After the exhilarating experience of Eberswalde and a late return by train to Berlin (it was after 11 PM before we were back at the hostel), it was time for a more relaxed schedule. We had only two appointments and the first wasn’t until 10:30 in the morning.
Just two appointments. But they were good ones. The first took us to Berlin Mitte (literally, the middle of Berlin), where we were scheduled to meet with Kerstin Meyer, Senior Associate of Agora Verkehrswende, which is spin-off from Agora Energiewende, a think tank that focuses on the German energy transition in a European and international context. Funded by the Mercator Foundation and the European Climate Foundation, Agora Energiewende is a major player informing government, industry, the press, and citizens about issues relating to energy. The current director is Klaus Töpfer, who has for many years been the “climate conscience” of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is an organization with a lot credibility that doesn’t shy away from controversial issues. Agora Energiewende has been at the forefront of those insisting that an explicit and substantive coal phase-out is urgently needed.
Agora Verkehrswende was created a year ago. As the name suggests, its focus is on reforming or revolutionizing the transportation sector (Verkehr equals traffic). With major car makers (VW, Audi, Daimler-Benz, and Porsche) and an ongoing national love affair with the automobile, not to mention the role of automobile manufacturing in the economy and the still unfolding diesel emissions scandal, Germany has its work cut out for it. Attempts by the federal government to incentivize the purchase of e-cars have been lackluster. Against this background, we were eager to find out more from Kerstin Meyer.
Kerstin has considerable experience working in transportation policy. For ten years, she worked as an environmental lobbyist in Brussels with the European Environmental Bureau and Transport & Environment. More recently, she was an advisor to the Green Party Bundestag Representative with the transportation portfolio.
Kerstin didn’t mince words. The challenge of the Verkehrswende is to decouple growth from transportation emissions. Despite twenty years of efforts, there has been no reduction in transport-related emissions during that time. Kerstin told us that the Verkehrswende consists of two parts: a mobility transition (meaning a qualitative change in how transportation works that results in major reductions in energy use), and an energy transition in the transportation system (meaning an on-going de-carbonization of the transportation sector).
One of the things we keep an eye out for when we talk with experts in sustainability is the source of their optimism and enthusiasm. In other words, what gives them hope. For Kerstin, it was clearly the vision of a fully transformed transportation system, where cars lose their priority on the urban street, ceding it to pedestrians and bicyclists (much like we saw in Dutch cities already), and car-sharing enabled by autonomous cars and the internet radically reduces rates of private car ownership. Did she think that Germany would take the lead in the Verkehrswende in the way that it had with the Energiewende? No. For the future of transportation, her eyes were on California.
Kerstin told us there were two people who wanted to see us before we left. Who might they be? They were in fact Martha Otwinowski and Benjamin Wehrmann, both of Clean Energy Wire, a journalistic initiative also funded by Mercator and the European Climate Foundation. CLEW sends out a daily digest of German energy news, prepares fact sheets and dossiers, and conducts workshops for international journalists. I’m not sure who was more surprised—we because of the unexpected opportunity to meet with the people who wrote a lot of the material we read in preparation for the trip, or they to find that they had an avid fan base of American students at the University of Pennsylvania.
Our second appointment was with Professor Claudia Kemfert, Director of the Department of Energy, Transportation and Environment at the Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW, German Institute for Economic Research). She is the foremost environmental economist in Germany, a powerful public promoter of the economic and environmental necessity of the Energiewende. We had asked her to talk to us about why the Energiewende was stalling.
The DIW building is also in Mitte, kitty-corner from the North Korean Embassy where a small demonstration was taking place, despite the rain. Elevators took us up to Claudia’s domain on the top floor where the rain continued to pelt the sky lights in the seminar room. Claudia greeted us, referring to the fact that the 2017 Earth Overshoot Day would be on August 2. That is the day by which humans on the planet will have used more ecological resources and services from nature than the planet can renew in a year. The US had already hit its Overshoot Day on March 31. Obviously, the whole earth needs an Energiewende.
But our purpose was to talk about the stalled Energiewende in Germany. After laying out all the climate, health, and economic benefits of transitioning to renewables (and phasing out coal!)—just think of the millions of jobs created worldwide and the many more that will be created—Claudia’s basic point was that it came down to a lack of political will. Against the backdrop of a slide showing us the optimal fully integrated energy system, Claudia confirmed that most Germans pat themselves on the back and think they’ve already taken care of that—surely all those wind turbines and solar panels must mean something. In other words, Germans have become complacent because of the deservedly good press that the initial Energiewende received, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of CLEW! Germany did ramp up renewables to unprecedented levels for an industrial nation—hats off, by all means. But it’s only the electricity we’re talking about here and until coal is phased out, and the transportation and agriculture sectors are decarbonized and greened, the overall energy mix won’t change significantly.
We came away from our meeting with Claudia Kemfert with the feeling that Germany had carried the energy transition baton for a good distance and definitely had a powerful impact on the world in terms of policy, innovation, and expertise. There is vast expertise in Germany, in the universities, businesses, government, NGOs, R&D, and happily it’s being placed at the disposal of nations and companies around the world. But it doesn’t make sense for us to look to Germany to carry the baton the rest of the way. Another nation—but which?—especially in the aftermath of Trump’s intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement—will have to carry it further. Will it be China?
And so ended our quiet Berlin day. Groups and individuals set out to discover more of this amazing city, which somehow manages to combine vibrancy with laid-back charm, like a relaxed and horizontal NYC, if you can imagine that! For my part, I got together with an old friend from Wernigerode (in the Harz Mountains) and we celebrated our recent 60th birthdays with a delicious vegetarian meal near Südstern.
Simon