Europe's Energy Transformation

When residents of the small city of Freiburg, Germany, go to school or work in the morning, they pass dozens of solar installations. There are solar panels on homes, on churches, on the facade of the main train station, on the soccer stadium, throughout a "solar housing development" and a "solar business park" and on the roofs of schools. All told, Freiburg's solar photovoltaic (PV) installations produce enough electricity to meet the needs of tens of thousands of homes.

Additionally, five large wind turbines are situated on hilltops within the city's boundaries and contribute to the town's energy supply. Small hydroelectric plants sit on the river, as well as combined heat and power plants and biomass plants that burn biogas and rapeseed oil, along with other facilities that burn wood chips and pellets.

Freiburg is known as a "Green City," but it is not atypical for the region or the nation. In May 2012, solar PV supplied 10 percent of Germany's electricity. During the first nine months of 2012, Germany produced enough electricity from renewable energy sources including wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric plants to supply 26 percent of its demand.

This capacity has been growing rapidly from year to year, and renewables already represent roughly double the share of Germany's electricity production as compared to the United States.

A high percentage of renewable energy production is not unique to Germany. Spain has been averaging 30-31 percent renewable electricity in recent months, and Italy reached 24 percent renewables in its electricity production over the first 10 months of 2012. The Czech Republic also has installed enough solar to achieve nearly the same per-capita amount of solar electric generating capacity as Germany. In many other European nations, renewable energy capacities continue to grow rapidly.

In Germany, the shift toward renewable energy is called the Energiewende, roughly translated as the energy transformation. It includes not only a transition away from fossil fuels, but also away from nuclear power, particularly after the Fukushima Disaster of March 2011.

Few Americans know that this process is happening. And among those who do are those who would like to delay it happening here as long as possible.

The experiences of Europe have never been more relevant to our circumstances in the United States than now. Following Hurricane Sandy - the second most devastating storm to hit New York and the Northeast in as many years - the issue of global warming and climate change has taken on a new urgency. With the re-election of President Barack Obama, many environmentalists see the potential for national political action.

You would think that at this moment both activists and policymakers in the United States would be clamoring to follow Germany's lead. They aren't.

There are multiple probable explanations for why this is not happening. Regulatory barriers exist to establishing German-style policies here, but a larger problem is the ongoing political deadlock in Washington. This has narrowed our ideas of what is possible and reinforced an American exceptionalism, where we don't look to successful solutions from other nations.

Another central problem is that the US media has done a poor job of telling the story of the energy transformation, and misinformation abounds. While much of this confusion can be traced to the fossil fuel industries and right-wing think tanks, there is plenty of blame to spread around for the distortion.