How citizens drove Germany’s renewable energy expansion

With its wood-beamed cottages and narrow lanes, Neuerkirch seems like any picturesque hamlet in rural Germany. But the glinting roofs and white wind-turbines tell another story. The pride of the village is a solar thermal system that provides heating to almost 200 homes, including those in the adjacent village of Kulz. The heating plant is fuelled by a small solar park and, in winter, wood cuttings. “This is the largest renewable heating network in the district,” says mayor Volker Wichter.

 

Villages like Neuerkirch are part of a pioneering renewable energy movement that has transformed Germany in recent decades, taking share of renewables in electricity consumption from 6% in 2000 to 37% in 2017. The drivers of this energy transition, or ‘Energiewende’, have been ordinary citizens who seized on incentive policies introduced in the late 1990s to build renewable energy plants in their neighbourhoods. The result: Close to half the country’s solar and wind installations are owned by citizens — from individuals and small businesses to villages and citizen cooperatives.

 

The switch has saved the district some 240 million euros in energy import bills, says Bertram Fleck, the district’s retired chief executive. “The money of the village should stay with the village,’’ he says, quoting 19th-century German mayor and cooperative pioneer Freidrich Raiffeisen.

 

Renewables have also boosted the local economy, creating some 10,000 jobs in the state. One municipality, Morsdorf, used income from leasing community land to wind turbines to build a tourist attraction: the country’s longest rope bridge. The bridge drew half a million visitors in the first two years, says Mayor Marcus Kirchhoff.

 

There has been pushback though. Critics say turbines are noisy, ruin tourist spots, and affect bats and birds. Still, Germany says it is committed to renewables. The government is trying to plan a coal and nuclear phase-out, and recently raised its 2030 targets for sourcing power from renewables from 50% to 65%. “What we want,” said Morsdorf’s mayor Kirschhoff, “are villages fit for the future.”