A Comparison of Attitudes to Climate Change in Germany and Turkey

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Germany and Its Climate Change

Germany covers an area of 357.021 square km of which 7.798 square km surface of this area consist of water resources and 30% of its land is covered by forests. It has Alps at the southern part and North Sea at the Northern part. The characteristic climate changes and differs from place to place and also from region to another region. Generally it is hot in summer and temperature can exceed till 300C, whereas winters are mild. But in the eastern part it has a continental climate where winters are very cold and summers are very hot. The yearly average temperature is around is 9°C. [2]

Gas Emissions

Germany which realizes climate changing made some provisions against it with regulations and changing and developing the way of acting the environment. Germany is one of the main countries the uses renewable energy and it is also first country which gives up nuclear energy usage in 2011. Germany plays a role global area cooperation about protecting environment, climate friendly developing strategies and energy. Germany decreased its greenhouse emission 24% since 1990 whereas Kyoto Protocol was proposing 21% until 2012. It follows a way about climate changing and protecting environment for long term. The key aspect of decreasing greenhouse effect is that, the increasing efficiency in the usage of energy of resources and developing renewable energy and raw materials which can be used in the later years without causing any harmful effects to the environment. Protecting environment (protecting natural living area) is specified as a government responsibility with regulations in 1994 in Germany. According to this, for an healthy environmental condition and life quality, the nature should be protected with clean air and also with clean water resources. The amount of dangerous gas emissions has been decreasing in Germany from over the years. There has been decrease in emission of Greenhouse gases in spite of increasing traffic intensity. The reason behind this interesting fact is that the vehicles are using catalyzators and also decreasing the use of nitric oxide by 50% that causes harmful effects inside the car. Also, sulphur dioxide emissions has been decreased by 90% in the thermoelectric power stations which uses coal and lignite as the raw materials, with the regulations to use limited sulphur rate. [2]

Water Usage

2.2% of the surface area of Germany is covered by water, and 0.85% of these sources comprised of natural lakes. The water surface is consist of 11 large rivers (Elbe, Danube, Rhine, Weser, Ems, Warnow/Peene, Elder, Schiel/Trave, Oder, Rhône, Maas). Moreover, Germany has 291 dams. In addition, approximately 11.7% of the surface area are designated to drinking water protection and underlie restrictions of use to protect existing water resources. In the lights of these informations, In Germany, per capita potable water rate is decreased from 144 litres to 121 litres. This means that Germany being the second industrialized country around the globe uses limited amount of available water. [3]

Renewable Energy

The rise of Germany as a powerhouse as a renewable energy is among the most innovative and has been very rapid and also successful worldwide. In the last two decades Germany has doubled its renewable energy from 17078 GWh of electricity generation to 95215 GWh in 2009[4]. Also the electricity produced from renewable energy has increased from 6.3% in 2000 to about 30 percent in the first half of 2014. Through renewable energy sources in 2011 the amount of electricity produced and supplied was increased from 20.5% (123.5 TWh) of Germany's electricity supply (603 TWh) [5]. Almost 31% of German electric power came from renewable sources, mainly wind, biogas and solar during the first six months of 2014 and this value was more than came from brown coal [6][7]. Over the same period the hydropower contribution have also basically remained same which makes it a remarkable achievement. In the present day Germany is the world leader in Wind energy and also a major exporter of Wind Energy Technology. Other areas of renewable energy like thermal energy, photovoltaic and biomas has seen extentional growth along with wind and solar energy. As a highly developed industrial Nation with Europe’s Premier and the world’s 4th Largest Economy energy issue have been at the heart of the country’s domestic and international since Germany does not have a big oil deposit that many of the developed countries have. With current estimated population of 82 million Germany’s welfare is directly dependent on its economical success which is tied to its energy resource tremendous interest not only in the future development of the international energy market [4]. For future prospects and to use energy in a more efficient way Germany has made some goals to be achieved in the future. Some of them are;

- Renewable electricity – Increase of electricity from 40 to 45% by 2025, 55 to 60% by 2035, and 80% by 2050. [8]

- Renewable energy – Increase of energy from 18% by 2020, 30% by 2030, and 60% by 2050

- Energy efficiency - Minimizing the total energy consumption by 20% from 2008 by 2020 and 50% less by 2050.

- Total electricity consumption – Reducing electricity consumption from 10% below 2008 level by 2020 and 25% less by 2050.

Germany is the leading producer of renewable energy and as of 2014, in the first half year renewable sources account for 30.8 percent of the overall electricity production comparing with the same time period of 2013 the energy production from solar, wind and biomass increased by 9.9 TWh, and there is an decrease from fossil fuels by 14.8 TWh, and remained almost unchanged for nuclear and hydro power. [9]

According to researches and surveys of EU countries, it can been seen that people of Germany are concern about the climate change and are willing to do contribute for the same. Here are some of the results;

> 66% of German people consider climate changing is most serious problem facing the world as a whole.

> Almost six out of ten German citizens(57%), saw business and industry as being responsible from climate changing.

> 64% of Germans answered in favour of when researches asked them about any action taken by them personally to fight climate change over past 6 months and are trying to reduce waste and regularly segregate it for recycling.

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