While US plans oil-dependent future, Germans make big sustainable move

[SpiralHawk]

Read it and weep. While BushCo has led the US Congress into a dead-end Energy Bill this fall, and ensured our Absolute Dependency on oil, Germany has taken some bold strides forward toward renewable energy.

Hey, this should have been done everywhere 20 years ago -- but at least some nations are waking up.


WCRE Update November, 27, 2003

The German Parliament continues the lead on: progressive promotion of photovoltaic and pushs the market introduction of biofuels by 100% tax exemption.

(snip)

The German Parliament has adopted today an amendment to the Renewable Energy Act to bring forward a regulation for photovoltaic. This regulation has not just been adopted by the governing parties the Greens and the Social Democrats, but has also been supported by the conservative opposition parties CDU/CSU, which underlines the broad consensus on the future of photovoltaic in Germany.

The regulation will come into force already in January 2004 and will guarantee every operator of a photovoltaic installations to receive a fixed basic reimbursement of 45.7 Euro Cent for each kilowatt hour fed into the public grid. An additional 11.7 Cent will be guaranteed for photovoltaic installations on roofs of up to 30 kW, respectively 9.3 Cent for installations of over 30 kW. For facades their will be a further payment of 5 cent. Each of this payments will last for 20 years. In addition, the former limitation to promote up to a total of 1000 MW has been cancelled in the law, too.

It is expected that this clear signal in favour of Renewable Energy will encourage investors to install more than 200 MW of photovoltaic power in the year 2004.


WCRE
c/o EUROSOLAR e.V.
www.wcre.org, www.eurosolar.org

[TexasMexican]

1. thats good and all

but it alone wouldnt work in America, we just want too much power.

Unlike Europe we would need nuclear power in addition to alternative means for all the power our population demands.

[leftofthedial]

2. really?

with a move to purely sustainable sources, how much power are you talking about?

[SpiralHawk]

4. If you never take even one step toward sustainability,

it is 100% guaranteed that you will never get there.

"You can never change things by resisting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete." -Buckminster Fuller

[Kanary]

8. Gee, that sounds like a candidate I know....

"You can never change things by resisting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes
the old model obsolete." -Buckminster Fuller

Great quote!

Kanary

[leftofthedial]

9. I agree with you

I find it unlikely that we would require nuclear power if we converted to sustainable energy.

Tidal, wind, geothermal, hydrogen and solar (passive and active) provide far more energy at a given instant than humanity has consumed in its entire existence.

[DUreader]

7. The American Whine, but weee caaaannnt dooooooo iiiitttttt

waaaaaaa

[leftofthedial]

3. I used to live in Germany.

Maybe it's time to go back.

[camero]

5. Didn't the Germans

also vote to eliminate thier use of nuclear power sometime ago? I remember seeing something like that on CBC.

The Europeans are way ahead of us on alot of things. I guess that's what happens when you lose millions of people to greed. You tend to think about everyone's survival.

[bicentennial_baby]

6. It's crunch time

Until the American consumer sees the light and realizes that we all need to bite the bullet and cast off the yoke of petroleum dependence, our government will remain completely beholden to corporate interests. For the time being, people will continue to chug chug along to the mall in their SUVs grabbing up every plastic product they can get, sailing along on a sea of petroleum that will not last forever...

Go Germany!

[Deja Q]

11. They also need to fight back

Many people just say "That's how the world works, get used to it". x( Possibly because they don't know how to fight back?

[9215]

10. How did the Germans get rid of the

fascist bastards that sabotage and otherwise undermine attempts at developing alternatives.....Oh....Oops, thats what WWII was all about.

The sickos reinvented themselves in the US.