What do you think?
Rate this book
Energy and Power: Germany in the Age of Oil, Atoms, and Climate Change
A novel exploration of the deeper political, economic, and geopolitical history behind Germany's daring campaign to restructure its energy system around green power.
Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in solar and wind technology. But this pioneering energy transition has been plagued with problems.
In Energy and Power, Stephen G. Gross explains the deeper origins of the Energiewende--Germany's transition to green energy--and offers the first comprehensive history of German energy and climate policy from World War II to the present. The book follows the Federal Republic as it passed through five energy transitions from the dramatic shift to oil that nearly wiped out the nation's hard coal sector, to the oil shocks and the rise of the Green movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the co-creation of a natural gas infrastructure with Russia, and the transition to renewable power today. He shows how debates over energy profoundly shaped the course of German history and influenced the landmark developments that define modern Europe. As Gross argues, the intense and early politicization of energy led the Federal Republic to diverge from the United States and rethink its fossil economy well before global warming became a public issue, building a green energy system in the name of many social goals. Yet Germany's experience also illustrates the difficulty, the political battles, and the unintended consequences that surround energy transitions.
By combining economy theory with a study of interest groups, ideas, and political mobilization, Energy and Power offers a novel explanation for why energy transitions happen. Further, it provides a powerful lens to move beyond conventional debates on Germany's East-West divide, or its postwar engagement with the Holocaust, to explore how this nation has shaped the contemporary world in other important ways.
Since the 1990s, Germany has embarked on a daring campaign to restructure its energy system around renewable power, sparking a global revolution in solar and wind technology. But this pioneering energy transition has been plagued with problems.
In Energy and Power, Stephen G. Gross explains the deeper origins of the Energiewende--Germany's transition to green energy--and offers the first comprehensive history of German energy and climate policy from World War II to the present. The book follows the Federal Republic as it passed through five energy transitions from the dramatic shift to oil that nearly wiped out the nation's hard coal sector, to the oil shocks and the rise of the Green movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the co-creation of a natural gas infrastructure with Russia, and the transition to renewable power today. He shows how debates over energy profoundly shaped the course of German history and influenced the landmark developments that define modern Europe. As Gross argues, the intense and early politicization of energy led the Federal Republic to diverge from the United States and rethink its fossil economy well before global warming became a public issue, building a green energy system in the name of many social goals. Yet Germany's experience also illustrates the difficulty, the political battles, and the unintended consequences that surround energy transitions.
By combining economy theory with a study of interest groups, ideas, and political mobilization, Energy and Power offers a novel explanation for why energy transitions happen. Further, it provides a powerful lens to move beyond conventional debates on Germany's East-West divide, or its postwar engagement with the Holocaust, to explore how this nation has shaped the contemporary world in other important ways.
416 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 28, 2023
2 people are currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Stephen G. Gross
3 books2 followersStephen G. Gross is jointly appointed in the Department of History and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU. After working for several years as an economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington DC, he completed his PhD at UC Berkeley where he subsequently lectured with the International and Area Studies Program. In his research and teaching Dr. Gross is interested in 20th century Germany, European unification, European and international political economy, energy policy, and international relations. His first book, Export Empire, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2015. He has also published on a variety of economic themes in German and European history in Central European History, Contemporary European History, German Politics and Society, and Eastern European Politics and Society, as well as in various book chapters.
Dr. Gross' first book project—Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945—explores the relationship between imperialism, economic development, and cultural exchange from the perspective of non-state actors such as trade fairs, research institutes, and professional exchange programs. It traces how German business leaders and academics established commercial hegemony in Southeastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Where scholars have used the concept of soft power to describe the foreign policy of liberal states, he concludes that authoritarian Nazi Germany was also able to exercise its own type of soft power, so long as its private institutions retained the space to operate in the interstices of state power.
Where his first monograph explores the commercial power that supported Hitler’s racist imperial ambitions, his second book project will trace how, after 1945, Germany crafted an energy policy that suited a nation heavily dependent on foreign oil and foreign multi-national corporations, and that ultimately enabled Germany to become a leader in renewable energies and energy savings technologies. German Energy Policy in the Age of Oil and Atoms, 1945–2010, as the book is tentatively titled, will explore the political economy of energy crises and transition, tracing how this oil-poor yet highly industrial state managed the transition from coal, to oil, to more renewable fuels, how it negotiated the many intense political and social tensions that came with this transition, and how it inaugurated what is now called the German Energiewende, or revolution to Green energy. By combining an exploration of the material interests involved in the energy sector with newly emerging ideas and scientific paradigms that justified renewable energies, the project aims to provide a more complete understanding of current energy policies in Germany and Europe.
Dr. Gross' first book project—Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945—explores the relationship between imperialism, economic development, and cultural exchange from the perspective of non-state actors such as trade fairs, research institutes, and professional exchange programs. It traces how German business leaders and academics established commercial hegemony in Southeastern Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. Where scholars have used the concept of soft power to describe the foreign policy of liberal states, he concludes that authoritarian Nazi Germany was also able to exercise its own type of soft power, so long as its private institutions retained the space to operate in the interstices of state power.
Where his first monograph explores the commercial power that supported Hitler’s racist imperial ambitions, his second book project will trace how, after 1945, Germany crafted an energy policy that suited a nation heavily dependent on foreign oil and foreign multi-national corporations, and that ultimately enabled Germany to become a leader in renewable energies and energy savings technologies. German Energy Policy in the Age of Oil and Atoms, 1945–2010, as the book is tentatively titled, will explore the political economy of energy crises and transition, tracing how this oil-poor yet highly industrial state managed the transition from coal, to oil, to more renewable fuels, how it negotiated the many intense political and social tensions that came with this transition, and how it inaugurated what is now called the German Energiewende, or revolution to Green energy. By combining an exploration of the material interests involved in the energy sector with newly emerging ideas and scientific paradigms that justified renewable energies, the project aims to provide a more complete understanding of current energy policies in Germany and Europe.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.