Will Merkel Complete Germany's Energy Revolution?

The clean energy explosion has already transformed Germany in positive ways. There is now a booming industrial and service sector based on renewables, which employs around 380,000 people (that’s half the number in the auto industry) and produces significant revenue for local, state, and federal government coffers. The new industries found homes above all in eastern Germany, helping pick up the economy there after years of post-unification stagnation. Meanwhile, sales of clean-energy technology have boosted Germany’s exports and bolstered its economic fortunes during the eurocrisis. Moreover, the devolution of power production to so many Germans has empowered a strong and very widely dispersed constituency. And, not least, Germany’s carbon emissions initially sloped downward, ahead of projected targets, before leveling off this year, a result of increased coal burning. (This is the upshot of the unwillingness of the junior partner in the last Merkel administration, the free-market-minded Free Democrats, to help revive the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, which puts a punitive price on carbon emissions. After failing to breach Germany’s five-percent hurdle to enter the Bundestag yesterday, the party will not be represented at all in the national parliament or government.)