TECN

Too much solar and wind power. Really? Is that possible? It’s a good problem to have, because if we’re going to beat climate change, we’re going to need way more low-carbon energy than we get now. But it’s still a problem for Germany.

Solar power production has grown more than 25 times over the last decade in Germany, spurred largely by big incentives for small producers to get into the market. But sunshine and wind power are intermittent, so engineers and others are looking for ways to balance out the flow of these renewable power sources through new storage technologies.

On December 15, 2014, the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted representatives of renewable energy associations from each of the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – in Washington. See interviews with them here about diversifying the energy mix to include more renewables.

Today, 60 percent of people in Copenhagen's city core commute by bike. In the greater Copenhagen area, over 40 percent do. “It’s not something that’s in Copenhagen’s genes, or that we’re weirder or stranger than any other people on earth,” Kabell says. “Every city can do this.”

On December 4, 2014, the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted representatives from the Sustainable Finance Lab and Carbon Tracker for a transatlantic discussion about the possible financial risks of the carbon bubble. You can listen the recording of the discussion and find the event materials here.

Standing on the shore of the Baltic sea a few miles outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, the view’s about what you’d expect. Rocky shore, grey horizon, a boat here or there. But this shore is special. Look up, and you’ll see — and hear — three giant offshore wind turbines cutting through the air. Each stands 500 feet tall, with three blades (each close to 200 feet long), spinning non-stop.

About an hour’s drive outside of Sevilla, Spain’s old city, past grazing black-footed pigs and olive orchards, sits the Abengoa Solucar complex, and it’s truly a sight: Imagine cresting a hill and then all of the sudden seeing several large towers, over 500 feet high, with hundreds of beams of light striking them — solar rays from an army of mirrors arrayed in a circle on the ground below. They’re called heliostats.

This fall the Heinrich Böll Foundation hosted a delegation of civil society representatives and journalists from Poland for a study tour to Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania and New York State to gain a better understanding of the effects that natural gas exploration have had on local communities along the Marcellus Shale. Tomasz Ulanowski, a reporter for the Polish daily newspaper Wyborcza, wrote this report.

A select group of American energy policy experts, who are engaged in finding new, cross-party solutions for energy and environmental policy, visited Germany, Denmark and Sweden to study the economic and ecological benefits of Europe’s transition to clean energy. Check out our Storify about the tour!

2014 journalism fellow Andy Marso reports about investments by European companies in Kansas wind.