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“Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy”

11:00 a.m. in 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building, UC Berkeley campus. Co-sponsored by the Energy and Resources Group.

View talk online

Abstract:
For 200 years, industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has had perilous consequences. On the one hand there is the insecurity of relying on the world’s most unstable region ‘ the Middle East ‘ compounded by the imminence of peak oil, growing scarcity and mounting prices. On the other, the potentially cataclysmic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, as the evidence of accelerating climate change shows.

Yet, there is a solution: to make the transition to renewable sources of energy and distributed, decentralized energy generation. It is a model that has been proven, technologically, commercially and politically, as Hermann Scheer comprehensively demonstrates. The alternative of a return to nuclear power ‘ again being widely advocated ‘ he shows to be compromised and illusory.

The advantages of renewable energy are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis ‘ which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests oppose the transition and what must be done to overcome these obstacles.

Biography:
Dr. Hermann Scheer is a member of the German Parliament, President of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energy, and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. He devoted the greatest part of his political and scientific life to the replacement of nuclear and fossil fuels with environmentally sound energy sources. In the German Parliament, the German Renewable Energy Feed-in-Tariff-Law, the new Federal Building Law (prioritising Renewable Energies) and the Tax-Free-Law for Biofuels are based on his initiatives. These laws became the most successful Renewable Energy industrial promotion and application worldwide.

Dr. Scheer has received numerous awards including the World Wind Energy Award, the World Prize on Bio-Energy and the World Solar Prize as well as the Alternative Nobel Prize. In 2002 Time Magazine recognized him as one of five ‘Heroes for the Green Century’.

His previous books include The Solar Economy (2002) and A Solar Manifesto (1994).