{"id":1184,"date":"2012-01-11T14:56:42","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T19:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/farmers-and-other-people-own-most-of-germanys-reneable-energy-production.html"},"modified":"2012-01-11T14:56:42","modified_gmt":"2012-01-11T19:56:42","slug":"farmers-and-other-people-own-most-of-germanys-reneable-energy-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/farmers-and-other-people-own-most-of-germanys-reneable-energy-production.html","title":{"rendered":"Farmers and other people own most of Germany’s reneable energy production"},"content":{"rendered":"Power companies aren’t the only possible owners of solar power farms,\nand centralized isn’t the only power distribution model.\nIn Germany, most renewable energy production is owned by\npeople, not power companies.\n

\nMatthew McDermott wrote for Treehugger 6 January 2011,\n\nOver Half of Germany’s Renewable Energy Owned By Citizens & Farmers, Not Utility Companies<\/a>\n

\nGermany’s promotion of renewable energy rightly gets singled out for\n\n<\/a>\nits effectiveness, most often by me as an example of how to do\nthings well versus the fits and starts method of promotion common in\nthe US. Over at Wind-Works, Paul Gipe points out another interesting\nfacet of the German renewable energy saga: 51% of all renewable\nenergy in Germany is owned by individual citizens or farms, totaling\n$100 billion worth of private investment in clean energy.\n

\nBreaking that down into solar power and wind power, 50% of Germany’s\nsolar PV is owned by individuals and farms, while 54% of its wind\npower is held by the same groups.\n<\/blockquote>\nNot only is that more distributed, but it also may be a faster\nway to get solar deployed:\n

\nIn total there’s roughly 17 GW of solar PV installed in\nGermany—versus roughly 3.6 GW in the US (based on SEIA’s\nfigures for new installations though the third quarter of 2011 plus\nthe 2.6 GW installed going into the year).\n

\nRemember, Germany now produces slightly over 20% of all its\nelectricity from renewable sources.\n<\/blockquote>\nNothing prevents Georgia Power or Colquitt Electric\nor any of the other power companies operating in Georgia from\nleading the solar pack.\nFor example, power companies concerned that solar doesn’t produce\nat night could still deploy solar peak load generation,\nthus dispensing with natural gas peak load generation.\n

\nWhile the power companies are not leading,\nprivate organizations such as\nTabby Solar<\/a>,\nfounded by a pair of doctors,\nare forging ahead anyway.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Power companies aren’t the only possible owners of solar power farms, and centralized isn’t the only power distribution model. In Germany, most renewable energy production is owned by people, not power companies. Matthew McDermott wrote for Treehugger 6 January 2011, Over Half of Germany’s Renewable Energy Owned By Citizens & Farmers, Not Utility Companies Germany’s […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,557,14,18,558,23,24,36],"tags":[944,8780,586,886,8701,8708,8781,250,8713,8714,3225,8716],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-colquitt-emc","category-economy","category-georgia-power","category-germany","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-citizens","tag-colquitt-emc","tag-distributed-generation","tag-farmers","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-germany","tag-people","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-tabby-solar","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-j6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}