As for #10, Smart Slope, those have been around since I was in college (and that was a long time ago). They were made by a company out of Germany and called then “Luftenstein” (sp.?) or something like that. Our professor managed to get several sent to our college and we built 3 or 4 walls with them. They are great and there are many versions available now. Glad to see them get a thumbs up here and hopefully see them used more in the future. I wonder if they can be made from a recycled product or something that’s less of a CO2 pig as concrete?

Why didn’t you provide a link to each items web site for further info.?

Germany has been very successful at encouraging solar power, particularly with Feed-in Tariffs, but not without stimulating much international analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of their government policies. More recently, Germany’s plan to phase-out all their nuclear power plants by 2022 is raising critical questions about how Germany will obtain adequate energy without nuclear (about 23% of total electricity supply currently), while achieving their goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% from 1990 levels in 2020.

Germany currently obtains about 17% of their electricity from renewable sources, with goals of 35% of total electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and 80% by 2050. However, if they are to replace the nuclear power with renewable energy, they may need to deliver as much as 50-60% of total electricity from renewable sources by 2020, as they already have very aggressive energy efficiency targets (to increase energy efficiency by 20% over 1990 levels).

California and Germany have many similarities (and some significant differences) with respect to energy policies. We’ll have an expert panel of solar industry executives discussing the challenges and opportunities for solar development in Germany and California in the context of the broader energy policy issues.

Our panelists:

Dr. Martin Heming, CEO, Schott Solar

Mr. Fred Jung, CEO and Co-Founder, juwi

Dr. Volker Nadenau, CTO, Bosch Solar Energy

Dr. Marc van Gerven, CEO, Q-Cells North America

Please reserve time to attend this free Thought Leaders event, either in-person or via webcast. A brief registration form is here: https://ia.cpuc.ca.gov/thtleaders/, and the webcast can be accessed from: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/thoughtleaders.

For any questions or further information, please contact Ted Howard (ted.howard@cpuc.ca.gov). More information about this event will be forthcoming at: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/thoughtleaders.