"Energy Companies"? You're Joking, Right?

Via David Atkins at Hullabaloo, an interesting point on how Germany is leaving us in the dust -- again. This time, it's energy from renewable sources. From Motherboard:

Germany is now producing 28.5 percent of its energy—nearly a third—with solar, wind, hydro, and biomass. In 2000, renewables accounted for just 6 percent of its power consumption.

This is further proof that Germany is, essentially, the world leader in renewable energy. No other country has demonstrated such a dedicated, accelerated drive toward transitioning to clean power—in Germany's case, away from nuclear to solar and wind. It has done so by intensely incentivizing private and commercial solar, aggressively pursuing wind power contracts, and, yes, by raising, slightly, the cost of energy in the process.

One point: Portugal has gotten as much as 70% of its energy from renewable sources (the first quarter of 2013) and overall for 2013, derived nearly 60% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources.

Could we do the same? Sure -- we get a lot more sun than Germany, and the Great Plains have a lot of wind to spare, all the time. Do we want to? No -- our "entrepreneurial job-creating class" is locked into oil and gas because they don't have a lot of imagination and they're all about easy, fast cash.