Towering like a beacon of hope in Germany’s North Sea stand wind turbines. Stretching as high as 60-story buildings and standing as far as 60 miles from the mainland, the turbines are part of Germany’s push to find a solution to global warming.
Some call it change. Some call it transformation. We call it a revolution.
According to an article in the The New York Times, it is expected that by the end of the year, scores of new turbines will be set in place – thus allowing low-emission electricity to be sent to German cities hundreds of miles south.
The push is part of what Germany is calling “energiewende” – the energy transition. With this, Germany hopes to remake its electrical system and achieve its goal of 30 percent of all power received from renewable energy sources. This would far outpace the United States, which gets roughly half that percentage from renewable sources.
This from German Energiewende:
The burning of coal, oil, and gas is causing our climate to overheat. Our current energy supply is not sustainable. One major aim of the German Energiewende is to decarbonize energy supplied by switching to renewable sources and reducing demand by means of greater efficiency.
The Issue at Large
According to The Climate Reality Project, all of the coal, oil, and gas known to humans has the same energy as the sun shines on us in 20 days. In conjunction with this, the United Sates Environmental Protection Agency reports that the earth’s average temperature has risen 1.4°F over the past century – the leading cause of this increase being the burning of fossil fuels.
Small changes in the earth’s average temperature can lead to big, and potentially dangerous, shifts in climate and weather.
A Piece of the Solution
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