If we do not change where we get our energy or how efficiently use energy, then our future does not look like it will be too pleasant. Fossil fuels are one of the largest sources of energy today, and this needs to change due to the effects of burning fossil fuels which include climate change. Most can agree that there is no one way to solve the carbon emission problem, and that is why Stephen Pacala, a professor at Princeton University, has suggested we use his wedge theory. His idea was to use technologies that humans have today in order to reduce the amount of carbon people emit so that the emissions do not continue to increase at the exponential amount they have been since the start of the industrial revolution. He made a triangle along with 7 wedges that would represent a technology that we have today that would reduce 1/7 of the amount of the carbon emissions we did not want to waste. Some examples of the techonlogy we have to cut carbon emissions today is the solar panels, wind turbines, fuel efficient cars, and cleaning up coal plants.
It seems as though Germany is beating the entire world at this game because a large energy company located in the country wants to split with using fossil fuels. There plan is to use “wind, solar, and other alternative forms of energy” which is a plan they started over 14 years ago. Today there results show that they have been very successful knowing that Germany receives more energy from renewable sources this year more than any other source. About 25% of there energy is green energy compare to 6.2% in the US and 4.8% in France.
This project is being supported by both the people and the government of the country with recent polls showing that 67% of citizens believe that “the country isn’t doing enough to move to renewables.” Although they are ahead of most developed countries the government vows to improve where it gets its energy from by promising that 45% of its energy will come from alternative energy sources by 2035 and improve it to 80% by 2050.
One of the areas the country is now focusing on is getting more electric cars on their roads in the future a sector they have been falling behind in compare to France, Japan, and the USA. German automobile company BMW is developing new electric cars such as the i3 that the government hopes to have 1 million “on German roads by 2020.”
It is good to know that a country is thinking of the future of the planet and making sure that its energy consumption will be sustainable, since it is widely known that soon fossil fuels will become scarce and new sources of energy will be needed to power many of the things we use everyday. It seems as though Germany will lead the world to think about using alternative sources of energy
How We See the Environment 
Juan, I thought it was awesome that you wrote about energy efficiently in another country. In my blog post I talked about energy efficiency in Japan so it was nice to be able to compare the two. In addition, I loved learning more about the wedge theory. It’s really vaccinating and sounds like a very promising approach. Job well done!!
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