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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables (digitaltrends.com)
Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables -- wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany's coal-fired power stations weren't even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany's progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won't be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country's sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be "completely normal" by the year 2030.
You can't have what Germany has without the heavy hand of government.
Wrong.
Germany is the size of a single average US State with a tiny fraction of the population and energy infrastructure of the US as a result. It's orders-of-magnitude easier for such major changes in energy infrastructure to be made in a relatively tiny nation like Germany compared to a large nation like the US. Government crony-capitalism (like the Solyndra scandal) also slows progress. The US is coming along but it will take time. What government does is force adoption before a technology is efficient enough and/or well-suited enough for the intended use, thus wasting wealth and resources better spent elsewhere. In the US these wasted resources have a strange habit of showing up in the pockets of those who support the politicians and their cronies currently in power.
Windfarms kill 10-20 times more migratory birds than previously thought: http://savetheeaglesinternatio...