Germany is home to solar-powered football stadiums and funfairs but the country’s renewable energy future still faces obstacles.
German ambitions to generate the vast majority its power from the sun, wind and other renewable sources by the middle of the century are at risk from cuts to solar subsidies and weak EU clean energy targets, industry and experts say.
The country’s target of getting 80% of energy from renewable sources by 2050 is one of the few to match the scaling-up of renewable power that the UN’s climate science panel said on Sunday was needed to avoid “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” from global warming.
The Energiewende (‘Energy transition’) programme to chisel fossil fuels out of Germany’s energy mix has a breathtakingly ambitious air that has swept through the north city-state of Bremen, where even the football stadiums and funfairs run entirely on clean energy.
In 2008, shortly after the EU set its green energy targets for 2020, the Freimarkt funfair and Werder Bremen football club both switched to renewable power, with the club completely renovating its stadium in a business deal with energy company EWE.
