brewinggeographer: - Das Weser-Stadion in Bremen, Germany: a 21st-Century temple of soccer and solar energy The vigor with which the Germans and many of their EU neighbors have embraced the shift to renewable energy is impressive. And Darrel Moellendorf correctly highlighted, in Dissent Magazine last August, the contrast with the United States, where it makes much greater sense to go the solar route: Europe overall has ten times the installed solar capacity of the United States. Given their comparative geography—the vast expanses of desert in the American southwest that Europe lacks—the difference is remarkable. Clearly government policy, not geography and not the free market, makes all the difference in directing a country’s energy policy toward renewables. Until the subsidy priorities of U.S. energy policy are dramatically changed, I’d wager that the stadiums of Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, and Phoenix will not be transformed into solar power plants. While it is not unreasonable to question the economic wisdom of aggressively subsidizing solar power in such a gray, sunlight-starved region as northern Germany, from a global perspective these subsidies will have done their job if they push sun-drenched regions in the Americas and beyond to follow the European lead. From the more narrowly minded perspective of U.S. competitiveness, I also fear that China will be more likely to adopt the German model than will my own native land.

brewinggeographer:

- Das Weser-Stadion in Bremen, Germany: a 21st-Century temple of soccer and solar energy

The vigor with which the Germans and many of their EU neighbors have embraced the shift to renewable energy is impressive. And Darrel Moellendorf correctly highlighted, in Dissent Magazine last August, the contrast with the United States, where it makes much greater sense to go the solar route:

Europe overall has ten times the installed solar capacity of the United States. Given their comparative geography—the vast expanses of desert in the American southwest that Europe lacks—the difference is remarkable. Clearly government policy, not geography and not the free market, makes all the difference in directing a country’s energy policy toward renewables. Until the subsidy priorities of U.S. energy policy are dramatically changed, I’d wager that the stadiums of Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, and Phoenix will not be transformed into solar power plants.

While it is not unreasonable to question the economic wisdom of aggressively subsidizing solar power in such a gray, sunlight-starved region as northern Germany, from a global perspective these subsidies will have done their job if they push sun-drenched regions in the Americas and beyond to follow the European lead. From the more narrowly minded perspective of U.S. competitiveness, I also fear that China will be more likely to adopt the German model than will my own native land.

3 months ago

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