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Scheer believed that the continuation of current patterns of energy supply and use would be environmentally, socially, economically, and politically damaging, with renewable energy being the only realistic alternative. Scheer had concluded that it is technically and environmentally feasible to harness enough solar radiation to achieve a total replacement of the foclear (fossil/nuclear) energy system by a global renewable energy economy. The main obstacle to such a change is seen to be political, not technical or economic.[2] In 1999 he was one of the initiators of the German feed-in tariffs that were the major source of the rise of renewable energies in Germany during the following years.[3]
As a student, he was involved in the re-establishment of the Social Democratic University Association in Heidelberg.[6] In 1973, he became state chairman of the Baden-Württemberg Young Socialists and in 1974 their deputy federal chairman.[7] Scheer supported the new, emphatically socialist course of the SPD youth organization, which was influenced by the student movement.[8]
He worked as postgrade scientist at Universität Stuttgart and as a scientist (1976 till 1980)[9] at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (a large nuclear and basic research center). He became a member of the Bundestag in 1980, representing Baden-Württemberg; in 1993, he also became a member of the federal steering committee (Bundesvorstand) of the Social Democratic Party.[5] Scheer had a solid track record as an anti-establishment figure within his own party.[10]
In 1988, he was one of the co-founders of the non-profit association for renewable energies Eurosolar.[3] Scheer had been its honorary president ever since, and his wife was its full-time managing director.[11] Since June 2001, Scheer had been co-founder and honorary president[12] of the newly founded World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE).[13]
From 1993 to 2009, he was a member of the SPD's federal executive committee. He had a significant influence on the SPD's environmental and energy policy. In the 2008 state election for the Landtag of Hesse, Scheer was originally pegged as minister for development, environment and economics in the shadow cabinet of Andrea Ypsilanti, candidate for Minister-President of Hesse in the election. He announced ambitious energy policy plans, which failed to gain favour with his own party and possible coalition partners.[14] Leading SPD figures such as Jürgen Walter and Wolfgang Clement, a former Minister President of North Rhine Westphalia from the right wing of the party, who later left the party, were rather critical.[15] Scheer however believed Ypsilanti's strategies would result in a big triumph of his party at the federal elections 2009. The election result saw the christian-liberal governing parties CDU and FDP lose the majority they had held since 1999 in the traditionally social democratic state. Yet, the result was very difficult because a left majority was not possible without the party The Left (which had been a merger of the ex-communist PDS and left SPD and labour union members, disappointed by the politics of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder). Although Ypsilanti had promised not to work with The Left, a party to which the SPD still had a controversial relationship but also had already worked with many years ago in other states, she refused to govern in a grand coalition under the CDU and did not want to give away the chance to form a new left government. So she successfully negotiated a minority coalition with the Greens, which would be tolerated by The Left. The final list for the proposed government put Scheer as secretary of a downsized ministry of economics still including the task to lead the transition to renewable energies.[clarification needed][14] Ypsilanti's attempt to officially form her government was set to fail when four SPD representatives declined to elect a government with the support of The Left.[16] This led to a disastrous result for the SPD in the following snap election in 2009, in which Scheer did not take part anymore, with CDU and FDP returned to a government majority.[17] He did not stand for re-election to the federal executive committee in 2009, explaining in a letter that it had become "all too common" to "engage in political power games, produce sham solutions, and take personnel considerations into account that have nothing to do with the issues at hand," and that he did not want to be involved in this.[18]
Scheer was chairman of the International Parliamentary Forum for Renewable Energy. He had been promoting the founding of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) for a long time, and IRENA was founded on 26 January 2009 in Bonn.[19]
He was one of the co-founders[20] and curator of the Institut Solidarische Moderne (ISM), which was founded in January 2010.[21] He was also a member of the board of trustees of the Energiewerk Foundation and a member of the World Future Council.[22]
In 2010, Scheer died from heart failure in a hospital in Berlin[25] after an unspecified short and severe illness.[26] His wife (since 1970), Irm Pontenagel, managed the solar lobby association Eurosolar for decades. His daughter Nina Scheer managed an eco management consulting company and is herself a member of the Bundestag.[27]
Member of the Parliament
Scheer had been a member of the German Bundestag since 1980. From 1982 to 1990, he was the SPD parliamentary group spokesman for disarmament and arms control, and then became chairman of the German Bundestag's subcommittee on Disarmament and Arms Control.[28] He had been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1983. From 1994 to 1997, he was chairman of the Committee on Agriculture.[29] In the German Bundestag, he was one of the initiators of many laws promoting renewable energies, including the Feed-in Tariff Act for Renewable Energies (1990), the amendment to the Federal Building Act to give priority to renewable energies (1996), the 100,000 Roofs Programme (1999), the Renewable Energy Sources Act (2000)[3][28] Act on Tax Exemption for Biofuels.[30][31]
Alongside Michaele Hustedt, Hans-Josef Fell (both Alliance 90/The Greens) and Dietmar Schütz (SPD),[32] Scheer is considered one of the founders of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, which included, for example, a cost-covering feed-in tariff for renewable energies such as solar power and became a model for 47 countries around the world.[3][33]
Scheer was the SPD's direct candidate in the Waiblingen constituency, but was always elected to the Bundestag via the SPD's state list for Baden-Württemberg.[34]
