Climate Democracy

In this 5-part audio series, Sandy Hausman, an HBF Energy and Climate Media Fellow for 2015, reports on recent advancements in marine energy development in Europe and the U.S. These stories were originally published for Virginia Public Radio. 

In the first week of June, the Czech government adopted an action plan that is supposed to lead to the construction of four new reactors in the country—first in Dukovany and then in Temelín. The government’s decision, however, is not the product of a rational political debate; it is the result of the long-term erosion of responsible governing. Therefore, the Czech Republic can serve as a textbook case of how decisions about the future of energy should not be made.  

Sandy Hausman, a 2015 Media Fellow of Heinrich Boell North America, investigates the secrets behind Denmark's success with wind power in part one of her series.

Part two of a series by Sandy Hausman, a 2015 Energy and Climate Media Fellow for Heinrich Böll North America, on offshore wind power in the US and Europe. Part 2 explores the linkages between wind farming in Denmark and Virginia.

Four years after Fukushima, global nuclear power generation continues to slow. This year's World Nuclear Industry Status Report takes a look at the current empirical facts and figures of the nuclear industry worldwide. 

Violent conflicts and security crises around the world have many different causes and effects. The vast majority of them, however, are in one way or another related to energy policy. Yet making this link apparent to policy makers has been challenging. Experts from the foreign policy, security and energy communities have been reluctant to fully grasp the security implications of promising green energy technology and market developments.

Stephanie Joyce, a 2015 Energy and Climate Media Fellow for Heinrich Böll North America, investigates how the tiny Danish island of Bornholm makes electricity demand meet supply in part one of her series.

Smart energy infrastructure and an entrepreneurial spirit will play an important role in driving energy transitions around the world. At the end of June, Cem Oezdemir, Co-Chairman of the German Green Party, travelled to San Francisco to witness how innovative solutions are driving low-carbon development in the Bay Area. We spoke with him about how California could serve as a model for German start-ups.

The restructuring of the energy system in one of the world’s leading industrialized nations is undoubtedly a highly ambitious undertaking. There is no blueprint for this energy transition that would offer a simple step-by-step procedure to follow. There is one thing that the German energy transition certainly is not: an island of its own that isolates Germany’s energy economy. On the contrary, a quick overview of the world’s state of affairs with regard to energy shows that the global energy transition is now picking up speed.