Example of Germany shows that energy transition is affordable

The real lesson of the German Energiewende is not that the transition to renewables is very expensive. Quite the contrary: it is affordable in highly industrialised countries, writes Tomas Unnerstall in an article in the journal Energy, Sustainability and Society.  “There [is] no doubt that the German Energiewende, at first sight, does not serve as an encouraging example in this respect”, Unnerstall argues. “A closer look at the costs of the German energy transition, however, reveals that around 75 percent of them are due to two particularities of the Energiewende that do not hold true for other energy transitions: the politically enforced nuclear phase-out and the fact that Germany massively expanded renewable energies at a time when they were still very expensive.”

Read the article in English here.