by Dan Gearino, Inside Climate
Gernot Wagner, an economist at Columbia University, had two big problems with Wright’s speech. Wagner is a native of Austria and I spoke with him while he was getting on a plane to present at an energy conference in Berlin.
The first problem: Wright characterized the German government’s investment in its energy transition as a waste of money, which gives short shrift to the role governments have to play in putting money into the economy to support economic sectors that are important to the future.
The second problem: Wright criticized Germany for producing less electricity than it did 15 years ago, which misses the larger point that the country has become much more efficient in its use of energy. Efficiency is good.
“The German economy hasn’t been growing quite as fast as it should for all sorts of other reasons, but the fact that efficiency goes up … that means productivity went up, so the economy is now more productive, doing more with less inputs, and that is progress,” Wagner said.
Quoted in: “Trump’s New Energy Secretary Called Germany’s Energy Transition ‘Unreliable.’ But He Missed All the Nuance” by Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News (13 February 2025)