ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

THE BAVARIAN TOWN WILDPOLDSRIED GENERATES MORE THAN THREE TIMES AS MUCH ELECTRICITY AS IT CONSUMES. THE VILLAGERS AREN’T NECESSARILY DIE-HARD ENVIRONMENTALISTS, BUT THEY CAN DO THEIR FIGURES.

What Wendelin Einsiedler fears more than anything is when the blades stand still. “They’ve got to get moving again,” the wind farmer exclaims, hopping about his office on one foot, then the other. Outside the boughs are bending and breaking, everything is in a whirl on this stormy Sunday. Apart from his white giants. In the gusty wind, the turbines have shut down to keep them from buckling like the trees. Einsiedler at his computer is master of twelve wind turbines. At the touch of a button he sets the blades, each the length of two large trucks, in motion again. Click, and Haarberg North on the neighboring hill starts turning. Click again and Langenberg starts up. The storm has turned the day’s schedule upside down. The CSU regional party assembly is about to begin. People are waiting, the 53-year-old with the tousled hair must go. “Franz,” he urges his brother, one foot al - ready in a rubber boot, “Haarberg South has stopped again. You do it!” The wind man, as his friends call him, has brought the ecological upswing to Wildpoldsried. When it comes to climate protection, the village is in the big leagues. While others have spent years talking, its 2,500 inhabitants acted long ago. The community generates three and a half times its own electricity needs. Wildpoldsried creates energy out of the raw materials that nature provides in this part of Bavaria. The wind that blows so plentifully in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. The forest timber. The sun that shines here for 1,755 hours a year. The fodder from which the farmers make bio - gas. Not even the power of the village stream is wasted.

ECO POWER PAYS
And yet they vehemently reject the “alternative” label. There is not one Green party member on the local council. The one-time “organic” shop no longer stocks organic produce. Such healthy living was too expensive for the thrifty Bavarians. It is not environmental awareness that motivates them. Money talks in Wildpoldsried. Profit is the most important principle in this community. Mayor Arno Zengerle of the CSU party has made the climate a town hall issue. Seated between a feng shui fountain and a motorcycle calendar, the 52-year-old conservative talks with wistful pride about annual bulk orders for solar energy systems. Generating energy has become the most popular pass - time in Wildpoldsried. The villagers are all for it, they all want to earn a profit. Getting a mention on the community website is better than winning a trophy. Everyone likes to see his photo online with the data that matter: Farmers tipping slurry and silage into a biogas fermenter. The wind man in whose tur - bines the villagers have invested their savings. The operators of the village’s three hydroelectric plants — one of them the mayor himself.

A wrench in one hand, torch in the other, Arno Zengerle hunches over his turbine. “Going again at last,” he rejoices, “the past month was far too dry.” Almost every day he looks in at the disused sawmill. Today the rain that followed the storm has set the plant humming. A meter below ground, the water piped from the village stream is driving the turbine blades. It used to power a saw, now it runs the mayor’s generator instead. The gauges show an output of six kilowatts. For every kilowatt hour of power he feeds into the grid, the mayor receives just under ten cents. The plant earns only a few euros a day. But that’s not the important thing. The mayor has a passion for technology, and since he took his turbine apart and rebuilt it, a love affair has blossomed.

BRAINSTORMING IN A MONASTERY
The development of renewable energy has always been more than just a hobby for Arno Zengerle. “We have to consider what we are handing down to our children,” Zengerle warned his councilors back in 1999. They retreated for a weekend to a former Benedictine monastery. There, in closed session, the councilors decided there should be more grass roots democracy. The villagers should decide what they wanted. The anonymous survey form that subsequently dropped through their letter boxes was three pages long. Questions ranged from local public transport to proposed designs for the village center. The locals were also asked to comment on two planned wind turbines: 92 percent were in favor. Based on the villagers’ answers, the local council developed a road map for the future. Less oil and more timber was what the community wanted. Building a heating plant especially for the village was less a matter of fine words than of a good business plan. The plant that burns wood pellets cost half a million euros — and saves almost 150,000 liters of heating oil and 470 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Sigmund Hartmann recites the figures to every visitor who comes to inspect the plant in the cellar beneath the village hall. It is plain to see that the facility is his pride and joy. The 68-yearold retired steelworker even helped to finance the plant. The system pumps heat through underground pipes to the town hall and the sports hall. Church-goers are also snug and warm. Just like the Hartmann family in their house nearby. More than 30 public and private buildings are connected to the village heating system. “As a community project it’s very worthwhile,” says the guardian of the system. The Hartmanns would have needed a new heating system anyway, and this one saves them around € 400 per year. Like many families in the village, they also have a solar system on their roof — for hot water. Getting away from oil was a big thing for the Hartmanns. “First of all, because the smell has gone from the cellar, secondly because it is cheaper, and thirdly because Straubing is closer than Saudi Arabia,” says Sigmund Hartmann. A 15-tonne truckload of pellets is delivered—from Straubing — every week or two.

TEACHING JAPAN A THING OR TWO
Wildpoldsried’s fame has spread far beyond the local region, as the entries in the community’s visitors book prove: From Japan and Lake Constance, from the ranks of the Green party and the conservative CSU, a steady stream of visitors come to see what they can learn from this energy-oriented village. The mayor is fond of telling the story of how he drummed up support to renovate the older buildings. In the middle of winter a film was taken from a hot air balloon. The main points of interest were the village roofs. Those on which the snow lay deep were well insulated. Where the snow had melted, the owners could see how much heat they were wasting. Mayor Zengerle had his eye on more than just the villagers; he also combed through the council’s energy bills. Each month the staff are required to monitor how much heating oil, electricity and water are consumed by the kindergarten, school, town hall and fire station. A closer look at the meters soon showed who the energy guzzlers were: The kindergarten boiler was on maximum, an easily avoidable waste. A faulty valve meant the heating at the fire station kept running through the summer. No one had noticed. Like a man with his heart set on breaking his own record, Arno Zengerle shows off the latest figures. “The solar energy units on public buildings alone brought us in € 70,000 last year,” he grins. But he is still on the lookout for more suitable roof space. He would dearly like to kit out the historic village church with some solar panels: “But it’s a protected monument, and we’re not allowed.”

Text: Christine Keck, Photos: Heinz Heiss
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 1/2010