Professor of Political Science Carol Hager and Christoph Stefes of the University of Colorado, Denver, have co-edited the book Germany’s Energy Transition: A Comparative Perspective.
Hager also wrote the book’s first chapter, The Grassroots Origins of the German Energy Transition. Much of the chapter focuses on The Freiburg region of Germany, which was also the destination for the 360° Hager taught with Associate Professor of Geology Don Barber and Professor of Philosophy and Religion Bob Dostal in fall 2015, Climate Change: Science & Politics. While in Freiburg, students got to meet and talk to many of the people cited in the book. There will be another trip to the region in the fall of 2017 when the faculty group reprises the 360°.
“With all the bad news right now regarding climate change, and more specifically, the lack of political will to deal with the problem, this book might give readers some hope,” says Hager. “It is focused on solutions, first analyzing Germany's pioneering energy transition and then describing the different paths other leading world economies are taking to promote renewable energy.”
More from the publisher:
"This book analyzes Germany's path-breaking Energiewende, the country's transition from an energy system based on fossil and nuclear fuels to a sustainable energy system based on renewables. The authors explain Germany's commitment to a renewable energy transition on multiple levels of governance, from the local to the European, focusing on the sources of institutional change that made the transition possible. They then place the German case in international context through comparative case studies of energy transitions in the USA, China, and Japan. These chapters highlight the multifaceted challenges, and the enormous potential, in different paths to a sustainable energy future. Taken together, they tell the story of one of the most important political, economic, and social undertakings of our time."
Hager is also author of Technological Democracy: Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the German Energy Debate and co-editor of NIMBY is Beautiful: Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation Around the World.