ENVIRONMENT-EUROPE: The Light Could Go All Green by 2050
By Julio Godoy
BERLIN, Jun 9 (IPS) - The EU could meet all its electricity demands from renewable energy sources such as wind and the sun by 2050 if governments take the right decisions now, leading environment and energy experts say.
Governments must stop authorising the building of traditional generators such as coal-fired power plants, accelerate the phasing out of nuclear power, and instead support investment in efficient use of renewable sources, the experts say.
Olav Hohmeyer, professor of the economics of energy at the university of Flensburg, some 400 kilometres west of Berlin, and member of the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU, after its German name), told IPS that another fundamental requirement is modernisation of national grids. Modernisation of accumulators is also needed to compensate for the oscillations in the amount of electricity generated by unstable sources such as wind and the sun, Hohmeyer added.
Hohmeyer, co-author of a report presented to the German government in May on switching to full reliance on renewable energy by 2050, told IPS that with the increasing energy supply from renewable facilities,
nuclear and coal- fired power plants are becoming superfluous. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47144If the European Union cand do it WE CAN TOO.
But if we continue to SUBSIDIZE Nuclear power and big oil and coal we will never have the resources to make this transition and the earth will conitinue to get sicker and sicker as will we all.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
