Energy and Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms, and Climate Change

"Energy and Power explains the deeper history behind Germany's daring campaign to refashion its energy system on a foundation of renewable power. It shows how the Federal Republic passed through five energy transitions since 1945 that fundamentally reshaped its politics, society, and economics. West Germany's transition to oil in the 1950s and 1960s unleashed a series of crises that politicized energy. This launched the nation on a trajectory that departed radically from the United States in emphasizing first the need for energy savings and eventually calling for the aggressive promotion of renewable power at a federal level. Where most scholars explain Germany's special energy path through its anti-nuclear movement and Green party, Energy and Power shows how this trajectory resulted from a synthesis of outsiders and political insiders, who wanted to change the nation's energy system for reasons of exports, geopolitical security, modernization, and jobs more than anything else. In contrast to neoliberal policymakers in the United States and Britain, who sought to protect free markets them from political intervention after the 1970s, German experts and leaders developed a new energy paradigm-Ecological Modernization-which embraced the fact that social actors working through corporatist negotiation should determine the basic orientation of the energy system. Even before global warming became a pressing concern, and for reasons that had little to do with climate change, Germans integrated ideas about the social cost of energy with new theories of technological change to unleash a novel, state-guided, green energy transition"--
A novel exploration of the deeper political, economic, and geopolitical history behind Germany's daring campaign to restructure its energy system around green power. Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in solar and wind technology. But this pioneering energy transition has been plagued with problems. In Energy and Power, Stephen G. Gross explains the deeper origins of the Energiewende--Germany's transition to green energy--and offers the first comprehensive history of German energy and climate policy from World War II to the present. The book follows the Federal Republic as it passed through five energy transitions from the dramatic shift to oil that nearly wiped out the nation's hard coal sector, to the oil shocks and the rise of the Green movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the co-creation of a natural gas infrastructure with Russia, and the transition to renewable power today. He shows how debates over energy profoundly shaped the course of German history and influenced the landmark developments that define modern Europe. As Gross argues, the intense and early politicization of energy led the Federal Republic to diverge from the United States and rethink its fossil economy well before global warming became a public issue, building a green energy system in the name of many socialgoals. Yet Germany's experience also illustrates the difficulty, the political battles, and the unintended consequences that surround energy transitions.By combining economy theory with a study of interest groups, ideas, and political mobilization, Energy and Power offers a novel explanation for why energy transitions happen. Further, it provides a powerful lens to move beyond conventional debates on Germany's East-West divide, or its postwar engagement with the Holocaust, to explore how this nation has shaped the contemporary world in other important ways.