In Germany, support for the Energiewende is not a matter of party membership. It is a field where all parties are active and generally support the Energiewende. To understand this political consensus, one needs to look to rural Germany, explains Alexander Franke. Just as in many other countries, farmers in Germany tend to generally vote in a politically conservative manner: In the last federal election, 74% of farmers voted for Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU – news report in German), making them one of the Conservatives’ most loyal supporters. When it comes to renewable energy however, a large majority of farmers are staunch supporters of the Energiewende and the fast development of renewables – an outcome that may surprise people in countries where conservatives oppose renewables. When German policy makers passed the Renewable Energy Law in 2000, they came up with the idea of a differentiated feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable electricity production, meaning that renewable installations would receive different remunerations based on technoloy and size of the renewable installation. On the one … Continue reading How winning over rural constituents changed the political discussions on renewables in Germany