Bonn, 5 January 2012
Time for Code RED - the Renewable Earth Decade
After ending the reign of nuclear power, time to end fossil fuel burning
While in Durban the appalling plan was hatched to maintain collective inaction for almost another decade, a team of Russian and US scientists readied their Powerpoint presentation for an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Fransciso. It reported of the discovery of vast new and powerful methane plumes rising from the shallow seabed along the Siberian coastline and escaping directly into the atmosphere. A greenhouse gas 20-70 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the massive Arctic methane store, if melted, is capable of triggering uncontrollable and abrupt climate change.
The final alarm has now been sounded: time for ringing in Code RED, the Renewable Earth Decade.
Eurosolar and the World Council for Renewable Energy request from German, European and worldwide governments to show global leadership in ensuring that the now generation old demands to control climate change be immediately enacted, specifically to:
- halt all coal power plants in planning or under construction
- terminate the operation of all coal fired generators as soon as possible but at the very latest by 2030. They are to be replaced by renewable energy systems, smart networks and storage systems, as well as generators supplied by biogas and methane synthesised from renewable electricity
- structurally reform the energy supply industry, to enable a rapid transition to a fully renewable economy. New German renewable energy systems already today are capable of providing more than half of national power
- provide policy and legal frameworks for effective efficiency and demand reduction / sufficiency action
- reform and restructure on a partnership basis the entire mobility support system, to enable a primarily renewable transport system to be in place no later than 2030. This requires also the transformation of the mass transport systems to make possible a shift from non-essential and difficult to replace aviation movements to rail.
These measures do not mean additional net costs. Quite to the contrary, they spell added efficiency and a boost to the innovation and productivity of national economies. Millions of new jobs would be created in Europe alone - yielding the kind of economic stimulus that also promises to help halt climate change.
Peter Droege, President EUROSOLAR