The renewable energy explorers return home

Justin Woolford, Senior Campaigns Manager - Social Goals, at The Co-operative, updates us on the last day of the 'Discover Community Energy' tour, summing up what he has learnt and giving his hopes for the future. The tour, part of a wider project for The Co-operative, is being jointly run by Forum for the Future and Carbon Leapfrog. This fact-finding mission seeks to discover what made the community energy revolution possible in Germany, and to explore what's possible in the UK.

A 2.3MW wind turbine is a pretty impressive looking piece of kit from a distance. Up close and personal, its presence is awe-inspiring, and silent. Craning up to take in its blades I feel half hypnotised by their rhythm. Someone runs up and starts to engage in a bit of turbine-hugging, spreading the arms around a fraction of its vast concrete girth. I look around at its neighbours and for a moment have the sense that I am in the middle of some kind of War of the Worlds invasion. There’s no getting away from it, these immense structures are emotive, and beautiful. Whether you find that beauty compelling or repellent most likely depends on a powerful mix of your values, your view of climate change and your relationship to nature and landscape. Personally I find them pretty eerie, particularly on this misty day, but I’m undoubtedly in favour. At the end of the day I guess I’d rather have a windmill in my backyard than a well-pad …

Feldheim is an hour south-west of Berlin in the fertile plains of Brandenburg. Our pilgrimage there, to visit one of Germany’s energy independent villages, was an education in how renewables ‘at scale’ is unfolding in parts of Germany. It has 48 turbines as well as a solar PV array, a biogas and a biomass plant. This rural community of 145 people struck a deal with a wind developer, set up its own energy company, and is now off-grid with a supply of affordable power for generations to come. They don’t own the turbines but receive a rent from the wind power company for the land on which the turbines stand. Some might argue they’ve been bought cheaply but the alternative would have been a dying community. Now they receive visitors like us from around the world and run a factory that produces sophisticated PV panel tracking rigs. It’s a new future for this rural community.

The bigger picture is that Feldheim now contributes to Germany’s 20% renewable energy supply. With this year’s decision to phase out nuclear power altogether this is only going to grow. It’s already at scale. And the conversations we have with energy policy-makers, financiers and entrepreneurs back in Berlin in the evening are buzzing with what needs to happen next. Developing a more flexible, smarter grid is a priority. But while that’s in train, the innovators are just getting on with it. PIS, the software company with the walnut logo, for example, developed a piece of software that measures and calculates the temperature of transmission lines running from the turbines on Germany’s north coast. It helped determine that the lines have 20% extra capacity on a blowy day as a result of the wind's cooling effect! Handy if you need to manage fluctuating demand from renewables.

What next for our intrepid band of renewable energy explorers? We’re heading home now, agreed that we all need to assume responsibility for our energy future, and with an invite from the WI to convene at Denham College to continue our work. My hope is that we can refine our joint vision, now in its infancy, and send a strong message to government that community energy means community renewal.

The Co-operative believes in energy democracy – a new relationship between people and energy in which communities across the UK own, generate, and benefit from their own clean energy.