Review of Switching To Solar: What We Can Learn from Germany's Success in Harnessing Clean Energy
Book Link: https://smile.amazon.com/Switching-Solar-Germanys-Success-Harnessing-ebook/dp/B005MXYWVS/ref=sr_1_3
This is the first book I've taken explicit notes for so I'm presenting here in note form, they may be a little choppy because of it. I basically framed these as takeaways from reading the book:
- Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush transition destroyed progress for solar in the United States -- Reagan especially
- Effectiveness of solar panels on every roof is much higher than clusters of arrays in a field. Almost as if operating in an industrial mindset to centralize pollution/resources is being applied but should be the opposite approach for solar power
- Nuclear power is a waste of money and has a huge downside on top of it, e.g. contaminated water leaks. Rancho Seco found radioactive iodine in drinking milk from nearby grazing cows.
- Proximity to Chernobyl drove Germany and Switzerland to focus on non-nuclear futures which drove PV use early on. No personal use initially, was all for the grid. Charged 1% to all customers to pay solar generators as power companies and gave them a little profit from it.
- Every successful solar result seemed to start with a single person that had the means (knowledge, finances, connections, time, etc) to create a prototype to show solar would work and also had political clout and abilities to write the formal Bills/Proposals. Not much detail provided on what it took to get funded and passed through. The pattern feels familiar to what Green New Deal is going through but does not address the political headwinds it is facing.
- One example of non-political clout was using "speeches" process and filling a room with people while lining up support for the cause with politicians beforehand -- lead to the 100,000 roofs program