by Evan Frisch: environmental writer, and co-founder of hivethrive blog, and agent for progressive social change

Grist’s David Roberts has posted an excerpt from an interview with Dr. Hermann Scheer, a leading advocate for renewable energy. (New Scientist conducted the interview, but requires a subscription to access the full interview.) Dr. Scheer is a physicist, member of the German parliament, and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. In the interview, Dr. Scheer discusses a successful solar energy program that he advanced, which even Greenpeace had originally thought was unrealistic, and discusses the great opportunity that is found in the transition to a localized renewable energy system.

Dr. Scheer explains in the interview that the policies he has proposed to promote a transition to renewable energy have been more successful than many had imagined possible:

“Ten years ago, I called for a programme to install solar panels on 100,000 roofs in Germany, so that we could have mass production as soon as possible. I wanted it in my party’s programme in the 1998 elections. Even Greenpeace said my plan was unrealistic, and my colleagues asked why we should be more radical than Greenpeace. But I persuaded them, and the programme was implemented within four years. In 2000, with colleagues, I launched the Renewable Energy Sources act, which ensures that independent producers generating excess electricity can sell it to the grid at a guaranteed price. Now renewables account for nearly 15 per cent of electricity generated in Germany.”

In response to a question about the kinds of changes that are needed in power generation, Dr. Scheer emphasized the need to move toward localization:

“To take advantage of this integrated system, we have to have localised energy production, near the farms. Solar and wind power is also best provided locally. This is completely different from the fossil fuel energy system, where production and consumption are separate - often on opposite sides of the world - and you need a huge amount of infrastructure to link them up.”

We often hear that responding to the climate crisis is an opportunity as well as a crisis, but the decentralization that is likely to be part of that opportunity is not always made explicit. Listening to commercials for a power company makes it seem that the future of energy is mainly about continuing to buy electricity from the same company, which will do us the favor of shifting its production to a mix of power sources that emit less carbon dioxide. Scheer, however, contends that renewable energy technologies are likely to spread rapidly and act as a force of decentralization and localization. Instead of paying large, faraway corporations for the fuel that we need for our homes, vehicles, and businesses, we will invest more in our local communities, and generate a growing share of energy ourselves. Scheer sees renewable energy following a course similar to the rapid spread of information technology, a technological revolution that decentralized power, unlike the centralization involved in creating enormous companies to find, extract, transport, refine, and sell petroleum. The opportunities inherent in localization of power generation are among the topics of Dr. Scheer’s book Energy Autonomy, which was reviewed here. As that review notes, the scale of the change required is of historic proportions:

“Transition to a renewable energy future will require political, economic, social and lifestyle adaptations which will be no less radical than those associated with the human transition to agriculture 400 generations ago and to the industrial revolution 10 generations ago.”

Such a transition will be a challenge, but it is also a great opportunity that can reverse the centralization of economic power that we have witnessed in recent decades. That prospect may not be realized fully unless we are able to limit the political power of large corporations, which seek to ensure their dominance over any emergent energy technologies. If we are able to do this, however, we can bring about a world in which local communities experience greater political engagement as well as economic opportunity.