R.I.P. Hermann Scheer: Author of Energy Autonomy

Long-term German politician and renewable energy advocate, Hermann Scheer, passed away last Thursday. He was one of the primary voices featured in the movie Energy Autonomy, and indeed, wrote a book by the same name, envisioning a transition to distributed, decentralized energy production.

Some of the main ideas I took away from the movie:

There has been a worldwide decoupling of energy production from energy consumption. The idea of energy autonomy is to re-localize energy production with networked systems of wind, solar, and bio-gas. This can be a strong poverty-reduction strategy in rural areas, and developing countries as a whole, especially when the costs of importing energy into a country is proportionately high to its overall GDP.

From Hermann Scheer’s perspective, the transition to renewable energy cannot be delegated to the traditional energy sector, whose main priority is maintaining the status quo of their previously built infrastructure. For Scheer, Carbon-Capture and Storage (CCS) is a “bad investment” and is characteristic of the clinging, death grip that the traditional energy sector has on fossil fuels. The energy transition must instead be advanced by a mass movement of people who start integrating renewables and smart design into the way they use transit, build their homes, and power their appliances.

A few criticisms of the movie:

Overwhelming emphasis on technological innovations and entrepreneurs, with little to no mention at all of capitalism (its need for growth/mass consumption)

There was no hint of “overshoot”, or our collective footprint exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth, and thus, the requirement of reducing consumption and material throughput.

Problematic endorsement of electric (sport)cars.

And lastly, the idea of autonomy could have been taken a bit further as there was no connections made to the political possibilities of a world where citizens have direct control of their energy supplies.

Otherwise, an uplifting movie, perhaps one of the first about energy to paint an optimistic vision of the future! (that is, if you aren’t counting this: