Speeches

Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
fellow colleagues from the German Parliament,
dear friends of IRENA,
Today we inaugurated the milestone for the global move to renewable energy - a move made in a higher speed than ever before.
The famous cosmopolitan scientist Leonardo da Vinci once said: “The sun has never seen a shadow.” Today the world’s civilization is shadowed by numerous existential energy crises, which cumulate at the same time. You all know the key-words: declining reserves, increasing energy demand – and therefore running exhaustion, rising prices, economic restrictions, social tensions within societies and international tensions between countries. And besides and above all that: climate change, air and water pollution, dying forests and desertification.

Ladies and gentlemen,
From Albert Einstein I know a sentence he has written in his last year in the 1950es: 'The methods that have caused our problems are unable to solve these problems.' And if we look to the global situation and the running energy crisis,...
Speech "Towards Energy Autonomy: New Politics for Renewable Energy" (video)

Ladies and gentlemen,
The many arguments which were given today for renewable energies show that there are so many benefits, for economy, for environment, for the general development, for international peace, and so forth, that the big question is: Why not, since years, all political decision-makers, all industrialists, do what they can and push renewable energies if they believe...
Speech European Renewable Energy Policy Conference 2007 (video)

Dear friends, by reviewing the state of the global energy supply, I can identify a good news and a bad news: The bad news is: oil reserves are running out. The good news is: oil reserves are running out. John Rockefeller, the first and most famous oil-tycoon in the history of oil defined oil in one of his bright moments as “tears of the devil”. This oracle has turned into reality. It is good news, because we are faced with another time limit, which is closer than the time limit of the other depleting non-renewable energy reserves. The biosphere including humankind is already overstressed. We are not allowed to burn off all the known reserves. That means: we are in a race against time. We have to change the world energy basis in the next few decades from polluting and finite to solely clean and sustainable energies – the renewable ones.

Albert Einstein once concluded his life experience in the sentence: „It is impossible to solve a problem with the same means that caused this problem.“ It is also impossible to solve a problem with the same people who have caused the problem. The main problem of the world is the already existing and culminating energy crises.


The ethics of a speech should be to tell the truth. The truth of the global energy situation is: Our world faces a turning point. We are about to cross the borderline of the present global energy system: The liquid oil and the natural gas resources – that is 60% of the present commercial energy supplies and demands are running out. Proposals to extend the life time of the fossil energy system by using so-called non conventional fossil energies will lead to tremendous price progressions and will definitely overburden the ecosphere.