Pollution, global warming and all other environmental concerns are filling the news and sentiments of people around the world, but it’s an overflowing concern in Germany.
Germany is leading the way towards a cleaner and safer earth as EON, the country’s largest power supplier, is quitting conventional energy to focus entirely on renewable energy.
Germany move towards wind, solar and other renewable energy
This advocacy is the climax of Germany’s decision to shift from traditional fossil fuels to wind, solar and other earth friendly renewable sources of energy.
While Germany’s eastern countryside is already full of wind turbines, they are still planning to expand to off-shore plants to take advantage of the steadier sea breeze.
The advocacy that started 14 years ago was sealed with the decision of the German government to start closing their nuclear reactors in 2011 right after the Fukushima tragedy.
The move is spearheaded by none than the German head of state Chancellor Angela Merkel who started with the closure of Germany’s eight oldest nuclear reactors and has set-up a plan to close everything nuclear by 2022.
At the moment, 25% Germany power is already coming from renewable energy as compared to 6% in the U.S.A. and 4% in France declaring Germany as the world leader in the subject of clean energy.
By 2035, Germany intends to increase their 25% to 45% usage of clean energy. And by 2050, the German government plans to put it up to 80%
Germany public contribution
This move towards safe energy, however, did not come without a price. With the emergence of renewable power as a better alternative, profitability of coal and gas plants have gone down. The ordinary German household had to make sacrifices too as the taxes on electricity, which subsidizes the renewable energy development program, has brought the German household’s power prices up to the second highest in Europe.
The surcharge on household electricity contributed a total of $ 132 billion to the clean energy program. It is projected that the total surcharge will peak this year but will go down considerably afterwards as the German government will start to relax the public’s contribution to the national clean energy program.
But, the Germans don’t seem to mind their sizeable sacrifices as 71% of the population applaud the closure of the nuclear plants. And 67% even feel that the shift to renewable energy is not moving as fast as they would want. It seems that the Germans are in a rush to clean up mother earth.
Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel taking it one step further
As a response to public clamor, Chancellor Angela Merkel takes the earth friendly program to another industry; automobiles. The Chancellor is pushing for the production and usage of electric cars to reduce the country’s smoke emissions. The goal is to have 1 million electric cars running by 2020.
