While Ontario’s ambitious feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy is being put to the test by domestic and international opposition, including a challenge from Japan, Japan has just achieved a major breakthrough for its own FIT policy as it continues to recover from the tsunami and nuclear disaster this past March. Both examples will have implications for renewable [...]

Coauthored by Paige Andrews and Marie Karaisl. In a drastic reversal of policy, Germany has announced that it will shut down all of its nuclear reactors by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima plant disaster in Japan. After the initial announcement, the government last week discussed the detailed drafts for the laws with the heads [...]

Electricians, plumbers, technicians and engineers – these are the people who will make it happen, who will make the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies. The list of professions encompasses all sectors when we consider the wider transition to a global green economy. But what policies are in place to ensure workers possess the [...]

After APECs confirmation of what had increasingly seemed inevitable – that the Copenhagen summit wouldn’t be the major breakthrough it was heralded to be – the chances of swift and effective action on climate change seem to have faded. But Europe has not been the leader on this issue its rhetoric would suggest. And the [...]

Angela Merkel’s CDU (with their Bavarian sidekicks, the CSU) and the free-market FDP – the main winner of Germany’s federal elections – will form the next governing coalition. This is almost certainly bad news for German climate change policy – both domestically and on the international stage – but the policy setbacks in this area [...]

Two weeks ago, a group of 20 German companies announced they would be forming a consortium called ‘Desertec’ for an investment in solar thermal power plants in northern Africa that would provide 15 percent of Europe’s electricity needs. The companies include re-insurer Münchener Rück, technology company Siemens, as well as utilities EON and RWE. It [...]

A major publication from the EU’s Convention on the Protection of the Alps last week, revealed the dramatic effects of climate change on the Alps region. The Convention on the Protection of the Alps was established in 1991 and is headquartered out of Bolzano, Italy. The Convention report published on 17 June 2009 is its [...]

Proponents of Carbon-Capture-and-Storage (CCS) have long hailed the technology as the silver bullet that will enable the world to both fight climate change and keep using coal reserves. In Germany, the debate about the merits and pitfalls of this approach has once again surfaced. It highlights three key problems with using CCS to solve the [...]

Seven years ago, Hamburg sold its municipal energy provider to the Swedish utility Vattenfall. Yesterday, in a telling example of changed thinking on energy policy, Hamburg’s Green environment minister announced the start of construction for the first (admittedly tiny) windpark operated by the city’s newly created municipal energy provider. The re-claiming of political control over [...]

Introduced as a seemingly small addition to make the Germany’s economic stimulus package seem more specific in helping consumers and the automotive industry, the wrecking bonus has become a breathtaking success. It’s formula is very simple: anyone who buys a new car which meets EURO IV exhaust limits gets 2500€ from the government as long [...]