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At the turn of the century, David Devereaux could judge the pace of his night shift by how much smoke was billowing in the sky above Lake Ontario. 

Back then, Devereaux was a control room officer for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator — a Crown agency that manages the province’s energy needs. Every evening, Devereaux would make the drive from Toronto to Mississauga, passing what was then North America’s oldest and most expensive coal plant. Known as the Lakeview Generating Station, it had four monstrous columns that blew black clouds across Lake Ontario. Every evening, Devereaux would check how many of those smoke stacks were puffing. If it was all of them, he knew he was in for a busy night. 

That was the case every summer. Even back then, hot days demanded air conditioning which, in turn, demanded a lot of energy. That meant the Mississauga plant, along with four others across the province — three in the south (Lakeview, Nanticoke on Lake Erie and another near Sarnia) and two in the north (one in Thunder Bay and another just west of it in Atikokan) — ran to their fullest. In southern Ontario, the smoke from these plants darkened the skies in an ominous, endless grey hue of smog — a toxic pollutant made up of mercury and sulphur dioxide, which made breathing difficult, even deadly.

The smoke from these coal plants represented a third of the province’s energy supply, but it was also a major environmental concern and growing public health emergency. By 2001 there was a chorus of calls urging Ontario to remove the source of the smoke. 

“But there was no easy off button,” Devereaux, now the system operator’s director of resource planning, told me. 

As an energy reporter, I hear that a lot. Some iteration of “You can’t flip a switch” is stated matter-of-factly by politicians, industry officials and experts in interviews and broader conversations. It’s both a reasoned argument and a warning signal: the energy industry is cautious about change, perhaps because changing where or how we get our electricity could mean disrupting the ability to keep our lights on. 

But 2024 marks 10 years since Ontario did the seemingly impossible and flipped the coal switch off — the first jurisdiction in North America to do so. It was a defining moment in provincial history, hailed as the single largest greenhouse gas reduction initiative across the continent to date. It removed 17 per cent of Ontario’s emissions — the equivalent of taking seven million cars off the road.

Devereaux is right: it wasn’t easy. It took 17 years, three provincial governments and a massive community and industry effort. But it was a true energy transition — worth considering today as we weigh the need to stop burning fossil fuels to limit the release of greenhouse gases that warm the planet, resulting in extreme and costly weather events. 

If national and international climate goals are to be met, Ontario’s next energy transition is away from natural gas, a methane-heavy, toxic fossil fuel that makes up 27 per cent of the province’s energy capacity. The challenges today are more complex but there are similar undertones to the issues Ontario was grappling with mere decades ago. 

“I’ve always said that in Ontario, we’re lucky. We’ve been commissioned by history, to lead not to follow or to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, but to leap.”

Dalton McGuinty, former premier of Ontario

Back then, the use of coal increased as the province shut down portions of its nuclear facilities for repairs. Today, Ontario is considering increasing natural gas — along with every other energy source it is able to — as a major portion of its nuclear fleet is again shut down for refurbishment or permanently. 

Back then, there were concerns phasing out coal would lead to periodic power outages as energy demand exceeded supply. Today, natural gas is being pitched as an easy solution to mitigate possible power outages that may result from energy demand rapidly outpacing supply as we look to electrify everything from industry to cars. 

Back then, doctors were ringing the alarm bells to mitigate a public health crisis that was, at its core, an environmental crisis. Today, doctors are once again ringing the alarm bells about the climate emergency, and how the public health effects of more frequent heat waves and wildfires will only get worse if we don’t transition seriously and soon. “I think we’re going to have an even cleaner, greener grid,” Stephen Lecce, current Conservative energy minister, told The Narwhal last month. “I think we just have to be pragmatic and realistic.” 

In 2014, Ontario proved it was possible to do that. Ten years is a long time but it’s also not that long ago. If we successfully phased out a fossil fuel once, can we do it again? 

Coal burning caused air pollution you could taste and feel

As crises go, this one was visceral. It had a clear cause and effect that could be experienced by human senses. The sky looked wrong; the air tasted toxic; the atmosphere smelled heavy. As complicated as energy issues usually are, getting off coal felt obvious and urgent.

Year by year, the impact of the fumes from coal stacks was more dire, with the number of smog days increasing from just a handful in the late 1990s to 53 in 2005. As a result, New York was chiding Ontario for the spread of smog south of the border. 

In 1998, the Ontario Medical Association did something uncharacteristic and weighed in on an environmental issue. The province’s doctors became champions of clean air, characterizing smog as a “serious health risk to the people of Ontario.” In a report two years later, the association said smog was costing the provincial health care system $1 billion per year. Ontario’s doctors calculated 1,900 premature deaths were caused by air pollution each year, with countless others suffering from respiratory illnesses. In 2000, the report found pollution would lead to “9,800 hospital admissions, 13,000 emergency room visits and 47 million sick days for employees.”

One of those affected was Elizabeth Witmer’s son, a preschooler at the time. The former Conservative health and environment minister was the first MP to propose a regulation for phasing out coal at Queen’s Park. She remembers taking her son to the hospital for frequent asthma attacks — an affliction he still deals with today. “I didn’t see the link to smog immediately,” she told me. “But on every trip, there were more and more people in the emergency room.” 

“My generation had accepted smog days as a reality,” Brad Duguid, the former Liberal energy minister who saw Ontario through the final stage of the phase-out, said in an interview. “I think many believed it was just going to be a permanent part of our life. But that didn’t have to be the case. Somebody just needed to say it.” 

Ontario’s doctors finally did. When they spoke out publicly and privately, the provincial government was “completely pissed,” according to John Wellner, who was then director of health policy for the Ontario Medical Association. It was the first time he heard the phrase “you’re out of your lane.” At least one politician, he recalled, allegedly yelled at representatives of the medical association in a meeting with a how-dare-you tone. 

“It was beyond my imagination to grasp that we could be powerful enough to fix [the smog problem],” Wellner said. “It felt too big a task but we decided to try.” 

The idea of connecting the smog health crisis to energy policy was, apparently, first suggested by Bruce Lourie. Now the president of the Ivey Foundation, at the time Lourie was a consultant to the non-profit Laidlaw Foundation, thinking about smog and its impact on children’s health — and how to help. 

“People don’t listen to environmentalists,” Lourie told The Narwhal. “But everyone listens to doctors.”

“Nobody had come up with the notion that you could go after the source of the problem anywhere in the world. But once we realized air quality was a health issue, we knew what had to be done.” 

“And it was clearly achievable.” 

Despite Lourie’s certainty, almost everyone else I spoke to about this story said that at the time they thought it was “impossible.” 

“It was a David-and-Goliath battle,” Jack Gibbons told me. He co-founded the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, which started as a coalition of seven separate organizations in the late 1990s and grew to 90 organizations working together to manifest a coal-free future. He helped shape the idea of a coal phase-out with Lourie, and handed out pamphlets at Toronto subway stations to raise public knowledge of the health risks of smog. 

The community movement went up against an energy industry that wasn’t enthusiastic about the shift. But they had something that is increasingly rare today: a strong political willingness — across all parties — to achieve the same impossible goal. 

That consensus didn’t happen automatically. First, Witmer had to convince a divided Conservative cabinet. 

When Ontario’s coal smokestacks came tumbling down

People often credit former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty for the phase out: in 2003, his government was the first to win an election with a promise to end coal, as well as the first to implement a long-term energy plan and energy efficiency measures.

But his government was carrying a baton first picked up by two women. In March 2000, former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion stood in front of the four smokestacks of the Lakeview coal plant with Gibbons and called for it to be converted into a natural gas facility that would release fewer and less toxic pollutants.

“Clean air is very important to economic development, as well as the quality of life of our citizens,” she told reporters before putting the responsibility to provide it squarely at the feet of the provincial government. “This is an opportunity for the Ontario government to show leadership.”  

The call was heeded by Witmer, a cabinet minister in the former Conservative government led by Premier Ernie Eves. As health minister, Witmer paid close attention to the Ontario Medical Association’s report on smog. In 2001, when she became environment minister, Witmer instructed her team to prepare a plan to eliminate coal-fired power plants. The result was a regulation that pledged to phase out coal by 2015, starting with shutting down Lakeview in 2005. 

“It was a very realistic plan,” Witmer told me. “Really, it was spot on. And that’s how it all started.” 

Not everyone in the cabinet agreed with Witmer’s proposed regulation. There were concerns about the economic impacts of shuttering a major source of energy, from job loss to disrupting business, especially in northwestern Ontario where two coal plants were a lifeline for multiple communities. It took a while to persuade those opposed, but the regulation passed. And in the 2003 election, all three parties made a pledge to carry it through — a relief to Witmer, since her party lost and McGuinty came to power.

“We had to do this because we were all inhaling it,” McGuinty said in an interview with The Narwhal. “Every time I went into an elementary school and asked ‘who’s got a puffer inhaler?’ too many kids put up their hands.” McGuinty, too, was struck by the experiences his three sons would have in nature: “It stressed me out that we’d take our regular canoe trips through a provincial park under the darkness of a smog day.” 

“I didn’t know exactly how we were going to get it done, but the longer I thought about it the more it occurred to me that coal was a 19th-century thing, it’s dirty and it’s dangerous,” he said. “I just thought, let’s be bold and ambitious.” 

Getting it done, however, meant clashing with what McGuinty described as “the electricity establishment, which was almost a government unto itself.” That included the Independent Electricity System Operator, which managed energy supply and demand, Ontario Power Generation, the Crown corporation that owned all five coal plants, and what is now known as Hydro One, which distributed electricity. 

This establishment “was old, it was powerful and, by and large, had done a good job of keeping the lights on for over a century,” McGuinty said. “They were very suspicious and leery of any efforts to intervene in a way that no government has ever done in Canadian history.” 

At the time, coal was the cheapest and most reliable source of electricity in the province. The industry argued phasing it out would mean more expensive power for everyone, which could turn businesses away. That tradeoff is familiar today: a short-term disruption for long-term gains. But in Ontario, the energy industry is largely owned by the province and run by government decree. Even if there are qualms, what the government says has to be done.

“I’ve always said that in Ontario, we’re lucky,” McGuinty said. “We’ve been commissioned by history, to lead not to follow or to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, but to leap.”

When the government tried to do so, “the industry said, ‘McGuinty, you’re crazy, you can’t do this’,” the former premier said. “We certainly felt resentment, a sense that we were interlopers who were interfering in matters we knew very little about. But we intervened, nonetheless.” 

“Policy clarity is always helpful,” Devereaux said when I asked about the industry’s response to the coal phase-out. Execution, he said, is more complicated. Ontario Power Generation took steps to work with unions for an orderly shutdown that trained nearly 1,000 coal workers for jobs at new natural gas or nuclear facilities and helped municipalities grapple with a changed economic and energy landscape. 

In the course of trying to understand how to phase out coal, the energy industry’s concerns “may come across as opposition,” Devereaux told me. “I don’t think it’s intended that way. It’s more like, ‘how do we do this?’ ” 

It took a lot longer than everyone wanted to get to the finish line. But in 2005, Lakeview Generating Plant was the first to shut down and literally fall. The four smokestacks that dominated the Mississauga skyline were toppled to the ground one after another. In April 2014, the Nanticoke Generating Station on Lake Erie — once the world’s largest coal-fired power plant and the biggest polluter in the province and across Canada — burned its final supply of coal. It was demolished four years later as an audience of employees cheered, and is now being considered as the site of a new power plant, possibly nuclear.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say there are thousands of more Ontarians living healthier lives because of the coal phase-out,” Duguid said. “Bold things, important things are often very challenging to do. When you’re doing something nobody has done before you’re going to run into things you don’t expect. That doesn’t mean you don’t do them. And that you don’t try them again.” 

The impact was immediate. The first year without coal-powered plants — 2015 — was the first year since 1970 without any smog warnings in southern Ontario. The sky was blue. Breathing was easier. 

Natural gas, once seen as a solution, now known to be significant cause of global warming

A decade on, Ontario’s coal phase-out feels mythical, magical and even enviable. But everyone involved is quick to tell me that it wasn’t an easy endeavour, just the first time it had ever been tried and successfully accomplished — and its lessons aren’t easily transferable, nor its solutions perfect. 

“If it looks like an easy thing to do, that’s, I think, a testament to how [the energy industry and the province] was able to deliver that,” Kim Lauritsen, senior vice-president of enterprise strategy and energy markets at Ontario Power Generation, told me. “Calling it easy somewhat diminishes what a heavy lift it actually was.” 

“Ultimately, not all transitions are the same,” she added. “And there is no one silver bullet solution.” 

Each one involved a lot of planning, a lot of communication and a lot of experimentation. 

The irony is that to move away from coal, Ontario increased nuclear power, but also opened the door to more natural gas — a recommendation that came from doctors, local politicians and energy officials. The Independent Electricity System Operator reports that in the time it took to phase out coal, the province nearly tripled its ability to generate power from natural gas, which produces about half the carbon dioxide per unit of energy that burning coal emits. One of the coal plants was converted to a gas facility, and brand-new gas plants were built across southwestern Ontario. 

“That was the only real alternative we could turn to,” McGuinty said, because a renewable industry didn’t exist yet. By the time the last coal plant was shuttered, wind, solar and biomass accounted for seven per cent of Ontario’s electricity production.

And while nuclear saw the greatest increase in coal’s wake, natural gas was the reason Ontario could phase out coal without disruption, Devereaux said. It “was like-for-like and unlimited fuel, but with lower emissions,” he said. “You could turn it on when you wanted to, turn it off when you wanted to.” 

But over the past decade, we’ve learned much more about the devastating climate impact of the methane-heavy gas. Methane is emitted as a byproduct of natural gas production, and can also leak from equipment both during extraction and transportation through pipelines. When released in the atmosphere, this unburnt methane has been found to be 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide; it is responsible for about 30 per cent of the rise in global temperature.

In spite of this, today, the Doug Ford government is looking at increasing Ontario’s reliance on gas generators, suggesting the path away from this fossil fuel isn’t clear or definite. While Environment Canada reported this summer’s heat waves broke records across Canada, Ontario communities don’t experience the immediate impacts of emissions from natural gas as they did the smog produced by burning coal. The natural gas industry has also become incredibly powerful, thanks to its ability to provide affordable, reliable electricity as the province’s hunger for it grows.

The chorus arguing against gas is slowly growing louder, one city at a time. Gibbons, who once stood beside the Mississauga mayor calling for a move in the fossil fuel’s favour, now crusades against its continued use. Gibbons said the same argument used against coal 10 years ago is applicable to natural gas today: “Phasing out gas is one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to reduce our greenhouse gases now.” He adds that any increase in natural gas to manage short-term energy supply crunches will mean losing 50 per cent of the pollution-reduction benefits Ontario achieved by phasing out coal. 

The Independent Electricity System Operator now projects the province can move away from natural gas by 2030 — in six years — if the will is there.

The Ford government does not currently have a policy to phase out natural gas. In fact, it has taken a technology-agnostic approach to boosting energy supply that has made climate and sustainability advocates question the government’s interest in moving away from fossil fuels. 

That’s not to say Ontario can’t achieve an environmental and energy success like the coal phase-out again. The politicians and advocates that delivered it have clear advice for those grappling with energy transitions today. Be practical. Do it carefully. Make realistic, honest promises. Make measured plans. Trust the expertise. Don’t let people’s power go out. Consider the costs of energy but also the costs of the climate emergency. Work collaboratively. Take the long view. 

“If we start making commitments to ban gas that are not realistic, it could all come crashing down on us,” Duguid said. “You could set the electrification movement back decades.”

The consequences of messing up could challenge our ability to keep the lights on. And, as Duguid knows, even a transition that succeeds in the long term can spell the end of a government first. The period over which the coal phase-out occurred was associated with major increases in electricity prices, particularly for residential consumers, which played a significant part in McGuinty’s resignation from government. 

But, as the coal phase-out proved, the right solution could be the make-or-break moment for a jurisdiction’s ability to provide both a clean environment and reliable, affordable electricity. 

The lesson of Ontario’s energy history is that there needs to be a strong will from both the public and the people in power to facilitate a transformative shift. There needs to be an understanding that change takes time, so none can be wasted.

The transition ahead could be even more impactful than ending coal because it requires a new level of thinking that embraces rapidly evolving technologies and global collaboration. 

“It’s so interesting to be here, thinking about all this,” Devereaux, from the Independent Electricity System Operator, said.

“More interesting than 10 years ago?” I asked. 

 “I think so,” he said. “I really do. The biggest challenge is making sure whatever plan we come up with is realistic.”

In other words, you can’t flip a switch. 

Editor’s note: The Narwhal’s Ontario Bureau has previously received funding from the Ivey Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories. All of The Narwhal’s funding is disclosed annually.

Corrected Dec. 9, 2024, at 8:45 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct a line stating the Nanticoke Generating Station was in Thunder Bay, Ont. The former coal plant was actually in Nanticoke, Ont., on Lake Erie.

Updated Dec. 10, 2024, at 12:48 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to clarify that unburnt methane is released during the production and transportation of natural gas, and it is that methane that is more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions.

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.

We’re all taught in life that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The sentiment has been applied to Germany’s renewable energy transition, or Energiewende, with critics questioning emission reduction reporting or arguing costs of new systems are too high. But even if the Energiewende isn’t quite as shiny as it first appears, there are still a few important lessons from Germany's energy transition that Canada can take to heart.

Localized and democratized energy production

Where once there were only four companies supplying energy to the German grid, there are now 1.2 million contributors, and Jacobs said that number is only growing. The result is a decentralized and localized system of energy production and supply.  

Germany's next steps

Political obstacles to Canada's energy transition

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.

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.

____

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. 

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.

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

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