[The Vector] Words of Hermann Scheer
The global solar world is mourning the October 14th death of Hermann Scheer. Known as the grandfather of solar, Scheer was not only a pioneer but an active advocate of solar and renewable energy as well as a great thinker and man of action. He was instrumental in introducing Renewable Energy Law (including feed-in tariffs) to Germany, and carrying German to a dominant solar position in the world. His initial actions were unheard of – a mass installation of more than 100,000 panels.
Scheer was a member of the German Parliament, President of the European Association for Renewable Energy EUROSOLAR, Chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and author (including “Energy Autonomy: the economic, social and technological cases for Renewable Energy” and seminal works “A Solar Manifesto” and “The Solar Economy.”) Days before his death, he published “Der energethische Imperativ.” The very applicable words of Mahatma Gandi appear in the introduction: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
TIME Magazine called him “Hero for the Green Century”, and Scheer was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 1999. He was also the first winner of the ‘World Photovoltaic Prize’ by the World PV Community. He described himself often as a “possibilist”.
There have been many obituaries and tributes written about Hermann, including Craig Shield’s own post on the 2Greenenergy blog. There is nothing more powerful than hearing some of his words from interviews over the years. I have therefore included a selection here, including from one of his last interviews:
“Guardian” (April 16, 2008). Interview with Kate Connelly
On the aesthetics of windmills, an oft-cited cry in certain U.S. communities “not in my backyard” thinking: “… don’t give me the arguments against the aesthetics of windmills. They’re not there to be liked – it’s enough to accept that they’re necessary, because we need 100% emission-free energies. Who, after all, likes power lines? But they’re accepted. Here we’re dealing with an existential problem.”
Commenting on Britain’s negative attitudes at that time (2008) to renewable energy and the feed-in tariff system:
“The fact is that the subsidies paid for fossil and nuclear energy are much higher – hundreds of millions of pounds a year – around 10 times more than has been spent on renewables over the last two decades. And nuclear power stations, for instance, are even relieved from having to pay their huge insurance bill because the taxpayer picks it up. So this argument about renewables and subsidies doesn’t stand up.”
When I speak in the U.K at the upcoming meetings “…I’ll tell them all about the benefits renewables have for economic, cultural and civilian development, and will urge them not just to look at actual cost comparisons, because that’s such a small-minded view and with that we can’t find a grand strategy or solve this macro-economic and macro-ecological problem.”
Scheer worked tirelessly to get British powers-that-be to understand how renewables could work for them, and he is surely in part to thank for the strides they are now making.
“The amount of sun, wind, geothermal and bioenergy at our disposal is by far sufficient. Take just the sun – it sends around 15,000 times more energy to our planet than all 6 billion people need. These resources are indefinite and cheap – the sun and wind won’t be sending you a bill, and neither can you privatise them.”
At some point, Scheer believes his ideas will become commonplace, writes Connelly. He lets the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer make the point for him. “There are three stages to a new idea,” Scheer says. “At first, it is ignored. Second, there is strong opposition against it. And finally, those who once opposed it set about introducing the initiatives themselves as if they’d been theirs all along.”
“The Christian Science Monitor” (Aug 20, 2008) with Mariah Blake.
Blake: What are the elements of a successful feed-in tariff?
Scheer: To really motivate development, it’s necessary to give a guaranteed rate and to differentiate between various energy options, because they have different costs. And we have to give incentives for all renewable energy sources because the target is the total replacement of conventional energies – nuclear energy and fossil fuels.
Blake: And you think that’s possible?
Scheer: The argument that it’s not possible is totally ridiculous. The sun’s rays deliver to our globe daily 15,000 times more energy than the daily consumption of nuclear and fossil energy. What we need is a mobilization of technologies to harvest this energy potential.
In an editorial about solar energy for “The Yearbook of Renewable Energies: 1994”
Regarding jobs:
There is a discussion about the number of jobs that could be created by producing renewable energy technology. No doubt there should be more analysis. But there is no doubt about one thing: all the costs for renewable energies are costs for the technology; that means: costs for labor to produce these technologies. Introducing renewable energies means in economic terms the replacement of conventional primary energy supply and conventional waste management by technologies that convert renewable energy sources into a secondary energy.
In other words: renewable energy technology production leads to much more employment in modern industrial jobs; it is the motor of new mass employment in industry and agriculture – an economic basis innovation!
