The time for the rapid and full renewable energy transition
2017 EUROSOLAR Delegates’ Assembly
resolution
The time for the rapid and
full renewable energy transition is now
Bonn
- May 17, 2017 - On the first Saturday in May, the
EUROSOLAR Delegates’ Assembly met in the EUROSOLAR head
office in Bonn and passed their determined resolution on the
future of energy. More than 30 delegates from ten countries
got together to discuss the obstacles and opportunities of
the fast and full renewable energy transition.
The
breakthrough of renewable energy across the globe is
accelerating, yielding employment, prosperity and justice,
industrial innovation and political stability. The 2017
EUROSOLAR European Delegates Assembly calls for a rapid
renewable energy transit, facing the major threats that
accompany the out-dated energy market across the
world.
Nuclear energy has been proven to have no viable
economic future, while being a great menace to public
health. Fossil fuels are annually subsidised with more than
a trillion USD annually worldwide, seriously hampering the
natural transition to a sustainable and clean renewable
energy future. More than two trillion USD are wasted on
military budgets each year – a good portion of this sum is
expended to defend fossil fuels sources, markets and
profits.
Even if one sets aside all the public funds that
are being wasted on the defence of fossil fuel, there is no
disputing the fact that these energy sources trigger
possibly runaway climate change. “Rapid action is needed
across Europe and the world. We need to broaden public and
political understanding of the well-known actions that are
needed to achieve rapid change”, says EUROSOLAR’s
President Prof. Peter Droege.
The EUROSOLAR Delegates’
Assembly of 2017 resolves this renewed and urgent seven
point call, including the call for 100% renewable energy,
freedom of information and the worldwide reduction of
military budgets, for an enlightened and renewable, new
energy market order to take hold.
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Please
find below the text of the resolution:
Resolution
2017 EUROSOLAR Delegates Assembly
The time for the rapid and full renewable energy transition is now
The breakthrough of renewable energy across the globe is accelerating, yielding employment, prosperity and justice, industrial innovation and political stability. The 2017 EUROSOLAR European Delegates Assembly calls for rapid renewable energy transitions across Europe and the globe. The reasons for moving to renewable energy are massive and compelling – of overwhelming urgency as four major threats are to be countered:
• The continuing reliance on the nuclear dead-end street and in some areas expanding fossil fuel production and combustion are subsidised by close to one trillion US$ annually - causing a massive drain and casting a long shadow on our future. It is high time to end the fossil threat and face the sun.
• Nearly two trillion US$ are expended on military budgets each year. A large portion of this is wasted to maintain and even expand a massive global military infrastructure built largely to defend fossil fuel sources and markets. The demobilisation of fossil defense systems is an urgent agenda item: it must redirected to mobilise resilient solar security actions everywhere: systemic resilience is a major call of our times.
• The indicators of fossil fuel triggered climate change – atmospheric CO concentrations, temperature increase, Arctic sea ice melting, deglaciation, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and species extinction rate – are not only progressing linearly but exponentially, unpredicted by many older assumptions such as IPCC models. Most governments are blind to this fact. Rapid action is needed immediately across Europe and the world, and with it, an understanding what actions are needed to achieve rapid change.
• Powerful and reactionary industrial and political forces attempt to reverse the vector of time and suppress the call for a renewable world, intelligence about the state of our world and access to free means of expression, exchange and political action.
The EUROSOLAR Delegates Assembly of 2017 therefore resolves this renewed and urgent, seven point call for enlightened renewable energy market order instead of the maintenance of old and dangerous systems.
1 Towards the Solar Age now: we call for the rapidly accelerating move to full renewable energy systems, based on local and regional empowerment – 100% renewable energy.
2 Towards a New Energy Market Order (NEMO) now: we call for new flexible energy markets for the full renewable energy transition and the accelerating convergence of flexible and interactively local and regional new energy systems. We call for a new market framework for power, thermal, mobility and transport, networks and storage systems.
3 Exit from nuclear and fossil energy now: we call for the rapid exit from fossil sources – coal, petroleum and gas are accelerated structural reform programs for coal mining regions and other areas economically depending on conventional energy production.
4 Renewable energy storage systems and networks now: we call for regulatory and financial frameworks in accelerating the development and uptake of storage systems and renewable energy capable local and regional trade enabling networks.
5 End fossil und nuclear subsidies now: we call for the rapid phasing out of all nuclear and fossil energy subsidies and the full accounting for external environmental costs, and a move to unfettered, free and renewable energy based markets.
6 End the growing suppression of science and information: we call for the strengthened information and education, objective science, freedom of information and rational discourse about the need for and advantages of a full renewable energy supply.
7 End global militarisation for fossil profit protection now: we call for embracing a 'climate for peace', the end to fossil and other resource based conflicts, and the reassignment of military budgets to build a decentralised and resilient renewable global economy based on local empowerment, energy autonomy, integration of climate and conflict migrants, refugees and other displaced people, social energy prosperity, access and justice and the targeted relief of climate change costs.