Germany's Energy Transition : A Comparative Perspective

This book analyzes Germany's path-breaking Energiewende, the country's transition from an energy system based on fossil and nuclear fuels to a sustainable energy system based on renewables. The authors explain Germany's commitment to a renewable energy transition on multiple levels of governance, from the local to the European, focusing on the sources of institutional change that made the transition possible. They then place the German case in international context through comparative case studies of energy transitions in the USA, China, and Japan. These chapters highlight the multifaceted challenges, and the enormous potential, in different paths to a sustainable energy future. Taken together, they tell the story of one of the most important political, economic, and social undertakings of our time. 

Carol Hager is Professor of Political Science on the Clowes Professorship in Science & Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College, USA. She is author of Technological Democracy: Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the German Energy Debate (Michigan 1995) and co-editor of NIMBY is Beautiful: Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation Around the World (Berghahn 2015).

Christoph H. Stefes is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver, USA. He is author of Understanding Post-Soviet Transitions (Palgrave 2006) and several articles on energy transitions (German Politics, Energy Policy, Journal of Public Policy).