Studio Guest - Thomas Straubhaar, HWWI

Our studio guest this week is Professor Thomas Straubhaar, president of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics. DW-TV: Thomas Straubhaar, ow do you light your home? Thomas Straubhaar: Actually we are on a fifty-fifty balance I think. We try to replace every old one as soon as possible with a new energy saving bulb. DW-TV: So you'll be ready by 2015 when the conventional light bulb is banned. But that is only one measure in order to save energy. What else needs to be done? Thomas Straubhaar: I think there will be more done automatically by the high oil prices, by the high resource prices. They do their best to change attitudes, to give an incentive for recycling energy and the search for new energy, so I think that's the best way to handle the crisis. DW-TV: Exactly, I'm sure you agree, no one wants to give up the sort of living standard we have achieved right now. And this living standard is based on electricity. We need a lot of it. Here in Germany, the lion's share of our electricity is supplied by coal-fired and nuclear power plants. Lately, alternative energy has caught up a bit, right now providing about 14 percent of our electricity. Still, we have a problem: coal is not environmentally friendly and it's finite, alternative energy has started to catch up, but it's still in the minority. Now there's a discussion that nuclear power is going through a kind of revival. What's your take on that? Thomas Straubhaar: I think it is very wise to discuss this openly and with no ideology behind it. I think it's a good time to discuss what kind of energy do we need. And what kind of energy we should have here in Germany. And I think nuclear power is a very important factor in this field. DW-TV: Here in Germany we have reported on that. Here in Germany we are quite advanced when it comes to alternative energy. But it hasn't caught on the way it should. Why do you think that is? Thomas Straubhaar: I think it is easy to explain. As long as oil was cheap nobody really cared about changing attitudes and there was no incentive to go into research for other alternative energy. So I think that now with such high oil and gasoline prices everybody will search and have an incentive to change attitudes and to change habits and to go for further research in all these alternative fields of energy. DW-TV: Do you think it should be voluntary, or should it be done like with this convention on light bulbs that a government should come, like in Australia and New Zealand and now in Europe, saying all right, this is it, by that date it's over, you have to come up with another idea. Thomas Straubhaar: No, I think it's necessary that we have more regulations. We have too many regulations in this market. So I think let's just do the market itself and then we will have the soonest and the best solutions as possible. DW-TV: So what do you think will follow the fate that the light bulb is suffering now? Thomas Straubhaar: I think there will be other changes as this one and very soon. And I am very optimistic that we will have good and attractive alternatives very soon.

DW-World | July 15, 2008

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