Energy Independence? One Village Makes It Happen

Wildpoldsried,  a village of 2,600 in Germany, produces 321% more energy than they use.  Employing a variety of methods including wind turbines and solar panels, the village is now in a position, both earth-friendly and enviable, of making money by doing the right thing.
Currently they earn $5.7 million in revenue a year by selling their extra energy back to the national grid.

They made their changes over a period of 14 years, and they did it without going into debt.  See their story and slide show here.

For more information on this village's energy transformation, see this article, or do some googling.

Wildpoldsried's experience and inspiration is now available not just online but in person.  The mayor visits other towns, giving advice on how to make changes.  Also, the village council offers energy tours and talks for people who want to visit the village to see for themselves.

Don't know about you, but I've been waiting 40 years for a story like this.  On one hand, during those decades, a number of individuals and, more recently, commercial buildings have achieved energy independence, sometimes economically.  On the other hand  we've heard way too many repetitions of lines like alternative energy is "too expensive,"  "impractical," "unreliable,"  "not scaleable," blah blah blah.  These are the turf-defending views of King CONG (Harvey Wasserman's name for the Coal Oil Nuclear natural Gas industries).

CONG needs us to believe that we must have their deep-water drilling, their hydrofracking, mountaintop removal coal mining, and nukes in order to have enough energy.

Enter Wildpoldsried.   The accomplishment of this one small village stands as a potent refutation of CONGtalk.  CONG is simply  wrong.  Energy independence is in fact possible and practical.   A group of people with good leaders decided to make a change, acted on their decision, and change happened.

It can happen in more places.  Maybe the rest of us will be inspired by the Wildpoldsried story.  Maybe there's hope for our species to sustainably inhabit this planet, after all. 


photo by jinterwas on flickr

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NYC Lags Behind Other Cities in Recycling

Image
The October 21 New York Times featured an article titled, Lunch, Landfills, and What I Tossed . Author Mireya Navarro counted up the waste she produced in a week's worth of take out lunches: "Saving all the packaging from a week’s worth of takeout food, I ended up with three plastic yogurt containers, a paper salad box, a paper cereal bowl, two Styrofoam plates, one plastic salad-dressing container and seven plastic food containers — the rigid ones with snap-on lids. Also, five plastic cups (each with a plastic straw), a paper cup with a plastic lid, a plastic water bottle and a plain old paper cup (it held milk for my cereal). Also, one plastic fork, one plastic knife and two compostable plastic spoons, which I threw out rather than composting." Besides the individual trying to brown bag it and otherwise cut down on waste, there is another problem--New York City is lagging behind many others in its recycling: "A survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council this...
Read more

Worried About Climate Change?

Image
Worried about climate change? With the largest climate demonstration in history coming to our town next Sunday it’s a good time to think about how plastic contributes to climate change. Plastic use releases hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year – an amount that could be greatly reduced by recycling more plastic and finding alternatives to everyday plastic items that we really don’t need. Think about it the next time you’re in the coop pulling plastic bags off the roll for your produce or bulk items. Just by getting into the habit of reusing plastic bags or replacing them with cloth bags, each of us can decrease our personal contribution to climate change while we’re lobbying world governments to take the big, urgent actions needed to avert climate disaster. Want to make your own cloth bags? Come to the Coop Environmental Committee's Big Sewing Event, Sunday, November 9, beginning at noon in the community room upstairs at the coop.
Read more

A Banana for Your Thoughts

Image
We're all about reducing waste, and it makes it easier if you have a great new use for would-be waste. Banana peels, for instance. Did you know that a banana peel can be used to remove splinters, polish silverware, polish shoes, reduce the itch of insect bites, and more. Get the details on reusing banana peels . Thanks to Kat G. for passing on this tip! After you're finished using your banana peels and other food waste, you can compost them. If you don't have your own compost, the Grand Army Plaza green market as well as others accepts compostable waste .
Read more