Home » Feature » Animal Planet
Bavarian village energized by green revolution
Print Edition
A row of wind turbines towers on the edge of the picturesque Bavarian village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, where rolling meadows meet pine forests and Alpine peaks line the horizon.
“I love them,” said Thomas Pfluger, a local resident, gazing at the windmills jutting out above the tree-tops. “To look at them, it makes me proud.”
Pfluger’s home village, with its old Catholic church and traditional beer garden, may be rural Bavaria at its most idyllic, but it’s also at the cutting edge of Germany’s green energy revolution.
Known as the “Renewables Village,” it uses mainly wind, solar and biomass to meet all its electricity needs, and sells the rest back into the national grid at a profit.
Like many other communities in Germany, Wildpoldsried took advantage of generous subsidies and price guarantees that were rolled out in recent years to boost alternative energy.
To ensure local acceptance, Wildpoldsried relied on a simple idea: to involve the entire village and spread the benefits among its people.
Like 300 other locals, Pfluger, a 55-year-old IT developer, put his money into the wind farm, which offered guaranteed, above-market-rate returns for 20 years.
“I invested 100,000 euros (US$110,000) in the wind turbines,” he said. “Every year, I get about 6 percent of this amount as profit.”
Village mayor Arno Zengerle, 59, stressed that “the participation of the citizens is the most important thing.”
“They must profit from the renewable energy. If only private investors from the outside took part, it wouldn’t work.”
So far business has been good. Last year, the village produced five times more electricity than it consumed.
The goal for this year is to raise that ratio to seven-fold.
Across the village, all public buildings are energy self-sufficient or produce a surplus, which earn the municipality several million euros a year.
“In other words, local taxes are not very high here,” smiled Zengerle, of the conservative Christian Social Union party. Zengerle often hosts foreign delegations of diplomats, experts and journalists — about 100 visits a year — to inform them about the clean energy model.
Some companies have been drawn to Wildpoldsried, including Sonnen GmbH, which makes batteries for storing excess wind and solar power, and which employs 140 people here.
Its founder and boss Christoph Ostermann, 45, said: “When I look out the window, I see solar panels on a lot of roofs, windmills that are spinning.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
