Energy transition
Energy transition refers to the shift from our current energy model, based on fossil fuels, to a model based on sustainable energy (which excludes nuclear energy). This involves a genuine political will to make the transition happen, translating into government-set targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing the proportion of renewable energy in each country’s energy mix. Yet despite the obvious need to combat climate change, improved energy security resulting from lower dependency on fossil fuels (which are mainly imported), the positive employment impact (as renewable energy favors local employment) and widespread support from public opinion, this transition is confronting funding difficulties and intensive lobbying by traditional energy producers which are impeding the change process. Like any emerging industry, the renewable energies sector needs financial support from the public authorities to make these energies competitive compared with fossil fuels (via preferential feed-in tariffs for electricity from renewables, etc.).
It is true that major investments, both public and private, are being made all over the world in order to increase electricity production from renewables (especially wind, solar, etc.). Yet meeting the commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement requires not just replacing fossil fuels by renewables but also changing consumer behaviors in order to dramatically reduce societies’ energy needs, especially in terms of heating (the passive house concept). This aim, of energy sobriety, is one of the most politically sensitive because it requires lifestyle changes that political leaders find challenging to take on.
In Germany, scheduled to complete its withdrawal from nuclear energy in 2022, the 2016 energy transition law set ambitious targets for reducing GHG emissions, the proportion of renewables in electricity production and reducing energy consumption overall. While the current trajectory makes it unlikely that the country will hit all its targets, this policy is part of an industrial development strategy that seeks to position Germany as a global leader in renewable energy.
Energy transition in Germany, 1990-2050
- fossil fuels > Fossil fuels
- {alias} Fossil energies
- energy mix > Energy mix
- Breakdown of the various primary energy sources (coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, etc.) used to produce energy consumed in the form of electricity, gasoline, etc. Each country’s energy mix reflects its available energy sources along with political and industrial choices favoring particular energy sources – as with the emphasis on nuclear energy in France. Fossil fuels still largely dominate the global energy mix.
- climate change > Climate changes
- The UN defines climate change as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], 1992). The expression is used to describe global warming of the Earth’s surface, whose extent and rapidity are without precedent in the planet’s history, and results from the increase in anthropic greenhouse gas emissions (principally carbon dioxide and CO2, but also methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride).
- public opinion > Public Opinion
- This term refers to all socially constructed representations expressed by the media, in surveys and by members of the elites, conveying what the population is said to think about current issues. Public opinion may also be expressed on international matters. Many actors, including NGOs, charities, companies and international organizations, refer to “international public opinion,” and in so doing give it a degree of social existence. However, transposition to the international level of a concept already contested at the national level is problematic. The rise of transnational activism and solidarity, expressed through protest movements and lobbies, does not necessarily express global public opinion.
- lobbying > Lobby
- Pressure or interest group whose aim is to influence political authorities so that they make decisions in the interest of that group’s members. Lobbies are recognized and accepted in varying degrees within the political cultures of different countries – and their methods and actions can involve varying degrees of transparency and legitimacy. Given the increasing technical complexity of trade negotiations and the intricacy of decision-making levels and processes, today lobbyists are amassing funding proportional to the interests they are defending and using high-level experts to prepare their dossiers. They play an important role in legislative development processes in the United States, in the institutions of the European Union and in the WTO.
- renewable energies > Renewable energies
- Energy sources which are naturally renewable, making them inexhaustible on a human timescale, and which are not depleted by consumption. The main renewable energies used worldwide are biomass (though its renewability depends on how its production is managed), hydroelectricity, wind power, solar power and geothermal energy.
- development > Development
- Definitions of development and its opposite – underdevelopment – have varied considerably according to the political objectives and ideological positions of those using these words. In the 1970s, Walt Whitman Rostow conceived of it as an almost mechanical process involving successive stages of economic growth and social improvement, whereas Samir Amin analyzed the relationships between center and peripheries, seeing the development of the former as founded on the exploitation of the latter. In Latin America, the dependency theory condemned the ethnocentrism of the universal view that the “periphery” of underdeveloped states could simply catch up through modernization. Talking of poor or developing “countries” masks the inequalities that also exist within societies (in both Northern and Southern hemispheres) and individuals’ connections to globalization processes.