Thom Hartmann: Transforming the world by revitalizing democracy. Welcome back, Thom Hartmann here with you live on radio stations from coast to coast, on TV stations from coast to coast, on satellite television, on Dish Network and on DirecTV, the two satellite networks, TV satellite networks, in the United States, we are live. Welcome back to our program.
What do you do if you are a largely landlocked country that is one of the cloudiest countries in Europe, I lived there for a year, I can tell you, second cloudiest behind England and you need more power but your people are not all that excited about building nuclear power plants, you don’t have any oil, you want to conserve your coal resources, and this is right after Chernobyl so people are definitely not enthusiastic about nuclear power plants. What do you do?
Well, Hans-Josef Fell, along with Hermann Scheer a colleague of his, in the German Parliament, he’s a member of the Green Party in the German Parliament, framed legislation to take on this issue. And EnergyWatchGroup.org, the website. And Hans-Josef Fell, the German legislator on the line with us, from Germany. Sir, welcome to the program.
Hans-Josef Fell: Yeah, hi Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you very much for being here. How do I address you by the way, is there a title?
Hans-Josef Fell: No, I have no title.
Thom Hartmann: Okay. Tell us about the legislation. How did you organize, how did you organize it so that Germany could have so much solar power that you’re generating I think it’s 8 megawatts now, about the same as 8 nuclear power plants, from just putting solar panels on people’s roofs?
Hans-Josef Fell: Yes. It took a long time and before I went to the German Parliament I organized in a lot of cities in Germany a feed-in tariff for solar power and this was very successful so a lot of people in the parliament and with the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party wanted to get such in law. I personally wrote the proposal of this law and when this law came in force in 2000 and it created a huge increase in rate of renewable energies: of solar energy, of wind power, biogas and geothermal, hydropower and we can, could get really fast and high increasing rate in industry process. So we had 30 thousand jobs in 1998 and today ten years later we have about 300 thousand jobs.
Thom Hartmann: In the solar industry or in the renewable energy industry you’ve gone to 300 thousand…
Hans-Josef Fell: In renewable energy completely.
Thom Hartmann: That is remarkable. We’re talking with Hans-Josef Fell of the Green Party in Germany, the German Parliament, one of the co-authors of the legislation that solarized Germany. Sir, I lived in Germany back in the ‘80s and I go back every year and I, 10 years ago when I would take the train from, I lived in Stadtsteinach by Kulmbach over in the Frankenwald. And I would take that train west to east from Frankfurt where I’d fly in all the way over to Bayreuth or to Kulmbach and looking up I would see just normal houses. Now I as, just a few months ago I was there and I took that train, and looking north at the southern exposure of people’s roofs, it seems like in some cities 1/3 or more of the houses are covered with solar panels now. How did you bring that about?
Hans-Josef Fell: Yes. The basic was the law I mentioned and the second was we have a lot of people who want to cancel nuclear power, who want to make climate protection with renewable energies and they made it for themselves. The concept of buying of electricity coming from the utilities and made the electricity by themselves on their houses and so, especially in Bavaria, we have so much solar roof panels on the houses that we have more photovoltaic installed than Japan and USA together.
Thom Hartmann: Amazing. And you did this, my understanding is that you did this by guaranteeing, allowing the banks to give low interest mortgages to people to put these on their roofs and guaranteeing that for the banks so it was no risk for the banks and by also forcing essentially the utility companies to buy electricity back for a certain period of time at a premium price so that when somebody puts a solar panel on their roof it basically doesn’t cost them anything. Do I have that right?
Hans-Josef Fell: Yes that’s right. It is very important that we must enrich our economy to a climate protection economy and also an energy secure economy with renewable energies. And this is possible when the investors get involved with the investment into renewable energies and not to profit into climate polluting with oil and natural gas and with coal and make nuclear waste. This is problematic with the conventional energies like you see in the moment like the Gulf Disaster, the spill disaster.
Thom Hartmann: Yes.
Hans-Josef Fell: And we can hope that this feed-in tariff law can come also to USA and it will bring a lot of huge investment and the people will be happy because they can make a profit with climate protection.
Thom Hartmann: Well and in the USA we’ve got large chunks of our country that get a lot more sunlight than Germany does. I mean, I just find it amazing that the second cloudiest country in Europe has the most solar energy.
Hans-Josef Fell: Yes, Germany has so much cloud as Alaska. And we have, in spite of this, a lot of sunshine. We could produce all the electricity that we need in Germany only on the roofs of German houses. But this is not the target. We have also wind power and we have also hydro and biogas stations and others so that we have no need to match, to bring the solar panels to all roofs. But it is one part, very important part for a strategy to come to a hundred percent renewable energies. At the moment we have an increasing rate in the last ten years and no one could imagine that it happened so fast. We set the target in 2000 in the law that we would reach in 10 years, 2010, about 12% coming from 6%. Most people told us, oh it is not realistic, it is unattainable. But we have now 17% share already and we see it goes very fast. And when we go on with the same increasing rate what we had in the last ten years we could serve whole Germany til 2030 completely to electricity with 100% renewable electricity.
Thom Hartmann: Amazing. Hans-Josef Fell, the, along with Hermann Scheer, the co-author of the legislation that made all this possible in Germany, or much of this possible in the German Parliament, member of the Green Party. The website, EnergyWatchGroup.org. Sir, thank you so much.
Hans-Josef Fell: Thank you very much too.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
