This report is in the final product of the Midwest Renewable Energy Tour. It shares the German success of using policy to develop rural renewable energy projects and how farms in the US states of South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin can increase their renewable energy capacity.
Half way through the work of the Transitional Committee (TC), the 40-member body tasked by the COP 16 in Cancun to design the new Green Climate Fund (GCF) for approval by the Durban COP, member countries at their recent second meeting in Tokyo focused on further clarifying important points of convergence and divergence among countries. Many of these, though clearly not all, ran largely along a contributor county-recipient country dividing line.
Observed around the world with varying degrees of curiosity, high expectations and hopes, skepticism, potential good will or schadenfreude, Germany has embarked on probably the furthest reaching energy transformation of any industrialized country by its recent government decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2022.
Dirk Ketelsen, organic farmer and executive director of Dirkshof, a renewable energy producer and consultancy in Schleswig-Holstein, gives a first-hand report on the success of his investment in renewable energies.
