Farewell to a Michelangelo of the renewable renaissance

It is with great sadness that we must note the passing of a pillar of the renewable energy movement, Hermann Scheer. As Kate Connolly writes in The Guardian, Scheer, of Germany, "who died unexpectedly aged 66 after suffering from chest pains, was a tireless campaigner for the promotion of renewable energies, in particular solar power, a cause he championed long before it was fashionable to do so, even in a country with such long-established environmental consciousness as his native Germany. He is credited with boosting the status of alternative energy, both at home and abroad, thanks to his visionary zeal." Scheer was the creator of the feed-in tariff by which individuals and businesses that generate power through renewable energies are able to sell it back to the grid at above-market prices, thus encouraging the spread of wind, solar and hydro power. It is now used around the world. More recently, he founded the International Renewable Energy Agency to counter-act the International Atomic Energy Agency, and was about to publish a book that showed it was technically and economically feasible for renewable energy to fully replace fossil and nuclear energy within just a few years, if the political will existed. (Pictured are Scheer and IRENA executive director Hélène Pelosse, at IRENA’s headquarters, in June 2010).