In the 1970s, Germany’s Rhine River was considered “the open sewer of Europe”.
Near the Swiss border, schools of salmon or trout could be seen on their backs, poisoned by the pollution. The sight was shocking to Germans and helped bring about a “collective consciousness” on environmental issues, according to German parliamentarian Barbel Kofler.
“I believe that is where the environmental movement really started to gather pace. That intensified after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986,” Kofler said. “But what has happened as a result of those events and others is that Germany started to become more aware of its environmental footprint. It partly answers your question of why Germany is so far ahead of countries such as Australia in terms of renewable energy and attitudes towards climate change.
“Australia is seen as a highly polluting country, yet it has so much sun and renewable resources. My question for you is why does it not do more?”
It is a question that baffles many Europeans and one that now lies at the feet of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Ms Gillard has said she will unveil Labor’s climate change policy at the National Press Club in Canberra tomorrow. With Labor having gone into the last election promising a price on carbon, and now delaying that pledge until 2012 at the earliest, the rest of the world will be watching to see how it proposes to reduce emissions.
The government’s unwillingness so far to follow the European Union’s lead and put a price on carbon is also restricting investment in renewable energy in Australia. While some Australians remain fearful that a carbon price will result in mass job losses and depress the economy, the German experience tells a different story.
Germany’s turnover from investment and operation of renewables last year reached €33.4 billion. While that may sound like an impressive number, a report by Pew Charitable Trusts on pure investment places Germany seventh once you strip out sales — leaving it trailing countries like China, the US, Spain and Brazil — with about $US4.3 billion ($A4.9 billion) of investment. Australia came in at 14th position with $US1 billion.
Related employment, often referred to as “green jobs”, is also growing rapidly in Germany. Since 2004, jobs in the renewable sector have increased by 87 per cent to about 300,500. While there have been some job losses through the greening of Germany’s economy, they have been offset by strong growth in the renewables sector — producing a net positive result in the jobs market.
By comparison, there are only about 10,000 green jobs in Australia, according to the Clean Energy Council. The government’s plan to require electricity providers to supply 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 will more than double that figure to an expected 24,000 jobs.
At that point, though, Germany will have almost tripled its current position: it is aiming for an economy with 750,000 green jobs by 2020 and 900,000 by 2030.
Even allowing for the fact that Germany’s population is about four times that of Australia’s, the figure is impressive by world standards.
Andrea Meyer, a spokeswoman from Germany’s Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, said renewable energy was the only area of Germany’s economy that enjoyed growth in 2009 following the global financial crisis.
“That is one argument why you don’t want to stop investing in renewables,” she said. “We have actually had to rework our solar program because nearly half of that €33.4 billion in investment was a result of the generous solar feed-in laws.
“We have had to change that because we don’t want to burn the whole sector because of a bubble. Some solar companies say they will go bankrupt but I don’t think so. Some might but, sorry, this is market-based.”
Germany’s strong interest in solar should not be a surprise given that it is considered the founder of the technology, although its market share has slipped to third behind a rapidly developing China and the US. And in the development of wind power, Meyer said Germany was still considered the country to beat.
Slightly more than 10 per cent of the energy Germans consume comes from renewable sources. The largest share comes from biomass (such as waste wood), which accounts for about 7 per cent of the total and is used mainly for heating.
In Australia, renewable energy sources account for about 7 per cent of electricity generation off a smaller base (that figure would decrease substantially due to inefficiencies when determining renewable energy consumed). Just under 80 per cent of Australia’s renewable energy is hydro power.
Germany is aiming to provide between 80 and 100 per cent of its energy needs through renewables by 2050. That goal is dependent on energy efficiency measures and bringing down energy demand by 55 per cent.
“You need to focus on every area,” Meyer said. “Attracting investment, government programs like our home audit in which we give you €200 ($A290) to talk to an energy consultant about ways to bring down energy use in your home, and training is needed in all areas to boost jobs.”
Perhaps even more ambitious than increasing the amount of renewable energy in Germany is its plan to phase out nuclear power.
At the turn of the century, the then German government officially announced its intention to phase out nuclear by 2021. It was a brave move given that the country has limited coal, oil and gas to provide baseload power, much of which it imports from neighbouring countries. Ridding the country of nuclear power would mean meeting an extra 20 per cent of its present energy requirements through other means.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and her Free Democrat (FDP) coalition partners have vowed to repeal that law, brought in by the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens now in opposition, but the outcome is far from certain.
Stefan Augustin, a spokesman for AusTrade in Germany, said big European companies were starting to look to renewable energy projects in Australia.
“So far, the biggest projects have happened in the wind area but more and more European companies are also getting involved in the solar as well as bio-energy segment,” he said. “There is also particularly growing interest from renewable energy equipment suppliers who see good market potential in Australia”.
Augustin said five out of eight shortlisted candidates for the federal government’s Solar Flagships program were European.
“This engagement will bring new technologies from leading renewable-energy markets to Australia and support the implementation of further large-scale solar projects,” he said.
But the challenge for Australia lay ahead, said Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren.
“Australia has much better renewable energy assets than Germany,” he said. “It’s sunnier, it’s windier and basically has more abundant clean-energy resources of all types.
“Our country should be a far more attractive place to invest in renewable energy than Germany, but we still have a lot of work to do before Australia ranks as one of the world’s leading investment destinations for low-carbon technologies.”
The reporter traveled to Germany courtesy of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). This story first appeared in The Age.
Renewable energy’s market share among total consumption in Germany 2009
- Renewables - 10.1%
- Wind - 1.6%
- Biomass - 7%
- Hydropower - 0.8%
- Solar & other - 0.7%
- Other fossil - 89.9%
Jobs in the renewable energy sector in Germany
- 2004- 160,500
- 2008- 278, 000
- 2009- 300,500
