Introduction: Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic and Multidisciplinary Perspective

Abstract

Building a sustainable society is a major challenge of the 21st century. Striving to become the world’s first major renewable energy economy by 2050, Germany is widely considered a global front-runner in environmental policy and practice. Requiring large investments in green technologies, as well as in new power lines and energy storage systems, the German shift from fossil fuels and nuclear power towards renewables amounts to a veritable ‘energy revolution’. What are the challenges and opportunities of this transition toward a more sustainable future? How did Europe’s largest economy come to embrace an energy challenge that has been compared to the first landing on the moon? And most importantly, is the German experience transferable to other industrialized nations such as the United States?