994
edits
Students:Kristýna Sosnovcová: Difference between revisions
→== A personal reflection ==
| Line 50: | Line 50: | ||
The topic is in general greatly relevant to our country because of several factors. First, Germany is a powerful member of the EU and therefore it plays an important role other than in policy making. For now the EU has adopted Directive 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from Renewable sources (RS) where the target is to achieve 20 % of energy (electricity, heating, transport etc.) from RS in the EU by taking individual national goals. The Czech Republic unsurprisingly accepted the low target of 13% because our starting position in 2010 was rather weak (we had only 9% energy from RS) but also because our government doesn't like to be challenged. The situation in Germany wasn't much different - they adopted only 18% goal from the 11% starting level in 2010. After the Fukusima catastrophe it changed and now Germany is working on 100 % energy from RS by 2050. The idea looks very nice - instead of burning fossil fuels they will use never-ending sources of energy. It means that Germany can be a pioneering country which can show the others whether it is possible to go this way and how sustainable RS is. Furthermore, thanks to government support there will be intensive research into technologies which, as I hope, will lead toward higher efficiency and new possibilities - another thing which is necessary to do but not popular because it doesn't bring money now but in the long-term. | The topic is in general greatly relevant to our country because of several factors. First, Germany is a powerful member of the EU and therefore it plays an important role other than in policy making. For now the EU has adopted Directive 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from Renewable sources (RS) where the target is to achieve 20 % of energy (electricity, heating, transport etc.) from RS in the EU by taking individual national goals. The Czech Republic unsurprisingly accepted the low target of 13% because our starting position in 2010 was rather weak (we had only 9% energy from RS) but also because our government doesn't like to be challenged. The situation in Germany wasn't much different - they adopted only 18% goal from the 11% starting level in 2010. After the Fukusima catastrophe it changed and now Germany is working on 100 % energy from RS by 2050. The idea looks very nice - instead of burning fossil fuels they will use never-ending sources of energy. It means that Germany can be a pioneering country which can show the others whether it is possible to go this way and how sustainable RS is. Furthermore, thanks to government support there will be intensive research into technologies which, as I hope, will lead toward higher efficiency and new possibilities - another thing which is necessary to do but not popular because it doesn't bring money now but in the long-term. | ||
On the other | On the other hand, after listening to the lecture on the topic it seems to me that Germany first made the target and after that started to count whether they can fulfill the limits. It is clear that Germany cannot stop all its nuclear power plants and replace them by RS so at the beginning they have to buy energy from their neighbors (e.g. Czech), energy which is produced from fossil fuels. Besides that, renewable technologies are quite materially demanding, even though it is improving, and it also matters where these materials came from, how they were mined or where e.g. where wind turbines were produced. If Germany doesn't consider all the consequences of its 100 % policy, it would exploit other countries and wouldn't reduce CO2 emissions but only transfer responsibility to different states. I would say that similar problems occurred with the promotion of energy from biomass in EU by the Biomass Action Plan 2005: a target was set and subsidised but no one had thought about the land use change it would cause, high GHG emissions by transporting biomass from Latin America to Europe or the loss of biodiversity due to the farming of monocultures. | ||
One other thing is that one country can afford to try such a change but if a huge number of countries follow Germany where they will find the resources and what consequences will it cause? Fortunately, the Czech public doesn't sympathize with RS after the PV issue and green topics are not popular in political discussions, therefore the Czech Republic is secure for several years. | |||