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When it comes to available solar resources, Germany is nowhere near the top compared to all countries in the world. Yet Germany has installed far more solar energy than any other country with 4.5 times more than second place Spain and 6.6 times more than the United States.

As a proud resident of sunny Arizona — a leader in domestic solar installation — I want solar revenge.

While I admire Germany’s accomplishments in adopting cheap, clean energy, my competitive spirit would rather see Americans surpass Germany and take our rightful place as the solar world record holder.

But Germany utilized a secret weapon in order to achieve its first place spot in solar energy adoption — one that the U.S. has yet to commit to. That weapon is a public policy known as a Feed-in-Tariff (FIT). 

FIT is a public policy that pays owners of solar electric systems a premium for the energy they produce. But FIT wasn’t developed by Germans — the policy was actually invented in the U.S. when President Jimmy Carter created the National Energy Act in 1978.  Still, in 1990, Germany adopted “Stromeinspeisungsgesetz” (StrEG), or its “Law on Feeding Electricity into the Grid.” StrEG was a FIT program that has been credited with creating the modern renewable energy industry. In fact, it has created a huge new industry in Germany that employs 340,000 people with an annual budget of 8.7 billion euros — more than $11 billion.

Germany’s FIT program consists of paying renewable energy adopters a premium price for energy generated by solar and wind. Funding for these premiums comes from rate payers, who were naturally initially skeptical, but whose concerns took a backseat to the opportunity for their country to be energy independent.

The German plan was to set the premium at a high level initially, so as to attract investors, but to watch the price decline as competition increased and economies of scale took over, eliminating the need for premiums. That is exactly what’s happening.

Since 2006, Germany has reduced FIT in a series of steps, reducing the incentives 5-15 percent with each step. Still, every time a new reduction is announced, German media sources announce the death of solar energy. And each time they’ve been wrong.

Not only has the German renewable energy industry survived incentive reductions, it has grown with each one! FIT incentives in 2012 will be less than 40 percent of those from 2006. Yet the amount of installed renewable energy has grown by a factor of 8.3 since then.

Complete elimination of incentives for renewable energy in Germany is in sight. The country’s energy policy has already produced lower energy costs, cleaner air, smaller energy imports, higher energy security, more competitive German industries and the huge new German solar industry.  

Another important aspect of Germany’s solar miracle is that most of the solar energy capacity is owned by German citizens. Paul Gipe of Wind-Works reports that 51 percent of all renewable energy in Germany is owned by individual citizens or farms, totaling $100 billion worth of private investments in clean energy. 

When it comes to energy independence, Germany has shown that public policy and political courage are more important than resources. Some states and local governments have stepped up and adopted Germany’s proven policy. After all, it was the U.S. that invented FIT and then quickly abandoned it.

I’d bet that the U.S. will soon readopt Germany’s FIT policy, either as a result of its clear functionality or out of economic necessity. Let’s hope it’s the former.