Last night, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) demonstrated the world’s first manned airplane that can fly exclusively with the use of a fuel cell. The fuel cell, which is based on polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM), generates power for the motor glider’s electric engine.

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A vegetarian woman was driving along a German highway and came upon a truckload of pigs headed for a sausage factory.  She told officers she was so traumatized by the site of the poor little animals going to slaughter, that she momentarily lost control of her car and sideswiped another truck, filled with pigs.

Apparently, there was little damage to the vehicles, the pigs survived and so did the driver.

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Field researchers from Karlsruhe’s Natural History Museum who made the discovery near Manaus, Brazil, say the species, which resembles miniature wasps and looks like no other, may date back around 120 million years, according to Reuters.

Martialis heureka, nicknamed the “Ant from Mars” due to its unusual features and heureka from its surprising discovery, the ants themselves are eyeless, pale in color, subterranean, and predatory, according to Wikipedia.

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Germany’s Daimler has teamed up with Essen-based utility RWE on a pilot project in the country’s capital. The project will see more than 100 electric cars on the road and a network of 500 charging stations.  Daimler currently has a pilot project in London, where a test fleet of about 100 first-generation Smart Fortwo electric cars are being used by corporate groups and municipal authorities, including the London Police.

Eva Wiese, a spokeswoman for Daimler, told the Cleantech Group that the new Smart cars in Berlin will have a greater range.

“The London one has 115 kilometers, and we think that with the new battery technology it will be a little better, but we haven’t specified it yet.”

Recent reports have pegged San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla Motors, maker of the high-speed electric Tesla Roadster, as a battery supplier for Daimler, but the Germany automaker is keeping tight-lipped about its power plans.

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“However, the looming expiration of the federal renewable energy production tax credit (PTC) less than four months from now threatens this spectacular progress,” said Randall Swisher, AWEA’s executive director.

Subsequently, wind energy is well on track to providing the 20% of US electricity by 2030, as envisioned by the US Department of Energy (DOE).

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The report (PDF) tracks and scores global investment in renewable energy for six months. The list saw the UK drop from fourth to sixth spot, allowing China to take joint fourth spot, along with Spain. The United States, Germany took out the top three spots.

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When we think about a problem as daunting as glacier melt, it’s tempting to throw up our hands and say that there’s nothing to be done. But researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany disagree. 27 students from the school recently set up a large structure in the Swiss Alps in an attempt to trap cold air over the Rhone glacier.

The giant windshield measures 49 feet by 10 feet (15 metres long and 10 meters high). The university says the shield has already been successfully tested in a laboratory.

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Renewable forms of energy such as solar and wind are notorious for being unpredictable. That may change with the advent of the Previento System, a new type of software developed at Oldenburg University in Germany.

The software, which uses weather models from multiple weather reporting services, is able to predict both the amount of energy a specific German wind park can produce as well as the total amount of energy wind parks around the country can produce. Predictions are available up to ten days in advance, and error rates are within 5% in 70% of the cases in Germany.

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However this is an announcement based on stats that AWEA is hoping the rest of the world won’t look at too hard.

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1. Germany has the world’s largest wind power sector— but had barely any notable wind power at all 16 years ago.

With over 20,600 MW of installed capacity, Germany is the world’s wind power leader. And they accomplished this feat pretty quickly, having had less than 100 MW in 1992. The second place wind leader, Spain, only has approximately 12,000 MW of capacity.

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From the 200,000 Germans that showed up to see Senator Obama speak in Berlin, to the press conference he had with a gushing French President Nicolas Sarkozy, it is not hard to understand why one European newspaper referred to him as, “Arguably the world’s most popular politician.”

But during a press conference with Sarkozy, one French journalist asked the politically astute question: “Is it a good thing to be loved by the French in the United States?”

Obama replied by saying both countries have suffered from caricatures — America as unilateral and militaristic, and France as anti-American and soft on security, but that in actuality, “The average American has enormous fondness for the French people,” Obama said. “And I think people in France and people throughout Europe should not underestimate how much interest there is in America in seeing the transatlantic relationship improving.”

Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe was designed, in part, to give those who doubted his presidential capacity, particularly in matters of foreign affairs, a glimpse of the junior Senator from Illinois being, well, “presidential.”

And it seems to have worked.

A July 26th Gallup Poll suggests that Obama has actually widened his lead over Republican John McCain while in Europe. Obama’s current seven-point lead over McCain ties the widest since the start of Gallup Poll Daily tracking of the general election in early March. The one other time there was a seven point difference was immediately after Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign for the Democratic nomination in early June.

Let me make this clear, polling is not an exact science, and swings of a couple of points here or there really don’t mean that much. And certainly some portion of the widening gap is attributable to the extra media coverage the trip sparked.

But as the Barack Obama Summer World Tour winds up today in London, it is plain to see the presumptive Democratic nomminee’s rock-star appeal is not bound by the shores of the United States. And Americans have reacted to candidate Obama’s overseas trip quite favorably.

Is it possible that the blinders that kept so many Americans from seeing how the rest of the world actually perceives us are now revealing that they have some holes?

Related Posts:

• “Poll: Americans Don’t Think More Drilling Will Lower Gas Prices”
• “Obama’s New Ad Rejects Gas Tax Holliday”
• “New McCain TV Ad Blames Obama for High Gas Prices”

Image Credits: 1. Obama for President; 2. Gallup.

“Inslee’s legislation would require utilities — at the request of any new renewable energy facility owner — to enter into a 20-year fixed-rate power purchase agreement. Uniform national “renewable energy payment” rates would be set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at levels that would provide a 10% internal rate of return on investment for available commercialized technologies in regions constituting the top 30^th percentile of renewable energy resource potential in the U.S..”

In plain English, this means that if you install solar PV panels on your home, the utility has to buy the electricity you generate at a higher rate than retail, guaranteeing you a return on your investment. Extending this power purchase agreement for 20 years gives everyone — especially those who want to invest in renewables or start a small business installing solar panels — assurance of return on their investment.

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New legislation in Germany is making geothermal electricity a viable option for the first time. Germany’s support of solar energy, mostly in the form of incentives and high return for consumers who sell excess solar power back to the grid, has made it a world powerhouse in solar energy generation and solar panel manufacturing. Now it promises to surge ahead in geothermal electricity generation, according to a story in Renewable Energy World. A new tariff structure has made deep drilling for higher temperature steam financially feasible, causing a boom in plant construction and a shortage of drilling equipment.

“… Germany could be generating several thousands of megawatts (MW) of electricity from geothermal sources in a couple of decades. More plants — some as big as 8-10 MW — are due to go into operation in 2009-2010 …. And looking 3 to 5 years ahead, there could be more than a hundred plants. About 150 geothermal power plant projects are in the pipeline representing an investment of 4 billion euros, according to the German government.” — Jane Burgermeister, Renewable Energy World

1,300 households get heat, and 500 households get their electricity from a geothermal plant in Neustadt-Glewe, which gets 97-degree centigrade water from a well dug 2250 meters deep.  Image credit: Exorka.com

Conservatives call into question highly successful feed-in tariff

There is a reason that Germany has half of the world’s installed solar generating capacity, and it is not the Northern European country’s boundless sunshine. Renewable energy capacity has achieved such tremendous growth because of the German government’s aggressive energy policy.

The policy vehicle responsible for the rapid acceleration of the country’s renewable energy capacity, known as a feed-in tariff (FIT), guarantees a fixed-rate of return for homeowners and farmers who install solar, wind, small hydro, biomass, and methane capturing systems and sell their surplus electricity back to the grid. Germany has Europe’s highest feed-in tariffs, allowing consumers to earn around 40 euro cents ($0.62) per kWh compared to paying retail rates of 18 euro cents per kWh after taxes and support fees.

Electricity generated through Germany’s feed-in law produces about 50 terawatt-hours (billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity per year, or nearly 15% of German electricity consumption (1). This adds an average of only 1.01 euros ($1.69) a month to a typical home electricity bill.

Bu, despite the law’s success, conservatives in the German Bundestag want to ratchet back the incentives that support renewable energy development.

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A May 16 article in the New York Times focused on the debate in Germany regarding whether generous subsidies for solar energy should be continued. Buried in the story was the remarkable fact that Germany has created 40,000 jobs in formerly blighted industrial areas by “turbo-charging” the growth of the solar industry there. Imagine if our government took a leadership role in jump-starting solar production in areas like Pittsburgh, Indiana, and Michigan, where much of the infrastructure and work force still remain from the declining steel and auto industries. Some facts:

• Germany has half the sunshine hours of San Diego.
• An American company, Signet Solar, chose to build its thin film plant in Germany, not the U.S.
• The engine that grew Germany’s solar industry is its feed-in tariff, which requires power companies to buy citizen-produced solar energy at an above-market rate for 20 years. Citizens have responded — by putting solar panels on nearly every available surface.
• Spain, France, Italy and Greece have copied Germany’s subsidy plan. California is using a version of it by requiring utilities to pay customers rebates for the amount of energy they would have bought if they didn’t have solar modules.
• Growing solar has helped other alternative energy production to grow as well: Germany gets 14.2 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, putting it ahead of the EU target of 12.5 percent from renewables by 2010.

Critics of the subsidies argue that they will eventually make solar energy too costly vs. other energy sources; defenders argue that the support for solar still doesn’t match subsidies to the dirty and declining coal industry, and that conventional energy costs will rise at a higher rate. Others charge that this is a classic attempt by large centralized power companies to weaken the role of distributed generation — citizen-generated, de-centralized power sources. Whether or not Germany decreases subsidies at a faster rate than planned, for now they are the world’s largest market for PV systems.

“To develop a technology, you’ve got to create an industry,” said Mr. Milner, the chief executive of Q-Cells, referring to the German success story. “You can wait and wait and wait for costs to come down, but it takes too long.” –Mark Landler, New York Times, 5/16/08

Today I would like to look at a situation where the reverse is true, visiting the Germany eco-town of Freiburg .

At first glance, those Germans may appear to have limited green credentials. Fearful of potential impact on their high performance car industry, Germany has lobbied aggressively in recent months to delay new EU legislation aimed at improving vehicle fuel economy. Germany is also home to six of Europe’s ten most polluting power stations and has been keeping quiet about plans to build 24 additional coal powered plants.

However, in terms of concrete and practical actions aimed at making a real difference to the environment, this nation of passionate recyclers, high speed railway builders, and renewable energy nuts appear to be way out in front.

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Wind speeds of 100 mph were recorded across Europe and topped 135 mph at the Czech Republic’s highest mountain, Snezka. The surplus electricity on the grid, produced mostly by German and Danish wind farms pushed prices down by 12% on the spot market.

Traders buying and selling round-the-clock power reported that the ‘day ahead’ price in central Europe’s power market dropped to €49.5 ($76) per megawatt hour compared with €56 at the end of the previous week, according to a piece at Planet Ark. Unfortunately, the article also suggests that sudden drops in electricity prices on the spot market have little effect on end-use rates.

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It is a truth well documented that community gardens foster unity among neighbors, but Germany’s Stiftung Interkultur has taken this logic a step further in the creation of its Intercultural Gardens. Communities in Berlin, Gottingen, Hamburg, and Munich (among others) are home to large and diverse immigrant populations, often living in close proximity. To encourage interaction and community spirit between German residents of all extractions, the Stiftung Interkultur has built a series of community gardens in which residents can share their gardening skills and horticultural knowledge with one another. The idea was born out of recognition that social exclusion plagued many new immigrants to Germany. Further, members of the discussions at Stiftung Interkultur felt that environmental and sustainable eating considerations were directed at the middle class, causing a secondary level of isolation that affected the health and eating practices of urban immigrants.

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Her name means “snowflake.” Since her birth in December, photos and videos from the zoo have been overloading the public with cuteness, stirring up “Flocke fever.”

Still, no one outside the zoo staff had ever seen Flocke in person. This week, she made her first live public appearance.

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