Carol Hager & Christoph H. Stefes 
Germany’s Energy Transition [PDF ebook] 
A Comparative Perspective

This book analyzes Germany’s path-breaking
Energiewende, the country’s transition from an energy system based on fossil and nuclear fuels to a sustainable energy system based on renewables. The authors explain Germany’s commitment to a renewable energy transition on multiple levels of governance, from the local to the European, focusing on the sources of institutional change that made the transition possible. They then place the German case in international context through comparative case studies of energy transitions in the USA, China, and Japan. These chapters highlight the multifaceted challenges, and the enormous potential, in different paths to a sustainable energy future. Taken together, they tell the story of one of the most important political, economic, and social undertakings of our time. 

Table of Content

Introduction: Germany’s Energy Transition in Context (Hager) .- 1: The Grassroots Origins of the German Energy Transition (Hager) .- 2: Why Subnational Actors Matter: The Role of Länder and Municipalities in the German Energy Transition (Schönberger & Reiche) .- 3: Critical Junctures and the German
Energiewende (Stefes) .- 4: The German 
Energiewende in a European Context (Schreurs) .- 5: Avoiding Transitions, Layering Change: The Evolution of American Energy Policy (Laird) .- 6: Exercising Power: China’s Transition to Efficient, Renewable Energy (Ohshita) .- 7: Renegotiating Japan’s Energy Compact (Hughes) .- 8: Conclusion. Lessons from the German Energiewende (Stefes).

About the author

Carol Hager is Professor of Political Science on the Clowes Professorship in Science & Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College, USA. She is author of Technological Democracy: Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the German Energy Debate (Michigan 1995) and co-editor of NIMBY is Beautiful: Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation Around the World (Berghahn 2015).
Christoph H. Stefes is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver, USA. He is author of Understanding Post-Soviet Transitions (Palgrave 2006) and several articles on energy transitions (German Politics, Energy Policy, Journal of Public Policy).