Ecological Restructuring or Environment Friendly Deindustrialization: The Fate of the East German Energy Sector and Society Since 1990
Author(s)
Boehmer-Christiansen, Sonja; Merten, D; Meissner, J; Ufer, D.
Abstract
The East German energy sector’s fate after 1990 is described, with an emphasis on environmental regulation. While primary energy demand in the West rose by almost 10% in 1991, it declined by about 30% in the East. Demand was not expected to return to its pre-Wende (U-turn) value until 2005, despite advancing privatization and energy price rises to Western values. Optimists had hoped that by the year 2000 at the latest a planned economy devoted to energy self-sufficiency would have become fully integrated into the West with the achievement of similar living standards. The evidence so far supports the pessimists who observe rapid industrial decline and the relative impoverishment of large sectors of the population, possibly leading to political destabilization. The ability of market forces to transform communism is being tested, along with the ability of society to shed its socialist inheritance without psychological disintegration.
