The path to energy transition

According to current understanding, the goals of the energy transition for Germany can be clearly and simply stated as follows: It is to bring about and compensate for the withdrawal from nuclear energy, to replace fossil fuels with renewable energies and to reduce or neutralise the emission of climate-damaging gases, especially CO${}_2$. What sounds so simple encounters major problems in the harsh reality. Economic consequences, technical difficulties and political dispute are already evident and will increase as the programme progresses. Social upheavals caused by an increasingly irritated public cannot be ruled out. This should not come as a surprise - the energy transition is a major project that affects the whole of society and is unique in German history in terms of its scope and consequences. How this project came into being, what has been achieved up to the present and by what means, and how it could ultimately end, is the subject of this book.