Tag: Germany

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Marketing, Innovation, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

In the 1990s, the US had a 40 percent share of the world-wide solar market. According to widely respected sustainability consultant Gil Friend of Natural Logic (@gfriend), the current US share of the global solar market is a pathetic 5 percent, while China now has more than half the global market: 54 percent. And that’s 10 times as much solar as the US is producing.

Friend’s article doesn’t discuss such solar leaders as Germany, Brazil, and Israel, but I’d expect all of those are currently making more solar than the US is.

It’s really hard to take US government claims that they care about creating jobs and greening the economy very seriously when they let a plum like this slip away. Solarizing the US housing and commercial stock would create tens of thousands of jobs, lower carbon footprint immensely, and also reduce dependence on imported oil (while lowering oil bills too, of course) A trifecta win, and we let it get away! Earth to Congress: Get with the program, for goodness sakes! Erth to Obama: Press your agenda on this!

 

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

This is really exciting: Germany, already a leader in the safe energy space—in fact, my solar inverter, installed back in 2004, was built in Germany—has rejected nuclear power. Germany has pledged to permanently close the seven plants taken off-line following Fukushima, and shut all of its 17 n-plants by 2022.

Remember: Germany is a cloudy northern European country. If solar can work there, it can work just about anywhere—and Germany’s clean energy industry already employs an impressive 370,000 people.

Germany was also the birthplace of the modern safe-energy/anti-nuclear movement, back around 1975, and had a huge influence on the creation of Clamshell Alliance and the US safe energy movement in the next few years after that. And citizen action clearly played a role. As the AP story noted:

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s cabinet is recommending to Parliament that the country phase out all its reactors by 2034. And Vermont, which is both defending itself against a lawsuit by Vermont Yankee nuclear plant owner Energy attacking its right to regulate the plant and suing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission over an improper license extension, submitted legal documents pointing out that Entergy knew perfectly well in 2001 when it bought Vermont Yankee that the plant was scheduled to close in 2012, waited to the last minute to challenge it, and therefore has no right to a preliminary injunction forbidding the state from closing the plant at the end of the license period.

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