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.

Stephen G. Gross is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center of European and Mediterranean Studies at New York University. After working at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Department of Commerce) in Washington DC, he received his PhD in history from UC Berkeley. He is the author of Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890-1945, which explores the political economy of the Nazi Empire. His research has been supported by the Fulbright Fellowship, the German Academic Exchange Program, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and the Andrew Mellon New Directions Fellowship, through which he earned a certificate of sustainable finance at Columbia University.

Introduction: The Paradoxes of German Energy

Part I: The Old Energy Paradigm
Chapter 1: Energy Price Wars and the Battle for the Social Market Economy: The 1950s
Chapter 2: The Coupling Paradigm: Conceptualizing West Germany's First Postwar Energy Transition
Chapter 3: Chains of Oil, 1956-1973
Chapter 4: The Entrepreneurial State: The Nuclear Transition of the 1950s and 1960s
Chapter 5: Shaking the Energy Paradigm: The 1973 Oil Shock and its Aftermath

Part II: The New Energy Paradigm
Chapter 6: Green Energy and the Remaking of West German Politics in the 1970s
Chapter 7: Reinventing Energy Economics after the Oil Shock: The Rise of Ecological Modernization
Chapter 8: Energetic Hopes in the Face of Chernobyl and Climate Change: The 1980s
Chapter 9: The Energy Entanglement of Germany and Russia: Natural Gas, 1970-2000
Chapter 10: Unleashing Green Energy in an Era of Neoliberalism: The 1990s

Coda: German Energy in the Twenty-First Century

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Archives
Index