German Village Becomes Model for Renewable Energy

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,820369,00.html

Werner Frohwitter drives his white Prius into Feldheim, parking halfway down the village's one street in front of what looks like a shipping container. Behind the street is a field where 43 giant wind turbines loom over the village's 37 houses. Frohwitter works for Energiequelle Gmbh, which owns the wind park. He greets a Russian camera crew and ushers them into the chilly container, which has become Feldheim's impromptu visitor's center. It's the only sign of life in this otherwise quiet village. Inside, he uses posters on the wall to explain the town's energy transformation for the Russian crew's renewable energy documentary.

This town of 150 inhabitants, tucked away in the Brandenburg countryside some 60 kilometers (37.2 miles) southwest of Berlin seems like an unlikely tourist hotspot. It has no bars, museums or restaurants. But since the Fukushima nuclear disaster one year ago, Feldheim has become a beacon for cities across the world that want to shift their energy mix toward renewables.

Feldheim is the only town in Germany that started its own energy grid and gets all of its electricity and heating through local renewable sources, primarily wind and biogas. This mix of energy self-sufficiency and reliance on renewables attracted 3,000 visitors in 2011. Visitors came from North and South Korea, South America, Canada, Iran, Iraq and Australia. About half of the visitors are from Japan.

Eri Otsu served as a translator for a group of Japanese energy analysts and politicians who came to Germany to see Feldheim. "Feldheim is not a charming Bavarian village; it is gray and they have little," says Otsu, an organic farmer in southern Japan. Still, the group found Feldheim the most impressive of the three German villages they visited because it is energy independent and uses renewables. "They were amazed and said they had never seen anything like that," Otsu says.

[KansDem]

1. What a surprise to read about politicians who actually work for the people...

...and not the corporations.

A Mayor's Work

"People are here almost every day," says Michael Knape, shifting through a stack of business cards on his desk. He sighs, saying that he can't keep track of all the visitors. The 41-year-old, with dark hair and wide eyes that make his young face look even more boyish, is the mayor of Treuenbrietzen, the larger municipality where Feldheim sits.

In many ways Knape's work is typical of a small town mayor, dealing with residents when snow is not cleared fast enough and sometimes answering the phone at the city hall. What makes Knape different is that he is also a patient ambassador for Feldheim, convinced that investing in renewables is the only answer to the country's energy dilemma.

After the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Chancellor Angela Merkel planned a phase-out for Germany's nuclear power plants and set the goal of requiring 35 percent of Germany's energy to come from renewables by 2020, up from 20 percent at the time. Yet the federal government is now cutting funding for renewable energy projects and phasing out solar subsidies.

Before Knape became mayor in 2002 he hadn't given much thought to energy-related issues. Now he is leaving the Free Democrats (FDP), Germany's pro-business party, over differences on energy policy. He invited party members responsible for energy issues from Berlin to see the project in Feldheim. "I had expected, hoped, that after Fukushima they would put all of their strength behind an energy transformation. But all of the decisions made since then have been the opposite," Knape says with resignation, his gaze shifting out the window.