THE ENERGY TRANSITION TAKES SHAPE

Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind

Justin Gillis, Sept. 13, 2014 (NY Times)

"...Germans will soon be getting 30 percent of their power from renewable energy sources. Many smaller countries are beating that, but Germany is by far the largest industrial power to reach that level…It is more than twice the percentage in the United States…[It] is driving down costs faster than almost anyone thought possible…Electric utility executives all over the world are watching nervously as technologies they once dismissed as irrelevant begin to threaten their long-established business plans. Fights are erupting across the United States over the future rules for renewable power. Many poor countries, once intent on building coal-fired power plants to bring electricity to their people, are discussing whether they might leapfrog the fossil age and build clean grids from the outset…A reckoning is at hand…The word the Germans use for their plan is…energiewende, the energy transition. Worldwide, Germany is being held up as a model…But it is becoming clear that the transformation, if plausible, will be wrenching. Some experts say the electricity business is entering a period of turmoil beyond anything in its 130-year history, a disruption potentially as great as those that have remade the airlines, the music industry and the telephone business…” click here for more

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