Hans-Josef Fell joined the Green Party in 1992 following years of interest in renewable energy and environmental protection. Fell worked on the city council in his hometown of Hammelburg from 1990 until 1998 and from 1996 until 2003 he worked in the county council in the Bad Kissingen district. He has been a member of the German Parliament since 1998. Hans-Josef Fell supported the shift in military training methods towards conflict deescalation, particularly at the Bundeswehr base in Hammelburg. From 1999 to 2005, as spokesman of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group on the German Bundestag’s research committee, Hans-Josef Fell helped to ensure an increase in funding for research into photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, geothermal energy, bioenergy, batteries for electric cars, bionics, nanotechnology and others. Hans-Josef Fell has initiated many technical assessment reports, which in some cases still offer important foundations for legislative developments today, for example: nanotechnology, geothermal energy, transport systems of the future, various medical issues such as research into the brain, nuclear fusion, and genetic engineering in agriculture and medicine. Hans-Josef Fell wrote the draft of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which was adopted in 2000 in the face of strong political opposition. The law, enacted 25 February 2000, guarantees cost-covering
feed-in tariffs for electricity from
biomass,
wind power, and
solar power, and aimed to increase the percentage of
renewable energy used in
Germany to 12.5% by the year 2010 and 20% by 2020. In 2011, Germany was already generating 20% of its energy from renewable resources. He was also involved in drafting the law amending the EEG in 2004. Hans-Josef Fell initiated legislation exempting biofuels from tax, and was also actively involved in establishing the legislative framework for renewables at the European level. Hans-Josef Fell is the founder of the
Energy Watch Group, a network of parliamentarians and independent researchers who conduct research on global energy developments and publish open-access studies to secure our global energy supply in a sustainable way. In March 2014, Fell became president of the Energy Watch Group. Additional key members are Dr. Werner Zittel, a senior scientist at the Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik GmbH, and Dr. Christian Breyer, an expert of Solar Economy at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. He is a signatory of the
Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. ==Awards==