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56 comments on The White House: AEI in All Its Glory (SOTU Open Thread 3)

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Marotti32 on February 1, 2006 - 10:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hi Slippery Slope, indeed many local proactive groups have cemented the foundation for this development here in Germany. Almost every developing starts on a grassroots basis. Atomic energy or clean coal are no technologies to be developed like this, because it is large scale technology and needs to be protected by laws or a lot of subsidizing money.

Meanwhile the industry of renewable energy became a major investment, not only in the EU. Bankers are heavily interested in this topic. The flow of capital and a very good profit lures them. So in the end, more the big money is benefiting from this. It became a multi billion Euro industry in a few years with good local jobs.

The installed wind power in Germany accounts for roughly 5 to 6 % of the domestic electricty. Ten years ago, there was almost nothing existent. Sometimes things can happen pretty swiftly.

matthias, berlin

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Slippery Slope on February 1, 2006 - 12:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It's a small world. Siemens, headquartered in Berlin and Munich, is one of the world's largest electrical engineering and electronics companies - and it operates wind farms here in Texas.

http://www.powergeneration.siemens.com/en/windpower/casestudies/king/index.cfm

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Marotti32 on February 1, 2006 - 1:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Siemens was once founded in Berlin. After WW II it started to have its headquarter in Munich (München). Siemens wind power is a small player in wind energy. The largest one in Germany is Enercon, a privately owned company which once started in a garden 2 decades ago. There is also a lot of activity in Spain. There however, the installed capacity is installed by the large utility companies. In Germany, it was quite common to save taxes by investing in "Bürger Windkraftparks" =citizen wind power parks. So a lot of the wind turbines are owned privately. The utilities are obligated to buy the electricty for a certain amount of money, which decreases every year by 5%, to make sure technology will improve.

This law is now wideley accepted within the EU and is now in places like Spain, France, Italy.....and even in China.

matthias, berlin (where is no sund now, it's dark and cold...;-)

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56 comments on The White House: AEI in All Its Glory (SOTU Open Thread 3)

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