Summary:
As a result of the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster in Japan, Germany has taken 7 of its 17 nuclear reactors down.
"If we had the winds of Texas or the sun of California, the task here would be even easier," said Felix Matthes of Germany's renowned Institute for Applied Ecology. "Given the great potential in the U.S., it would be feasible there in the long run too, even though it would necessitate huge infrastructure investments."
In Germany, the producers of renewable energy — be it solar panels on a homeowner's rooftop or a farm of wind mills — are paid above-market prices to make sure their investment breaks even, financed by a 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour tax paid by all electricity customers.
For a typical German family of four who pay about euro1,000 ($1,420) a year to use about 4,500 kilowatt-hours, the tax amounts to euro157 ($223).
The tax produced euro8.2 billion ($11.7 billion) in Germany in 2010 and it is expected to top euro13.5 billion ($19.2 billion) this year. The program — which has been copied by other countries and several U.S. states such as California — is the backbone of the country's transition toward renewable energies.
This is the quintessential example of an industrialized country doing exactly what is necessary to progress into cleaner energy. Go Germany! Maybe America will get out of a war finally, and we'll be able to focus on ourselves, for once.
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