The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy

For 200 years industrial civilization has relied on the combustion of abundant and cheap carbon fuels. But continued reliance has had perilous consequences. On the one hand there is the insecurity of relying on the world’s most unstable region – the Middle East – compounded by the imminence of peak oil, growing scarcity and mounting prices. On the other, the potentially cataclysmic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels, as the evidence of accelerating climate change shows.

The advantages of renewable energy are so clear and so overwhelming that resistance to them needs diagnosis – which Scheer also provides, showing why and how entrenched interests oppose the transition and what must be done to overcome these obstacles.

Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future 

"The Solar Economy", by one of the world's most effective analysts and advocates, lays out the blueprints of how political, economic and technological challenges of sustaniable energy can be met using indigenous, renewable and universally available resources, and the enormous opportunities and benefits that will flow from doing so.

The global economy and the way of life it has created are based on the exploitation of fossil fuels – coal, oil and, more recently, natural gas – and fossil fuels will be the engine of the collapse of that economy. Without fundamental change, it has no future. Fossil energy not only threatens massive environmental and social disruption through global warming but, at present rates of consumption, it will run out within decades, causing huge industrial dislocation. Even before then, the conflicts and imbalances it causes in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world’s economy will be frighteningly exacerbated.

The alternative exists: renewable energy from renewable sources – above all solar. Substituting renewable for fossil resources will take a new industrial revolution, which is imperative if the worst of the damage is to be averted, and which also offers an unprecedented chance to restructure the international order, revitalize regional economies and prevent environmental devastation.

It can be done, and it can be done in time. The Solar Economy, by one of the world’s most effective analysts and advocates, lays out the blueprints, showing how the political, economic and technological challenges can be met using indigenous, renewable and universally available resources, and the enormous opportunities and benefits that will flow from doing so.

A Solar Manifesto
Second Edition, published April 2005,  Earthscan/James & James,  272 pages. ISBN 1-90291-651-4.

Climate Change, pollution, deforestation, destruction of the ozone layer, poverty and the population explosion are all problems created or exacerbated by the use of conventional energy. Answers are now more urgently required than ever, and Hermann Scheer shows that this crisis may yet be reversed - but that this can only happen through a fundamental change in political and economic strategies, paving the way towards a global solar energy economy sustained by new social principles. This book champions the replacement of fossil and nuclear fuels with solar energy as a real solution to the threat to the environment and associated social consequences.

In the decade since the "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, the response of the world's governments and authorities to the threats to the global environment has been to enforce the reduction of energy consumption and harmful emissions - solutions primarily based around conventional energy resources and conventional thinking. The question is, though, wether this strategy is radical enough to address the key challenges now facing the environment, and wether it can be effective in avoiding catastrophe on a global scale.

For Hermann Scheer, the answer is a definite no. In this fully updated edition of A Solar Manifesto, he once more attacks the lack of political will to find answers outside a conventional frame of reference. Climate change, pollution, deforestation, destruction of the ozone layer, poverty and the population explosion are the problems created or exacerbated by the use of conventional energy. Seven years after the first edition of this book, answers are now more urgently required than ever, as current policies serve merely to alleviate the escalating symptoms rather than attempting a cure for what could become a terminal affliction.

Hermann Scheer shows that this crisis may yet be reversed - but it can only be made to happen through a fundamental change in political and economic strategies, paving the way towards a global solar energy economy sustained by new social principles.