Articles by

Paul Hockenos

Germany’s Unlikely Renewable Energy Revolutionaries

By

Paul Hockenos

For the most part, Germany’s new energy producers are home owners, small and medium-sided businesses, and farmers, many of the latter who faced ruin only a decade ago. At the heart of Germany’s alternative energy bonanza is the country’s reputed Mittelstand: the nation’s well-situated, educated, conservative, entrepreneurial-minded middle class, which is the backbone of its economy. . .

Angst or Arithmetic? Why Germans are so Skeptical about Nuclear Energy-

By

Paul Hockenos

The fact that Germany, in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, redoubled its efforts to phase out nuclear energy has nothing to do with hysteria or postwar angst. On the contrary, a majority of Germans, including much of the political class, has been unconvinced of its merits since the early 1980s; the source of this anti-atom consensus lies not in emotional populism but rather in the persuasive, fact-based arguments of a powerful, grassroots social movement that has long included nuclear physicists and other bona fide experts. . .