Opponents of wind turbines charts that they kill tens of thousands of birds each year. How many birds died from coal plant emissions? The question is rarely asked, but Craig Morris has been following the subject for more than a decade and finds the human death toll from coal power is much bigger than the number of birds killed by wind turbines.
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Learning From The German Transition To Renewable Energy
Germany is moving forward to replace fossil fuels with renewables faster than most countries. But there is always pushback, most recently in the form of much media discourse about rising electricity prices spearheaded by the Federal Minister of Environment Peter Altmaier. Like many politicians, he is already preparing for national elections in September, so let’s take an honest look at this discourse surrounding electricity prices and how they affect Germany’s move toward renewables. An article by Julius Fischer via Climate Progress.
Seasonal Power Storage – The Challenge for Solar
A recent article at Slate.com is a refreshing exception to the frequent misreports. Nonetheless, Craig Morris has a few nits to pick and says that the bad news for Germany is the good news for the United States.
“Endless Energy” from Campaign to Mainstream
Envisioned to help counterbalance the public relations might of the Big Four, the Renewable Energies Agency has become a valuable think tank in its own right, writes Paul Hockenos, US freelance journalist living in Berlin.
Looking back at the Energiewende 1980 – Time for a Coal Phaseout
In this final installment looking back on the first book on the Energiewende of 1980, Craig Morris looks at the many things the book gets right and wonders whether it might provide good reasons to finally call for a coal phaseout in Germany.
Germany’s Energiewende: What Have We Learned So Far?
Within the next decade, Germany will have shifted from a coal- and nuclear-powered economy to a thriving, decentralized system with power from renewable sources. This transformation, writes John Mathews, will not only make a real reduction in global carbon emissions. It is leading to a democratization of economic power that is unprecedented in the industrial world.
Looking back at the Energiewende 1980 – Nuclear Cannot be Efficient
In the late 1970s, the first major protests against nuclear power had already taken place in Whyl and Brokdorf. Perhaps no other publication better reveals what the arguments against nuclear were back then than the original book Energiewende. Craig Morris was mainly surprised at the early focus on overall efficiency.
Looking back at the Energiewende 1980 – 55 Percent Coal?
The term “Energiewende” did not come about in 2011, but rather in the late 1970s, and it was canonized in an eponymous book from 1980. But a close read reveals that “Energiewende: growth and prosperity without petroleum and uranium” is not about phasing out coal at all – quite the contrary, as Craig Morris reports in this three-part series.
From Coal to Renewables – The Jobs Perspective
Over at the Washington Post, environmental blogger Brad Plumer rightly points out the social responsibility we have in the switch from old technologies (coal power) to new ones (renewables). Germany has quite a bit of experience switching coal miners to green jobs, and Craig Morris knows the German word for it: Strukturwandel, or structural change.
2012 German Nuclear and Gas-Fired Generation Falls Further While Renewables Grow
A proper analysis of the composition of German electricity and the effects of renewables is often difficult to conduct as contradictory interpretations clash. Guest Author Paul Gipe from Wind-Works.org takes a step back and looks at the most recent data from a long-term perspective to shed some light on the developments caused by the energiewende.