Environment Forum

Greens party soars to new heights in Germany

Germany’s Greens party are already the world’s most successful environmental party – having spent seven years in government of one of the world’s largest economies as junior coalition partners to the centre-left Social Democrats. The Greens wrote Germany’s renewable energy law that helped the country become a major player in wind and solar energy technology between 1998 and 2005 — and the party is chiefly responsible for raising the share of renewable energy to 16 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption.

Although in opposition since 2005, the Greens’ popularity has nevertheless soared to record levels over 20 percent in recent months and the party – which only recently celebrated its 30th anniversary – is doing so well in opinion polls that they could possibly end up heading coalitions in two state elections next year ahead of the SPD in Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city-state of Berlin. 

Pollsters say the Greens are benefitting from an increasing awareness in environmental issues, such as climate change and the public’s opposition to government plans to extend nuclear power in Germany beyond 2021. The Greens are also profiting from voter frustration over broken promises by the ruling parties.

So what’s their secret? Why is the unabashedly pro-environment party so successful in an industrial nation like Germany? We got the chance to chat with the co-chairman of the Greens, Cem Oezdemir, who explained why the Greens are doing so well –but also warned that good opinion polls do not always translate into good election results.

“We’re thrilled about the good run in opinion polls but there’s no danger of us getting arrogant about it like the other parties might,” Greens party co-chairman Cem Oezdemir said in an interview with Reuters at the Greens’ party headquarters in Berlin – under a roof with a photovoltaic system on top. “We’re not going to suddenly start changing our positions according to how the political winds are blowing. We’re sticking to our guns and concentrating on our core issues. We’re not going to squander our political capital and we’re not going to make promises before elections that we forget about after the elections.”

That, in essence, is why the Greens have climbed to around 20 percent in national opinion polls this year from the 10.7 percent they won in the last federal election. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition has, by contrast, lost credibility and plunged in the polls because many of the pre-election promises the ruling parties made were quickly scuppered after the vote. Pollster and analysts agree the Greens have taken advantage of the weaknesses of the other parties.

The Greens have also been helped by such things as their consistent opposition to a new rail station in the southwestern city of Stuttgart that will cost billions of euros. They are the only party that has argued against the mammoth project from the start and, because most voters in the state are also opposed, have gained from that stance.

Will Germany kill its energy golden goose?

Will Germany kill the goose laying the golden eggs?    Germany is understandably proud of its renewable energy sector — wind and solar power supply more than 15 percent of the country’s electricity. Its Renewable Energy Act (EEG) has fuelled its rapid growth over the past decade and been copied by more than 40 countries around the world.    But is the party over?    A new centre-right government announced plans to slash the EEG’s guaranteed feed-in tariffs (FIT) that utilities are required to pay the myriad of producers of solar energy, many of whom feed the modest amounts of solar power from their roofs into the local grid. The EEG already foresees a FIT decline of about 10 percent per year — a built-in incentive to keep overall costs falling.    Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen wants an additional 15 percent cut in April on top of the 10 percent from Jan. 1, 2010 and ahead of the next 10-percent cut on Jan. 1, 2011. In the past decade, the previous two environment ministers from the Greens party and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) worked closely with the solar industry before making changes.    Roettgen made it clear those days of compromise were over. He said he spoke to solar firms last week before proposing the cuts, but rejected their offer to a one-off mid-2010 cut of 5 percent. “This is not a compromise,” he told journalists in Berlin on Wednesday. “It’s a bullseye.”  He said the cuts would save consumers about 1 billion euros a year over the next decade. Consumer groups and some industry groups had wanted deeper cuts, Roettgen noted.    Solar companies in Germany, which have until now worked closely with the government on reducing the tariffs the utilities pay to producers of green electricity, criticised the cuts which amount to about 35 percent within 13 months. They fear they will cripple the sector and kill jobs. Roettgen said he wants solar power, which now generates about 1 percent of Germany’s electricity, to be providing 4 to 5 percent by 2020 even though the support is being slashed by one-third in the course of 13 months. He portrayed the cuts as if he were doing the industry a favour.     Several leading German companies — such as SolarWorld, Q-Cells and Solon — said there were dark days ahead for the solar industry. They pointed out that prices, and support, were already falling steadily and would reach grid parity by the middle of the decade. Why, they asked, ruin a good thing? Frank Asbeck, CEO of Germany’s biggest solar company by revenue SolarWorld, called the plans unacceptable. As my colleague Christoph Steitz reported here, the cuts would cause problems for solar companies around the world.    Carsten Koernig, managing director of the BSW solar industry lobby, said “a radical cut like that will rob German companies of the foundation for business”.    Claudia Kemfert, an energy policy expert at the independent DIW economic research institute, said: “This level of 15 percent is quite problematic. It means a 25 percent cut within a few months and I consider that to be too much. It’s going to hit the small and medium sized companies very hard. It’s going to bring a lot of uncertainty into the market.”    The German Renewable Energy Association also used strong language, saying: “The radical cuts endanger the expansion of renewable energy.”

Is it a done deal? It’s hard to say at this point. There could be a lot of resistance from key conservative-ruled states such as Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg. They have important solar power industries and in the past succeeded in watering down attempts to cut the FIT.

German Greens at 30, world’s No. 1 green party

Germany’s Greens party celebrated their 30th birthday on Wednesday.

The world’s most successful environmental party spent seven of those 30 years as junior partner in the government of one of the world’s biggest industrial nations and are now part of three state governments. They were the driving force behind the country’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) 10 years ago that has made Germany the world’s leader in wind energy and photovoltaic and the world’s first major renewable-energy economy — laws promoting the development of renewable energy that led to the creation of some 280,000 jobs in the last decade.

Despite their rather chaotic and inauspicious start on Jan. 13, 1980, the Greens have matured into one of Germany’s major political forces and formed a centre-left government with the Social Democrats in 1998 — even though they ended up on the opposition benches again in 2005. An opinion poll published in Stern magazine today showed 63 percent of Germans believe the Greens are indispensible.

The Greens won 10.7 percent of the vote in September federal election, their highest score ever. They would win 14 percent of the vote if an election were held this Sunday, the Stern poll also found. That makes them the third largest party in Germany at the moment. But more important than their seats in the federal, state and local assemblies, the Greens have become an established force in Germany with clout that goes far beyond their numbers.

Every major party in Germany — from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives on the right to the Left party on the far-left wing — have borrowed and even tried to usurp green ideas for their own party platforms. Their once radical demands have long since become mainstream. For example, all parties in Germany now favour renewable energy (after seeing how many jobs it can create) and everyone in Germany dutifully separates their trash into four different bins — paper, plastics, glass and other waste.

The Greens, who have now begun forming coalitions with the conservatives as well despite their left-leaning roots, are probably the most coveted and flexible party in Germany’s five-party landscape right now at a time when climate change has helped make green parties more popular in a number of industrialised countries around the world.

“It’s been a pleasure during our 30-year celebrations to see how the other parties are all chasing after us now,” said Greens co-leader Cem Oezdemir. “They’re welcome to court us.” The Greens in Germany were founded in 1980 by a diverse group of environmental and peace activists, leftists and anti-nuclear demonstrators.

Can science and politics mix in Copenhagen?

As a trained physicist, Angela Merkel knows scientific findings and political negotiations don’t always mix well.

So the German Chancellor, who has no doubts about the scientific evidence of climate change, is going with a somewhat uneasy feeling to the climate conference in Copenhagen, where negotiations are taking place for something that she thinks should be non-negotiable: fighting global warming.

“Limiting a rise in temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius is an ambitious target but it’s absolutely necessary to reach that target,” she told a group of foreign journalists in the chancellery, which is covered with 1,300-square metres of solar panels producing nearly 150,000 kWh of electricity per year. “Because if global temperatures do rise above 2 degrees there will be a need for adaptation and there will be reactions that will be not only enormously expensive but far more difficult to manage.”

Merkel, who has a doctorate and worked at East Germany’s Academy of Sciences for 12 years before entering politics in 1990,  said it is infinitely more difficult to reach a comprehensive agreement on fighting climate change than on many other issues because there are so many different countries with so many different interests involved. She doesn’t envy hosts Denmark.

“It’s not like some political target, such as putting limits on bank bonuses, that we can choose at will. We’re facing a natural phenomenon here that requires an answer based on scientific fact.  It is an issue of vast importance to humanity itself,” she said.

As Merkel talked about the perils of climate change in her office with its  view of the Tiergarten park, it was clear she is not only well-versed in the material but also has more than a casual interest. As Germany’s Environment Minister from 1994 to 1998, she hosted the first U.N. climate conference in Berlin in 1995, a meeting that paved the way for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. A conservative politician, Merkel raised the issue of climate change in her speech to the U.S. Congress last month, and sometimes struggles to understand why in the United States the conservative party –  the Republican Party –  has not embraced the fight against climate change too.

An agreement in Copenhagen is possible, she said. But there is still a lot of hard work ahead. The United States, China and India all need to improve their offers although she is encouraged by their first offers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But will they get the message?

They came from as far away as Taiwan, Hawaii, South America and South Africa and they ranged from toothless toddlers to gray-haired grannies as they all shivered together in Copenhagen on Saturday. They spoke in countless different languages but the 30,000 activists marching  all had the same message: Act now on climate change.

Their hope is that the delegates to the Climate Conference — and more importantly the world leaders due in town later next week — will get that message.

“Bla Bla Bla. Act Now!” was the ubiquitous slogan on one popular placard. “There is no planet B“, “Change the politics, not the climate“, “Obama — get your head out of the Bush” and “Earth in Need. Delete Meat” were some of the other messages on posters and placards. My favourite was a simple hand-painted sign: “Make Copenhagen a name our children will remember“.

The atmosphere during the long walk was largely festive despite the finger-numbing chill and anyone who breathed deeply could not help but notice the distinctive scent of marijuana.

There were trucks filled with loudspeakers playing techno rhythms and other flatbeds carrying loud human speakers spouting witty slogans. But there was also a number of tense moments as the crowd moved slowly along a circuitous route through the southern districts of the city towards the Bella Centre, where the Climate Conference is taking place.

Sleeping next to activists in Copenhagen

There’s no concierge, no bellboy nor even a check-in counter. There’s no lobby, nor mini-bar and not even any heating. But despite the lack of amenities there was still something special about sleeping alongside 2,000 other climate change activists in an empty warehouse in an industrial section of northwest Copenhagen last night. 

It’s cold, loud and dusty. But the price is unbeatable and so is the atmosphere. You could say they were all happy campers.

There’s no charge but donations are welcome. There’s even breakfast available, a delicious porridge concoction.  And even free wireless, which is helping me get this post written.  Last night I managed to find a fairly empty corner on the cold cement floor of this drafty warehouse shortly before midnight but by the time I woke up at 7 a.m. there were hundreds more activists in sleeping bags crowded around me. They had been streaming in through the night.

One of the organisers just announced that there were 500 more activists from Britain due to arrive within the next few hours. “So could you please try to make some space for them by moving your sleeping bags together,” he said through a megaphone.

There are several such “communal accommodations” set up around Copenhagen this weekend — all the hotels and hostels have been booked out for months. Word at the train station last night was that several were already full but this one, called Ragnhildgade, still had space available.

Despite the near-freezing temperatures both inside and outside the warehouse, there’s an incredibly positive atmosphere going into today’s rallies around the city. There were a few complaints about the chill but otherwise most seemed unperturbed by the lack of creature comforts.

“I couldn’t just stay home and do nothing,” said one demonstrator from Sweden, shivering in the cold while charging up her cell phone on a set of communal plugs. “I had to be here. But it’s really cold. I’ve lived in squats that had better heating than this. I hope they get something sorted out by tonight.” Another activist from Germany added: “Who knows if the demonstrations will do any good? Who knows if any of those who are making the decisions will even notice us? But I didn’t want to miss the chance to do something about climate change.”

Packed train beats cheap plane to Copenhagen

Imagine standing packed inside a commuter train with a thousand other people, some in dire need of a shower, some apparently having eaten garlic for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Imagine your fingertips clinging to a metal overhead rack as you struggle to stay upright on turns and bumps in the track. And then imagine doing that for hours on end.

That’s what the train trip from Berlin to Copenhagen today was like as some 45,000 demonstrators converged on the Danish capital for Saturday’s march. But the journey was still a lot of fun — and we saw a myriad of wind turbines in both northern Germany and southwestern Denmark turning in the breeze, and thousands more roof-top photovoltaic systems extracting what little daylight they could out of the mid-December sky.

Fortunately, most of the people headed to the demonstration were in a fabulous mood. And there was even a happy ending to the ride — for the last two hours of the trip, in Denmark, an extra four carriages were added so just about everyone ended up getting a seat for the final third of the ride from Berlin, via Hamburg and a short ferry-hop.

Before that, the train was so full of German, Italian, French and Dutch demonstrators that the conductor didn’t bother to check for tickets, and the border guards gave up before they even started. “Forget it Heinrich,” one German border guard said to his colleague. “It’s too full. Just stay where you are.” They got off at the next stop without checking anyone’s passport.

Some of the lucky few who did had a seat reservation seemed very unhappy indeed as they struggled through the packed aisle to get to their seat and invariably had to shoo someone, often in a woolly sweater, away from the seat they had paid a few euros extra for. But, as ridiculously packed as the train was, no one lost their temper. “We all just need to stay calm here,” said one bearded protester in a soothing voice. “We’re all in the same boat.”

Taking a plane would have been a lot easier and faster — and could have cost less than the 150 euros ($220) the train cost, had I booked early enough. I had thought long and hard about flying instead of taking the train.

But the one-hour plane trip would have produced three times as much CO2 — 102 kg, compared to 34 kg for the six-hour train ride. It seems odd to have a system where the plane costs the same or even less than a train. It’s hard to imagine how answers to climate change will be found as long as plane journeys cost less than train rides.

What will they say in 2100 about what (didn’t) happen in 2009?

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber can speak eloquently and at length in English, German, French or Spanish about the perils of climate change. But the cold language of science in any of those languages melts away when the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 59, mentions his 18-month-old son and the impact that global warming will have on  the toddler’s life. 

“I’ve got a young son,” Schellnhuber says, pictured at the right with the boy, his wife and Britain’s Prince Charles on a visit to Potsdam in April. “I hope this all turns out to be wrong. I would be delighted if it turns out that we haven’t understood the system as well as we think we do, and that we might get a 20- to 30-year ‘breathing period’ when global warming slows or is even halted,” Schellnhuber said in an interview.

“I hope my son can live in a world where there won’t be massive conflicts because the sea level rises by a metre in his life time. I hope he’ll be able to have a happy life. But I’m growing increasingly worried.” 

I’ve had the chance to listen to Schellnhuber on several occasions in recent weeks and his infant son regularly comes up.

It is, for me at least, the drop-dead argument about climate change: What will our children or grandchildren say in the year 2100 about our generation and what happens, or does not happen, to slow climate change in 2009? What will they say about us when the world’s median temperature is 2 to 6 degrees higher and problems abound because of what didn’t happen in 2009?

Schellnhuber asks: “Would you put your child on a bus if you knew someone had cut the brake cable and there’s an 80 percent chance the bus will crash? But what if I say there’s an 80 percent chance the planet will be flooded even if it’s not for 100 years? Would you change your habits? The threat is far away. It’s an indissoluble problem.” 

Schellnhuber says he and fellow scientists have no choice but to warn about the threat of climate change. He says he gets zero pleasure over warning of the apocalypse and finds upsetting the hate mail he receives. “I didn’t pursue this issue – it found me,” he said. “But when you’re deep in your research, you can’t just say ‘this is all too much, it gets to me too much’. It does get to me.”

Catching rays + cutting emissions

The phrase “catching a few rays” might conjure up images of lying on a sunny beach.

But Germany’s Renewable Energy Act has given that phrase a whole new meaning. I’ve discovered that you can get paid for capturing the sun’s energy on your roof, converting it into CO2-free electricity with the help of special equipment, and feeding it into the grid — and watch the investment yield handsome long-term returns.

The German feed-in tariff system is as simple as it is successful – which is probably why Germany produces as much solar power as the rest of the world combined. German utilities are obliged under the Renewable Energy Act to pay above-market feed-in tariffs to producers of photovoltaic or wind energy for a period of 20 years. Germany will add up to 3 gigawatt of PV electricity this year. 

Here’s how the system works. 

Two years ago, after writing this feature on why Germany leads the world in photovoltaic electricity production despite being covered by clouds half the time, I decided to crack open my piggy bank and borrow some money on top of that to invest in a modest 6.8 kWp solar power system for my roof (below left). I added a carport (above right) so that I could put up more solar panels. 

The system cost a total of 30,000 euros and it produces about 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year. More importantly, that saves about 2,700 kg of CO2 emissions. The 5,000 kWh is about 500 kWh a year more than we use. The local utility is required to buy those 5,000 kWh of CO2-free electricity that spin through a meter and into the grid from me at 49 cents per kilowatt for a fixed 20-year period. I buy about 4,500 kWh back each year at the current market rate of about 18 cents per kWh. That amounts to about 2,400 euros of revenue per year, with monthly payments from the utility peaking at about 500 euros in June. (I pay a separate 70 euros per month to the utility for the electricity we use).

German ships navigate Northeast Passage – but is it a good thing?

Two German ships have successfully navigated their way through the fabled Northeast Passage on the first commercial journey by a western shipping company on the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s Arctic-facing northern shore — a new cost-cutting passageway from Asia to Europe made possible by climate change.  

The MV “Beluga Fraternity” and the MV “Beluga Foresight” (pictured above) arrived safely at Novvy Port/Yamburg in Russia at the delta of the river Ob on Monday after a 17-day trip through the icy cold but briefly ice-free Arctic Ocean after departing from Vladivostok on Aug. 21. The ships had earlier picked up their cargo in Ulsan, South Korea and after delivering it in Novvy Port will steam on to the Netherlands to complete the Pacific-to-Atlantic journey that explorers and merchants have been dreaming about for centuries. 

By taking advantage of the short two-month window of opportunity in August and September before the Arctic Ocean freezes over again, the journey from South Korean through the Northeast Passage (not to be confused with the Northwest Passage through Canada) to Europe cut about 3,300 nautical miles off the usual 11,000 nautical mile trip via the southern route through the Suez Canal. Instead of the usual 32-day journey on the southern route, the Northern Sea Route takes 23 days. The shorter distance cuts the cost of the journey considerably because less fuel was used — and thus less CO2 emitted.