Speech of Dr. Hermann Scheer at the First World Renewable Energy Policy and Strategy Forum 2002, Berlin, June 13th, 2002

Ignoring the possibilities of renewable energies was one of the greatest failures of the 20th century. At the same time, one of the biggest problems of the 20th century was the worldwide orgy of energy consumption that accompanied it and resulted in man using twice as much energy between 1950 and 2000 than in all prior history of civilization. This process was triggered by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. The Industrial Revolution was founded on fossil energies. The fossil energy economy emerged with the availability of power for the steam engine, which became the primary means of energy conversion for more than a century - not only to replace human and animal labour with mechanical power and thus enable the introduction of mass production, but also for steam ships and thus the beginning of a global transport system, for steam trains and thus modern overland transport, and finally for the large condensing power plants driven by fossil fuels - and later by nuclear energy - that still function according to the principle of the steam engine.

 Speech First World Renewable Energy Policy and Strategy Forum 2002 (pdf)