The contradictions in Germany’s energy policy are coming home to roost. It’s struggling to balance efforts to combat climate change while at the same time shutting down its nuclear power plants. The difficulty of doing both things at the same time were starkly exposed by a United Nations science report released Monday, which found that if the world is to hit a goal of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the role of low-emitting nuclear energy is likely to rise significantly. That’s not something the backers of Germany’s ambitious shift to renewable energy — called the Energiewende — want to hear, and the strains of holding on to all the different strands of the policy are beginning to show. Chancellor Angela Merkel is being buffeted by tensions between the country’s environmentalists and industrialists.
Politico 10th Oct 2018 read more »
A non-profit Berlin tech startup has offered to buy the remaining 200 hectares of an ancient German forest to save it from being destroyed for coal surface mining. Ecosia, a search engine which donates the majority of its advertising revenue to conservation initiatives and funded the planting of almost 40m trees across the world, has approached the energy firm RWE with an offer of €1m (£877,000) to secure the final stretch of the 12,000-year-old Hambach forest in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Guardian 9th Oct 2018 read more »