[The Vector] Hermann Scheer – Continued

From “CLIMATE ACTION 2009” for the UN Conference in Copenhagen

In this talk, Hermann Scheer debunks the myth of renewables being too expensive and explains why we must keep developing clean tech, describing how each affected industry can make the most of the new opportunities.

When talking about renewable energies, there always follows – like a Pavlovian reflex – the question of costs. The basic assumption still predominates that renewables are not affordable; that they cost too much in comparison with conventional energies. In other words, there is a negative economic myth about renewable energy. This assumption acts as a permanent excuse not to adopt a grand strategy to actively deploy renewable energy. It is argued that the time for renewables has not yet come. Investments in the field of renewable energy are considered an economic burden that no one is willing to shoulder. Those arguments are short-sighted, superficial and highly misleading.

They are short-sighted because they ignore the fundamentally different economic prospects of conventional energies on the one hand and renewables on the other. It is obvious that conventional energies will become more and more expensive over time, whereas the costs for renewables steadily decrease.

The negative myth of high costs that accompany the use of renewables is superficial and misleading because it does not differentiate between micro- and macroeconomic assumptions – that is between expenses for a single investor on the one hand and for the whole national economy on the other. However, this distinction is crucial for the question of whether governments stick to conventional energies or decide to orient their activities towards renewable energies.

…Next to agriculture, it is the construction business, including the building materials industry, that will experience the largest upswing if it seizes the opportunities provided by solar construction. Numerous new building materials and construction methods – from glass that insulates as it produces electricity to energy saving wood constructions – could be employed. If every building is going to be capable of using cost-free solar energy optimally for heating and cooling purposes, it needs to adapt these new materials and methods to the conditions of the local topography and bio-climate – each with its own special solar plan. Solar retrofitting of the existing building stock plus new solar buildings are a goldmine for the construction trades, architecture and building engineers.

In short, not only will new industrial enterprises emerge when renewable energy prevails, renewable energy will also open up opportunities for old branches of industry…What the energy business experiences as the destruction of capital breathes new life into industry and reinforces the economy at large.

From “Globe and Mail” (Aug 2008) Interview with Chris Turner

During the interview, Turner says that Scheer rattled off the two most common criticisms of renewables – that they are too expensive and would take too long to deploy at such a scale – and noted that the exact opposite has been the case in Germany since the passage of the feed-in tariff. Conventional energy costs have only gone up while the cost of renewables has decreased dramatically, and Germany has installed 22,000 megawatts of wind power – the equivalent of about one-fifth of Canada’s entire installed power-generating capacity – in less time than it can take to build a single nuclear plant.

The surcharge on the average German consumer’s power bill, Mr. Scheer asserted, has been 24 euros (about $38) a year:

“It is the most successful new- job-creation program we ever had, and the most cost-effective job-creation program,” he said. “The most effective climate-protection program – it is cheaper than [any] emission-trading concept.”

“There are too many links between [energy companies] and the government, and this is a barrier for adequate renewable energy legislation,” Mr. Scheer said. “And the only [ones] who can overcome this are the legislation chambers themselves. This is a question of political will and political strategy – only that.”

“NewScientist” (May 21^st, 2008) Interview with Fred Pearce

Scheer: Ten years ago, I called for a program 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 program 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 program 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.

Pearce: Many environmentalists are pessimists and don’t believe in technical fixes. But you are a real techno-optimist.

Scheer: Yes, because I see the opportunities for renewables. I see that they can provide 100 per cent of our energy, and they can be introduced very fast. All the great technological revolutions happen much more quickly than even the experts and enthusiasts guess. The forecasts for the spread of cellphones and IT were all overtaken by the reality. The renewables revolution will be the same. The IT and mobile phone revolutions were also the first technological revolutions in modern times that were not about centralising power. They were about decentralising. And this will happen to energy from renewables. The big old-fashioned power stations and long supply chains will be replaced by local supplies for local markets. This is changing the tide of history.

Acceptance Speech, Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award), December 1999

[Renewables…] secure the future of mankind. Their use must lead towards the replacement of the nuclear/fossil energy economy. Whether this replacement will be done in time – that is, in the first half of the 21st century – will be the answer to the question whether the industrial revolution was a unique chance for mankind to improve life conditions – or the start of its collective extermination. This replacement cannot be implemented without conflicts and we have to cope with them. We have to fight for the better alternative. It needs a grand design. This perspective is essential for overcoming the psychological disaster of having no alternative…

The beginning of each alternative is to show its opportunities to as many people as possible. This is what stimulates people to take initiative. That is the main meaning in this Alternative Nobel Prize: personally a stimulus for my ongoing work and in general – and more important – for many people. Solar energy is the energy of the people. To use this energy does not require big investments of only a few big corporations. It requires billions of investments by billions of people. They have the opportunity to switch from being a part of the problem to becoming a part of the global solution. That is globalization by the people.

From Scheer’s book “Energy Autonomy” (2006)

Regarding the debate of solar vs nuclear:

“Solar or nuclear” was the title of a debate on Austrian television I conducted several years ago with a well-known professor of atomic physics. The professor was not one of those members who likes to whitewash the risks of nuclear energy. But he was convinced of the indispensability of nuclear energy. He regarded renewable energy as something that (unfortunately) did not have enough usable potential to satisfy people’s energy needs. His remarks on the subject amounted to a grab bag of grotesque assumptions, all of which were easy to refute with a few empirical facts – like his assertion that the energy expended on producing a solar facility would be higher than its energy output. After the broadcast he told me in a voice that was both moved and moving: “Measured by what you have said, my professional life was misguided.”

Scheer lays out six reason arguing against nuclear power in the book:

• The water problem: Nuclear reactors’ enormous water needs for steam and cooling compete with the demand for water from a growing world population.
• Minimal efficiency: The waste heat produced by nuclear power plants hardly lends itself to combined heat and power cogeneration. The reason is that long-distance heating transmission from centralized power plant blocks is very expensive. That is why nuclear energy is the energy form with the most meager opportunities for increasing efficiency.
• Risk vulnerability: In tandem with the growing risk of “new wars” (wars no longer carried out between states) there is a parallel rise in the world-wide danger of nuclear terrorism – and not just from airplane attacks on reactors.
• The wrong energy business plan: Since investment in nuclear power plants is especially capital-intensive, building these plants clashes with the liberalization of electricity markets and their short-term amortization periods.
• The time perspective for final disposal: Nuclear waste needs 100,000 years to be securely stored. In light of growing risks of social instability, what political system can provide guarantees for such a lengthy term?
• Creeping radioactive contamination: Nobody can estimate the long-term risks that releasing radioactivity harbors for nature and for human beings, even on a small scale. The more nuclear power plants there are in operation, the greater the danger.