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(15 %) Germany is pioneering an epochal transformation it calls the energiewende - an
energy revolution that scientists say all nations must one day complete if a climate
disaster is to be averted. Among large industrial nations, Germany is a leader, last year
about 27 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources such as wind and solar
power, three times what it got a decade ago and more than twice what the United States
gets today. The change accelerated after the 2011 meltdown at Japan's Fukushima
nuclear power plant, which led Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Germany would
shut all 17 of its own reactors by 2022. Nine have been switched off so far, and
renewables have more than picked up the slack. What makes Germany so important to the world, however, is the question of whether
it can lead the retreat from fossil fuels. By later this century, scientists say,
planet-warming carbon emissions must fall to virtually zero. Germany, the world's
fourth largest economy, has promised some of the most aggressive emission cuts - by
2020, a 40 percent cut from 1990 levels, and by 2050, at least 80 percent. The fate of those promises hangs in the balance right now. The German revolution
has come from the grass roots: Individual citizens and energy genossenschaften - local
citizens associations - have made half the investment in renewables. But conventional
utilities, which didn't see the revolution coming, are pressuring Merkel's government to
slow things down. The country still gets far more electricity from coal than from
renewables. And the energiewende has an even longer way to go in the transportation
and heating sectors, which together emit more carbon dioxide than power plants. The energiewende will take much longer and involve every single German - more than 1.5 million of them, nearly 2 percent of the population, are selling electricity to the
grid right now. "It's a project for a generation; it's going to take till 2040 or 2050 and it's
hard. It's making electricity more expensive for individual consumers. And still, if
you ask people in a poll, Do you want theenergiewende? then 90 percent say yes. If you ask why antinuclear sentiment has been so consequential in Germany, you end
up back at the war. It left Germany a divided country, the front along which two nuclear
superpowers faced off. Demonstrators in the 1970s and '80s were protesting not just
nuclear reactors but plans to deploy American nuclear missiles in West Germany. When
the German Green Party was founded in 1980, pacifism and opposition to nuclear power
were both central tenets. When the Soviet reactor at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, the left-leaning Social
Democrats, one of Germany's two major parties, was converted to the antinuclear cause.
Even though Chernobyl was hundreds of miles away, its radioactive cloud passed over
Germany, and parents were urged to keep their children inside. It's still not always safe to
eat mushrooms or wild boar from the Black Forest. Chernobyl was a water shed.
It will have to get off gasoline and diesel. The transportation sector produces about 17
percent of Germany's emissions. Like the utilities, its famous carmakers - Mercedes -
Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi - were late to the energiewende. But today they're
offering more than two dozen models of electric cars. The government's goal is to have a
million electric cars on the road by 2020; so far there are about 40,000. The basic problem
is that the cars are still too expensive for most Germans, and the government hasn't
offered serious incentives to buy them. Much the same is true of buildings, whose heating systems emit 30 percent of
Germany's greenhouse gases. The strategy has always been to modernize old buildings in
such a way that they use almost no energy and cover what they do use with renewables. A
lot is being done, but not enough. Just one percent of the stock is being renovated every
year. for all buildings to be nearly climate neutral by 2050, the rate would need to double
at least.
After Fukushima, for about half a year there was a real euphoria; but the feeling
hasn't lasted. Economic interests are clashing now. Some Germans say it might take
another catastrophe like Fukushima to catalyze a fresh burst of progress. But here's the
thing about the Germans: They knew the energiewende was never going to be a walk in
the forest, and yet they set out on it. While most countries have been free riders, who have
an incentive to do nothing and hope that others will act, Germany has behaved differently:
It has ridden out ahead. And in so doing, it has made the journey easier for the rest of us.