This is the third part of three-part series exploring the German Energy Transition or Energiewende, by David Ravensbergen. In Part 1, The Land of Wind and Solar, Ravensbergen describes how decentralized, small-scale changes can amount to a broad energy revolution. In Part 2, Is the German Energy Transition Everything It's Cracked Up to Be?, he takes a closer look at the promise and the reality of the German response to climate change along with energy researcher Tadzio Müller. In this third and final installment, Ravensbergen asks what the German experience can teach North Americans looking to make the transition away from fossil fuels.

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In Canada, hopes of implementing a national strategy on climate even remotely equivalent to the German Energiewende are continually sabotaged by the federal government’s unwavering commitment to propping up the fossil fuel sector. For Canadian climate activists struggling against the expansion of tar sands pipelines and Harper’s Paleolithic energy policies, one big question looms: how do the Germans do it?

According to Tadzio Müller, the explanation is simple. “What the German government has done was the result of 35 years of social struggle by movements.” While it may be tempting to chalk up the change to a healthier public discourse or more reasonable elected officials, Müller insists it wouldn’t have happened without the tireless work of activists. “The laws that were passed were fought for by movements. The government has done only what it has been forced to do.”

Nowhere is this lesson more visible than in Chancellor Merkel’s 2011 decision to completely shut down German nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima. Müller notes that Merkel’s government at the time was “a conservative-neoliberal coalition that had being in favour of nuclear power as one of its key brand elements.”

For some environmentalists who see nuclear power as a necessary component of a post-fossil fuel energy mix, the German public’s resolute anti-nuclear stance is difficult to grasp. But regardless of where you stand on nuclear power, the remarkable fact that a center-right government legislated the end of its own domestic nuclear industry while committing to a massive expansion of renewable energy begs explanation.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

A large part of the answer lies in the breadth of the social coalitions that mobilized around environmental issues like industrial pollution and acid rain in the mid-70s. As Joachim Jachnow writes in his excellent summary of the changing fortunes of the German Green Party, environmental activism gained critical mass around the issue of nuclear power: “Ecologists, feminists, students and counter-cultural networks joined with farmers and housewives in mass protests that brought nuclear-plant construction sites to a halt in Wyhl (Baden-Württemberg), Grohnde (Lower Saxony) and Brokdorf (Schleswig-Holstein).”

Out of these successful mass actions against the expansion of nuclear power, an unlikely coalition between the radical and conservative wings of the environmental movement began to take shape. As Müller explains, it was this loose alliance that slowly began to change German public opinion on energy and the environment. When renewable energy went mainstream with the introduction of feed-in tariffs the alliance grew bigger still, bringing those motivated by profit as well as conviction into the fold. By the time Fukushima happened, the anti-nuclear movement had become so powerful that Merkel was left with no choice but to expedite the nuclear industry’s downfall.

So what lessons can be drawn for people outside of Germany working towards building a movement capable of stopping climate change? The important thing to keep in mind is that the environmental movement in Germany had 35 years to achieve the limited progress of the Energiewende. We haven’t got nearly that much time. “How do you mobilize the green constituency to take action beyond what they’ve been doing so far?” asks Müller.

Owing to the urgency reinforced by the latest IPCC report, Müller argues that the time has come to step up the both the frequency and efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience. “We need a drastic expansion of disobedient actions beyond what 350 has been doing so far. From Germany it looks a bit funny when people do these actions where they cross a line and then count the number of arrests—I’ve never seen an action in Germany count its success according to the number of arrests.”

While Müller acknowledges the major differences between North American and German movement culture, he says the strength of civil disobedience undertaken by the German environmental movement has been its focus on ambitious goals rather than symbolic gestures. In addition to mass protests and blockades that halted the construction of new nuclear reactors, tens of thousands of activists have taken part in highly coordinated lockdowns to prevent train shipments of nuclear waste from France from arriving at their destination in the German nuclear waste storage facility in Gorleben.

Often carried out in freezing conditions and with the help of local farmers using their tractors to build roadblocks for logistical support, these actions worked to keep the pressure on politicians who were looking for ways to renege on their commitments. “The radicals in the anti-nuclear movement were absolutely crucial in keeping the flame alive through the years when the issue didn’t have a lot of play in the media.”

Müller argues that radical activists have the necessary experience, skill and imagination to coordinate the kinds of ambitious direct action that could increase the pressure on climate change. Just as importantly, however, those radicals need to be integrated into a broad movement capable of winning support from diverse sections of society.

“The interesting challenge is how do you get all those different types of actors to work together: anti-capitalists, climate justice radicals, big greens and farmer’s groups,” says Müller. “That requires constant and active coordination and getting out of your comfort zone.” Drawing on the experience of the German anti-nuclear movement, Müller argues that building a popular front against climate change is the task ahead.

For a popular front strategy to work, groups with strong disagreements about both the causes of and solutions to climate change need to temporarily suspend their differences in pursuit of the common goal of drastically cutting emissions. Working together doesn't necessarily mean adopting the same strategies, but it does mean refraining from actively undermining other sections of the movement. Selecting a viable focus for action is also key. For Müller, struggles against pipelines like Northern Gateway and Keystone XL represent key points where a broad-based environmental movement can have the strongest impact. 

“We are too weak at this point to achieve the outcomes and effects we want to achieve, so we need to find points of leverage where we can amplify our power. We need to look at systems and at weak points,” says Müller.

“We know we can pressure Obama because we know that environmentalists are part of the Democratic coalition, and since the Keystone XL is an international decision we know that this goes over Obama’s desk. It’s these details that make choosing the Keystone XL as a focus a sound strategic decision.” 

Ultimately, the differences between different sections of the environmental movement will need to be worked through. But with the latest IPCC report confirming that the majority of remaining fossil fuel deposits need to stay in the ground if we are to have any chance of avoiding the wholesale destruction of runaway climate change, broad alliances are more important than ever. 

In the months and years ahead, Canadian environmentalists would be well advised to learn a bit of German: Fossil fuels? Nein danke. 

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This is Part 2 of David Ravensbergen's series on the Germany Energy Transition. Read Part 1, In the Land of Wind and Solar and Part 3, Building a Popular Front Against Climate Change.

In the bleak realm of climate politics, Germany's progress on renewable electricity has been hailed as proof that another world may still be possible. In countries like Canada, addressing the energy crisis at the heart of climate change is something to be talked about now but accomplished later, once the economy has been adequately strengthened.

But economic growth is never sufficient: the goalposts are always moving, and there will always be more sacrifices to be made to ensure that the GDP continues to rise. As long as there’s bitumen in the ground, Canadians will be told that investment in clean energy will have to wait.

Things seem to work a bit differently in Germany, at least when it comes to electricity. Of course, Germany is just as committed as Canada to the sacred mission of securing economic growth. But this heavily industrialized exporter of high-quality manufactured goods has managed to maintain the world’s fourth-largest economy while undergoing a major transformation away from nuclear and fossil fuels. In this second installment in DeSmog Canada’s series on the German energy transition, we’ll take a closer look at the promise and the reality of the German response to climate change along with energy researcher Tadzio Müller.

Unlike Canada, Germany doesn’t suffer from the resource curse of large fossil fuel deposits. But when it comes to implementing renewable energy like solar, Germany doesn’t have any particular advantages either. The grey northern European Bundesrepublik is hardly known for its balmy blue skies, but that hasn’t stopped it from installing one-third of total global photovoltaic capacity.

Rather than wait for large corporations to deem solar energy profitable enough to be worthy of investment, Germany took a different route: subsidizing solar panels on the roofs of homes and small businesses, alongside communally-owned renewable energy infrastructure like solar and wind parks. [view:in_this_series=block_1]

Müller explains that this transfer of power was accomplished in part thanks to the Renewable Energy Act (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz, EEG) of 2000, which mandated a system of feed-in tariffs for renewable electricity. The law essentially guaranteed that producers of electricity from renewable sources could sell their power to the grid at a fixed price for 20 years. In effect, the German government used feed-in tariffs to make clean energy infrastructure profitable for a segment of the population. By wooing these small-scale green capitalists, Germany incentivized the scaling up of renewable energy while securing ongoing electoral support for the continued implementation of the energy transition.

As a result, renewable energy has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of German economic life. “Renewable energy isn’t seen as something crazy in Germany. It’s an established branch of industry,” says Müller.

While the social acceptance of renewable energy means that there is enough political will to continue the transition away from nuclear and fossil fuels, the economic mainstreaming of the Energiewende comes along with familiar problems. For those not enjoying the government-guaranteed profits from feed-in tariffs, the move to renewables has meant a rapid jump in electricity costs for German households, hitting low-wage earners, retirees and people on welfare particularly hard. 

But what impact has the energy transition had on Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions? By the end of 2012, Germany had achieved a 25.5% reduction in GHG emissions relative to 1990 levels, actually surpassing its Kyoto Protocol-mandated target of a 21% reduction.

To Canadians still stinging from the Conservatives' embarrassing move to formally withdraw Canada from Kyoto, those numbers are cause for envy. But as Müller cautions, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

“Most of Germany’s fairly impressive post-1990 emissions reductions have to do with the deindustrialization of East Germany,” says Müller. The formerly separate Federal Republic of Germany (West) and the German Democratic Republic (East) were officially reunited in 1990. During the initial process of reunification, East German industry was still operational, producing both manufactured goods and significant levels of greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, the baseline German emissions levels from 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto Protocol, combine the total emissions of both West and East Germany.

As the reunification process unfolded, East German factories were privatized and eventually closed down, causing emissions levels across the newly reunified Germany to drop significantly. As a result, comparisons between emissions levels from 1990 and the present give the impression of a major reduction.

Two things are missing from this measurement of emissions. First, the dismantling of East German industry was not a government climate strategy. It was part of a process of shock therapy, as the formerly socialist economy was rapidly adjusted to the imperatives of capitalist production. For the residents of the former East, the result has been persistent long-term unemployment and lower income levels. Twenty-four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, socio-economic divisions between the formerly separate nations remain stark.

The second point to consider is that deindustrialization only looks like a reduction in emissions if you measure from the point of view of production. As multinational corporations have shifted their factories away from the West to China and other parts of the developing world, emissions levels in wealthy nations like Germany have appeared to drop. But does it make sense to measure emissions at the point of production, when so many of the goods produced in places like China are exported to the West and consumed there? In fact, roughly one quarter of China’s much-maligned CO2 emissions can be attributed to the production of goods for export to Europe and North America.

According to Müller, the majority of emissions reductions in all western countries can be attributed to deindustrialization. But when measured from the point of view of consumption using the concept of embedded emissions, those reductions shrink dramatically. Shutting down factories and offshoring production isn’t a viable response to climate change.

Seen from this perspective, the German example looks somewhat less promising. On the one hand, the German energy transition shows that an advanced industrialized nation can make significant strides in moving away from fossil fuels. On the other, accounting for emissions at the international level shows that what appears to be progress in one country is cancelled out by the fact that climate change remains a resolutely global problem.

As always, the question remains: what is to be done? In the final segment of this series, Tadzio Müller offers some insight on how to resolve the contradictory lessons of the Energiewende, and what the Canadian environmental movement can learn from the German experience.  

Image Credit: Flickr via Cea

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.