies now run to become less and less available and more and more expensive.
Since 1981 the rate of discovery of new oil deposits worldwide has fallen steadily below the rate of increase in demand. According to oil industry analysts, the new drilling technologies that can now tap previously inaccessible sites have not changed this scenario. Not only are oil reserves rapidly diminishing, industrial civilization is burning oil at a steadily increasing rate.
If we don’t plan for an orderly transition from oil dependency to renewable energy, we will likely be left in the lurch not only by a supply crunch and a price spike, but by other nations and regions of the world that have already gone into overdrive with their public policies and infrastructure planning for the transition to renewable energy.
I know there are those who scratch their heads and say it can’t be done, not here in New Brunswick, and not here in Canada. It’s too cold, too cloudy, the wind is too intermittent, and above all (perhaps) people want their electricity as cheaply as possible.
Others argue that fossil fuels are the life-blood of our economy and we have to make maximum use of then to generate more economic growth and more wealth. Otherwise, how will we ever get ourselves out of our current debt and deficit hole, both provincially and nationally? Everyone seems to agree that economic growth is the David for our debt Goliath.
I am happy to say there is plenty of evidence that New Brunswick is not too cold, too cloudy, or insufficiently windy to make a combination of renewable energy technologies a rapidly growing feature of our energy system and a significant factor in economic growth. The best case study for New Brunswick and for Canada is Germany.
Germany is less sunny on average than New Brunswick, yet during midday on May 24th and 25th of 2012 its solar capacity supplied 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour to the national grid. That’s equal to the output of 20 nuclear power stations. This was close to 50 % of the nation’s midday electricity needs. Of course, this is just a peak which is why the German system combines wind (8.6%), biomass (6%), and solar (6.1%) along with hydro to now have 26% of its electricity generated by renewable energy. Solar is the rising star of this system. Solar power installation and electricity production in Germany grew more than 50% in the first nine months of 2012.
The first key to this growth is the feed-in tariff that provides a powerful economic incentive for anyone with a building and power bill to install solar electric panels. All renewable electricity producers are paid a premium for the power they supply. Individuals, cooperatives and communities own an amazing 65% of the nation’s renewable energy capacity. This change is being driven by private investment because Germany’s energy policy has got the incentives right.
The second key to this success is that the vast majority of the German people understood that to make this feed-in tariff and renewable energy system work, the amount they pay for electricity service needed to increase. Because they want their country to make this transition to renewable energy, they accepted this increase in cost. Honest information, public education, political leadership, and both private and public investment have combined to make Germany a world leader in renewable energy. This has taken broad cooperation and a keen sense of the common good.
It’s true there are people in Germany who have opposed the increased costs of electricity and some special interests that disagree with the national energy policies, but they are marginal to the general support that has rallied behind this growing transition to renewable energy.
Germany now has over 1/3 of the world’s solar electric capacity and they are bounding ahead at an astounding rate. In 2000, 6% of their electricity came from renewables. They set a target of 30% by 2020, but they are now ahead of their projections and expect to make to 35 to 40% by that date. By 2050 they expect to be at 80 to 90%. Some folks might say only the Germans can pull this off, but the fact is other nations in Europe and around the world are following this example and making it work. Why not New Brunswick? Why not Canada? (For further study see the new book, Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation by Osha Gray Davidson.)
The final point to this story is that the switch to renewable energy is also a boost for economic development at the grass roots level. The move to renewable energy is a job creator. It creates jobs in the manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy systems. The recent announcement by Premier Alward that wood pellets will heat two new schools being built in Woodstock is perhaps a small step in this direction. New Brunswick may not yet be manufacturing the furnaces, but it is manufacturing the pellets, and the greater the demand for pellets the more jobs in the industry.
It’s a good sign that the government now has the German firm, Siemens, working on a smart grid for the province. If the government would begin installing solar electric on public buildings, it would be taking a step that would help create good jobs and lower the long-term costs of operating government infrastructure. And if it put a feed-in tariff system place for electricity generated with renewable energy, it would be taking another important step to boost the industry and create still more, good, long lasting jobs. When we see this kind leadership, we will know we are on the way to serious growth in renewable energy, and to a renewal of job creation in the economy.
Keith Helmuth is a member of the Woodstock Sustainable Energy Group (SEG). SEG has just published From Oil Dependency to Renewable Energy: An Energy Transition Guidebook for the Woodstock Region; Assessment, Planning, Resources. Complimentary copies may be obtained by contacting ekhelmuth@mindspring.com">ekhelmuth@mindspring.com
January 26, 2013
