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Health & Fitness

German Village Gets 100% of its Energy from Renewables

Feldheim is the first village in Germany to obtain all of its energy from renewable resources. We can learn from their experience.

At least 3,000 visitors toured Feldheim last year, a tiny East German hamlet (Population 148) according to an April 2012 issue of "The Independent." "The tourists don't come to see the 13th-century stone churches or appreciate the pine forests and gently rolling countryside. Tourists come to see the wind turbines, some 300 feet above the ground.

Feldheim is the first community in Germany to meet all its energy needs renewably. In addition to the wind turbines they also have a biogas heat plant powered by slurry made from corn and manure obtained from its 700-sow pig farm and 1,700 acres of arable farmland. "To make up for possible energy shortfalls caused by fluctuations in wind power and biogas supplies during cold weather, the village also installed a woodchip furnace fuelled from the remains of trees felled in the surrounding forests."

This all started in the mid 1990's when villagers were offered incentives ranging from cash to new sewage plants to persuade them to accept turbines on their land. "In 1994 Michael Raschermann, a young renewable-energy entrepreneur, looked at Feldheim's exposed location on a plateau and decided it would be an ideal spot to install a wind turbine. Dozens more followed, as the villagers found that they could earn cash by renting their land to energy companies for use as a turbine plots."

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The German Government plans to shut down all the country's nuclear power plants by 2022, and by 2020, to have increased its reliance on renewable energy to 35 to 40%.

Since the catastrophe at the Fukushima plant most of the tourists are from Japan. The residents of Feldheim are admittedly more comfortable with the wind turbines than they are with the tourists. "It's like living in a goldfish bowl," said one farmer.

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The lesson that we can take away from Feldheim is the use of incentives to encourage investment in renewable energy. Wind energy generation needs the right conditions involving topography wind speed and consistency. There are many places in the Midwest where wind farms could supplement farmer's cash crops. Solar, geothermal and biomass are other alternative sources of energy. With the right incentives renewable energy can replace much, potentially all of our reliance on gas, coal and nuclear energy. What is needed is the political will to put more incentives in place.

Feldheim is a tiny town that gets all its power locally. Perhaps energy designers in the US can consider shifting from the paradigm of transmitting electricity over long distances to designing energy creation locally in a decentralized system. This would minimize the need to replace aging long distance transmission lines that criss-cross the continent.

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