Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gross, Stephen

Titel

Energy and power : Germany in the age of oil, atoms, and climate change

Ort / Verlag

New York, NY : Oxford University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

[2023]

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Includes bibliographical references and index
• Energy price wars and the battle for the social market economy : the 1950s -- The coupling paradigm : conceptualizing West Germany's first postwar energy transition -- Chains of oil, 1956- -- The entrepreneurial state : the nuclear transition of the 1950s and 1960s -- Shaking the energy paradigm : the 1973 oil shock and its aftermath -- Green energy and the remaking of West German politics in the 1970s -- Reinventing energy economics after the oil shock : the rise of ecological modernization -- Energetic hopes in the face of chernobyl and climate change : The 1980s -- The energy entanglement of Germany and Russia : natural gas, 1970- -- Unleashing green energy in an era of neoliberalism : the 1990s -- Coda : German energy in the twenty-first century
• Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in solar and wind technology. But this pioneering energy transition has been plagued with problems. In Energy and Power, Stephen G. Gross explains the deeper origins of the Energiewende--Germany's transition to green energy--and offers the first comprehensive history of German energy and climate policy from World War II to the present. The book follows the Federal Republic as it passed through five energy transitions from the dramatic shift to oil that nearly wiped out the nation's hard coal sector, to the oil shocks and the rise of the Green movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the co-creation of a natural gas infrastructure with Russia, and the transition to renewable power today. He shows how debates over energy profoundly shaped the course of German history and influenced the landmark developments that define modern Europe. As Gross argues, the intense and early politicization of energy led the Federal Republic to diverge from the United States and rethink its fossil economy well before global warming became a public issue, building a green energy system in the name of many social goals. Yet Germany's experience also illustrates the difficulty, the political battles, and the unintended consequences that surround energy transitions. By combining economy theory with a study of interest groups, ideas, and political mobilization, Energy and Power offers a novel explanation for why energy transitions happen. Further, it provides a powerful lens to move beyond conventional debates on Germany's East-West divide, or its postwar engagement with the Holocaust, to explore how this nation has shaped the contemporary world in other important ways.