WWEA team from four continents at WindEnergy Hamburg, September 2016
WWEA, the Voice for Wind Power and Global100 % RE – in Past, Present, and Future
By Stefan Gsänger, WWEA Secretary General
Remembering the ecological situation in the 1970s and 80s, it was hard not to become depressed about the prospects of mankind: Many of us still remember well the scary reports about dying forests caused by air pollution and acid rain. In addition, the scarcity of fossil fuels became apparent – long queues in front of fuel stations symbolised this problem during the oil crisis. Obviously we were too much dependent on polluting fossil fuels but there was no way out visible. Also, the public perception of climate change problems started to grow – and still almost all our energy came from burning oil, coal or gas. What future would mankind have?
At the time, some still believed in nuclear power, but the nuclear accident of Chernobyl in 1986 demonstrated to the world that nuclear power cannot be seen as a long-term option. 25 years later, Fukushima proved once more that nuclear power is simply not a viable solution.
It was in the early 1990s when the author of this text, by pure coincidence, listened to a German politician who presented during a TV talkshow in brief a kind of masterplan of how to get rid of fossil fuels, how to develop a solar industry and how to convert our energy supply fully to renewable energy. His name was Hermann Scheer – later he was also involved in setting up the WWEA in 2001.
In the 1980s and 90s, the first communities and small companies had started investing in renewable energy, even without expecting a profit, simply to contribute their part to the