Writer Foretold World's Solar Future More Than a Decade Ago

Hermann Scheer, perhaps the most influential person in modern times whom Americans have never heard of, died last month in Germany, just as the global energy transformation he foretold began to take root in this country.

Mr. Scheer explained in the early 1990s with his book “A Solar Manifesto” (in Germany, “Sonnenstrategie”) that large-scale solar energy development was blocked by political and not technical obstacles. In 1999, with the publication of “Solare Weltwirtschaft,” not published in English until 2002 as “The Solar Economy,” he examined the economic influences that in his view would drive a gradual but eventually unstoppable and revolutionary move to a solar global economy.

So far it appears that Mr. Scheer, whose academic training was in economics, social sciences and law, was right.

Countries such as his native Germany, along with Spain, Japan, China, India, Portugal, Israel, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Canada, Australia and others have been increasing solar electricity generation even in the midst of the worst global economic climate since the Depression. The Russian Federation is the latest to announce plans for solar development.

The United States, while slow in catching on, has in the past two months been making up for lost time. The federal and California governments in a matter of weeks have approved the construction of massive solar power plants in Southern California that together will generate thousands of megawatts of electricity, putting solar squarely in the mainstream as an energy source for the first time in the United States.

And this first wave of large U.S. solar installations is but a fraction of what is planned. For those wondering how and why this historic shift is occurring, Mr. Scheer’s decade-old book is an excellent place to begin.

In English, the full title of Mr. Scheer’s “Solare Weltwirtschaft” work is “The Solar Economy: Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future.”

A decade ago, with Mr. Scheer serving as a member of parliament, Germany erased one of the political barriers to solar development by adopting a law that pays people to produce solar electricity through a mechanism called a feed-in tariff.

“

The old dispute
of capitalism
versus socialism
pales into
insignificance
before the
life-or-death
choice of
renewable versus
non-renewable
sources.

”

Hermann Scheer
"The Solar Economy"

Nations compensate pioneering energy developers for their efforts because, as Mr. Scheer pointed out, “Energy and raw materials are the fundament of our economies,” and “Today, almost all human activity is critically dependent on energy produced from fossil fuels.”

“The resource base is far more fundamental to economic development than questions of political and social order,” he said in “The Solar Economy.” “The old dispute of capitalism versus socialism pales into insignificance before the life-or-death choice of renewable versus non-renewable sources.”

The idea in Germany was that the price paid for solar electricity through feed-in tariffs would decline over time as the industry developed and costs were reduced through economies of scale. In mid-2010, when Germany’s feed-in tariff was trimmed, widespread media reports predicted a crash of the country’s solar industry. Instead, solar installations this year have soared.

Mr. Scheer said in his book that many technological revolutions have reshaped societies throughout history, but none have taken effect without encountering massive resistance.

“The widespread resistance to renewable energy is motivated by fear of the changes this revolution would bring,” he said in his prescient 1999 book, just as California’s energy crisis was setting the stage for the gradual development of a robust solar photovoltaic marketplace in that state.

Mr. Scheer said at the time, when the use of solar power was negligible, that its future emergence as a global economic force stemmed in part from the fact that the sunlight resource is available everywhere to varying degrees. Fossil fuels, accessible only in a limited number of places, have long supply chains from extraction to end use that continue to grow longer.

“Conventional energy sources are assumed to have an economic advantage, whereas renewable energy sources are denounced as a burden that can be borne only in small doses,” Mr. Scheer said in “The Solar Economy.” However, “an examination of the entire supply chain for fossil fuel energy demonstrates that its claim to be more economical is a myth,” he added.

Pentagon officials, while emphasizing the national security benefits of solar energy development, have recently pointed out that it can cost $400 to deliver a gallon of gasoline to a unit in Afghanistan. The toll in lives lost from attacks on fuel convoys is incalculably higher.

A transition to a solar global economy will not be seamless, Mr. Scheer said, but will be like a “roller coaster ride” that eventually affects almost everything. However, like the Industrial Revolution, he predicted that it would unfold gradually, with countries and continents moving at different paces.

Although a dramatic shift to renewable energy will engender fear and resistance, it’s necessary for societies to advance and prosper, the author said.

“Making the groundbreaking transition to an economy based on solar energy and solar resources will do more to safeguard our common future than any other economic development since the Industrial Revolution,” he said.

Source - Solarhbj