The Triumph of the Sun - The Energy of the New Century
The physicist, long-time EU Commission official and comrade-in-arms of Hermann Scheer has published his legacy. It is fascinating to read how the new renewable energies, i.e. photovoltaics, wind power, modern biomass and solar thermal energy have grown exponentially from small beginnings to the present day. Wolfgang Palz puts this development into context by providing hallmarks of earth's history and the achievements of physics, thereby proving his optimism that mankind will make the transition to a sustainable use of energy with facts and figures.
The leading role of Germany and the European Union in the industrialization of photovoltaics and wind power is scrutinised as well as their current relapse behind China, Japan, the USA and India. The redirection of the large-scale extractive industry of fossil and nuclear fuels to the phase-out level does not result from insight into mankind's limitations but from renewables having become more attractive financially. The European Union has played its part in this development, as did Wolfgang Palz, who was jointly responsible for the course taken for many years.
The book concentrates on the positive development of renewables in the last decades and gives us hope that mankind can cope with the transition in good time. There is no evaluation of the progressing climate change, whether it is picking up pace despite all achievements and whether it might destroy everything. It is the positive side of the coin that this book presents comprehensibly and through dense facts, which is saying a lot for a work of 200 pages. There is little room for pessimism about the future, even though renewables and their potential are still not given their fair share of attention at international climate conferences and nuclear energy keeps being overvalued.
So, anyone who supports EUROSOLAR's goals or perhaps still doubts their viability should read this book and be confirmed or, if necessary, converted - not through utopian visions, but through well-researched facts.
Wolfgang Hein, November 2018
Pan Stanford Publishing Pte Ltd 2018, 210 pages; € 41,43; ISBN 978-9814-80006-8