A Berlin citizens’ group wants to wrest control of the city’s electricity grid in order to promote renewable energy. They accuse current operator Vattenfall of failing to seek alternatives to fossil fuels. Louise Osborne met the activists.
All posts tagged: Coal
Coal power causes roughly 3,000 deaths per year in Germany
The campaign against coal power continues in Germany. Two new studies come to relatively similar estimates of the number of people who die every year from coal emissions in Germany alone – and one organization says some EU standards are more lax than those in China and the US. Craig Morris wonders whether the various numbers from different studies will convince skeptics.
Germany builds minus six coal plants after nuclear phaseout
In a recent paper about Germany’s energy transition, Craig Morris found one particular claim that he wanted to investigate: have the Germans built any coal plants to make up for lost nuclear power since 2011?
German reliance on coal from the US
A German NGO has joined the call for a German coal phaseout – and invited a US activist to Germany to raise awareness about where Germany’s hard coal is coming from. Craig Morris wonders whether the discussion is focusing on what’s important.
“The Era of Coal is Over” – In Los Angeles!
The City of Los Angeles has announced that it plans to replace coal power with renewables, efficiency and natural gas starting immediately. Craig Morris wonders how doomed coal is in the rest of the US – and in Germany.
Calling for a Coal Phaseout: The Health Costs
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.
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.
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.