{"id":20523,"date":"2016-05-08T08:14:37","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T13:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20523"},"modified":"2016-05-08T08:14:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T13:14:37","slug":"germany-about-to-make-big-changes-to-its-renewables-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20523","title":{"rendered":"Germany About To Make Big Changes To Its Renewables Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germany About To Make Big Changes To Its Renewables Policy<\/a><\/h3>\n\"Solar<\/picture>\n
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On Earth Day, some 171 nations formally\u00a0signed<\/a>\u00a0the Paris climate agreement; it was a mostly symbolic, though meaningful next step. The document now awaits individual ratification and, more specifically, ratification by 55 countries representing 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. When and from where those approvals will come is difficult to say with certainty. How are the targets are then actually met is even less clear. For its part \u2013 and well aware of the fact that it has much to do \u2013 Germany is in the process of reshaping its transformative Energiewende policy.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Germany is no slouch. Over the last two years the country has\u00a0added<\/a>\u00a0roughly 11 and 4 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity respectively. Last year, nearly 33 percent of Germany\u2019s electricity demand was\u00a0satisfied<\/a>\u00a0by renewable sources \u2013 wind even\u00a0out-produced<\/a>coal for the first time ever in December. Renewable energy penetration in the power supply is already\u00a0greater<\/a>\u00a0than 100 percent in two German states. Moreover, renewables\u00a0account<\/a>\u00a0for 15.3 percent of gross final energy consumption nationwide, up nearly 2 percent from 2014. Globally, Germany has a top-three wind fleet and the world\u2019s largest solar PV capacity.<\/p>\n

But \u2013 with high expectations and increasingly heavy realties \u2013 there\u2019s still much left to do. As it stands, Germany will not meet its current climate obligations. By 2020, it is\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0that Germany will only have cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32\u00a0percent<\/a>\u00a0compared to 1990 levels, or well short of its 40 percent\u00a0target<\/a>. In fact, GHG emissions have seen year-on-year\u00a0growth<\/a>\u00a0in six out of the last ten years.\u00a0Persistent<\/a>, and in some cases growing coal use, combined with backward progress in the transportation sector suggest the current, aggressive electricity transformation is having trouble maturing into a full blown energy shift.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germany About To Make Big Changes To Its Renewables Policy On Earth Day, some 171 nations formally\u00a0signed\u00a0the Paris climate agreement; it was a mostly symbolic, though meaningful next step. The document now awaits individual ratification and, more specifically, ratification by 55 countries representing 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. When and from where those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[113,328,359,386,11348,674],"class_list":["post-20523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-germany","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-paris-climate-agreement","tag-renewable-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20524,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20523\/revisions\/20524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}