Greening the Economy

The German Energiewende shows that the current German electricity system can easily cope with 25 percent renewables. But exceeding these 25 percent will be a crossroad, as now event the strongest proponents of the Energiewende agree that Germany needs to reform its energy system to accommodate for the next influx of renewables.

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013, launched on July 10th in Brussels, debunks the myth that the world is seeing a nuclear renaissance.Two years after Fukushima, global nuclear power generation continues to decline.

In his book Smart Growth: the Green Revolution, Ralf Fücks, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation argues that while the calls for the end of growth are not realistic there is a possibility to follow a growth pathway that goes hand-in-hand with ecological sustainability.

This summer the Heinrich Böll Foundation is leading several tours to enhance awareness of the renewable energy revolution in Europe. The tours include US congressional staff examining EU low carbon economies, US energy and climate funders looking at renewable communities, and American and European journalists focusing on environmental issues.

While the US energy sector is good for big business, Germany’s is good for citizens. Germans not only want clean power; they also want to make it themselves. When locals own and control their environment, the acceptance of renewables increases, argues Craig Morris.

Germany's tansition to a renewable energy economy will not succeed without smart grid technologies. They play an essential part in the "Energiewende" towards an electricity supply system based on high energy efficiency and changing renewable energy supplies. Upgrading the grid is the most urgent task, but restructuring it has to follow suit.  

Many powerful transnational corporations (TNCs) have growing influence over the governance of resources in sectors, such as energy and agriculture. This paper addresses the strategic dilemmas faced by civil society organizations that address corporate power in their struggles to curb global warming and achieve the human rights, including the rights to food and energy.

Natural resources are back on the agenda. After the rise of new economic powers such as China, India, and Brazil, global competition has perceptibly increased strategic concerns. Germany, the EU, the US and others have formulated raw material strategies that put concern over access and supply at center stage – but the environmental and the socio-political dimensions are widely neglected in these strategies.

On the eve of Rio+20, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung North America has asked several of its partners from civil society to reflect in short commentaries about some of the linkages and synergies between gender equity and key issue areas of sustainable development.

Since the first UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, we've seen a worsening of all important ecological trends, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and scarcity of resources. This essay describes a policy of less and wealth measured in "just enough" to allow a decent life without poverty for all.