Germany's First Offshore Wind Farm - Der Spiegel

As the world's most balanced and well run economy, Germany always has something for the rest of the world to look at and be inspired by. Der Spiegel has this excelelnt analysis of the first offshore wind energy powerplant in Germany off the Emden coast. The 220 GW project will power 50,000 households. Knowing the Germans, this powerplant will be fully commercially viable and not a mere demonstration of left-wing idealism by a bunch of starry-eyed jholawala types (yes, an Indian expression there, ha, ha!) hellbent on doing little other than preaching to the rest of the world.

Considering that India, the country of my birth, has a huge power deficit problem and that it also has one of the world's longest coastlines, and, considering that some reports suggest that if India continues on its current path of building more and more coal fired powerplants, it will have to spend more than $ 40 billion a year on importing coal alone in about 7 years time, I hope someone in New Delhi is watching this development. I also hope that whoever is watching it is open-minded enough to think seriously about looking at replicating this around the country. Not to do this would be stupid in the extreme - the Germans didn't become as rich as they are by half measures. If India - and other countries in the region - want to enjoy the same levels of prosperity, they will need to follow in the Germans' footsteps.