ENERGY: The German village running on its own juice

Feldheim advertises itself as energy-independent and attracts tourists eager to visit the off-grid village – Image: Michael Sohn/AP Photo/picture alliance

While war in the Middle East sends oil prices soaring and households brace for higher bills, one tiny German village has spent 30 years making itself immune to exactly this kind of shock.

For many people, the arrival of an electricity bill might be met with a degree of dread. But in the small German village of Feldheim residents barely give them a second thought.

“In my old apartment, I used about 2,400 kilowatt hours a year. All this technology needs a lot of electricity,” said Jens Neumann, gesturing to his gaming setup of four screens and a console.

In his previous home, the costs were racking up. But since Neumann moved to the village in 2024 — one of many new residents drawn by the promise of cheaper electricity — he’s been “pretty relaxed about all of this now because my costs have been cut by more than half.”

Even when Russia’s war in Ukraine plunged Europe into an energy crisis and sent heating and electricity prices soaring, Feldheim remained insulated from the shock. At the peak of the crisis, Germany’s average electricity price spiked to around €0.45 ($0.50) per kilowatt hour. In Feldheim, a village about 80 kilometers (51 miles) from Berlin, costs stayed fairly steady at less than half that.

And as far as Neumann is concerned, the village should keep building more of what is keeping his energy bills down — the wind turbines he can see rotating gently from his back porch.

That puts him at odds with some of rural Germany, where “not in my backyard” has become the default response to renewable energy projects. Even Chancellor Friedrich Merz has dismissed wind turbines as ugly blights on the landscape.

But as the latest energy crisis sends costs spiraling and Germany’s renewable’s rollout slows down, Feldheim’s green transition may have lessons worth paying attention to.

How did Feldheim end up with cheap energy?

The story begins in the early 1990s, when a young engineering student named Michael Raschemann saw potential in Feldheim. The village sat on slightly elevated ground for this flat part of Germany, so had ideal wind conditions, and had a power line conveniently nearby. It was also a rural area in former East Germany struggling to find its place in a newly reunified country.

“Everything was dismantled — jobs disappeared, people had to commute farther and farther, and nothing was happening,” Raschemann recalled, adding that when he showed up proposing four wind turbines, it was at least something new for the village.

The turbines were such a curiosity at the time that they grabbed the attention of both the local community and TV station.

What followed was a slow, deliberate process of community engagement that Raschemann and his wife — who together founded the energy company Energiequelle — maintained throughout the project’s expansion.

Together with local government, residents and the farmers’ cooperative, which administers much of Feldheim’s land, they made decisions like where turbines could be built without casting a shadow on houses.

The continuous dialogue was one reason residents got on board, says Sebastian Herbst, head of local agricultural cooperative and Feldheim native.

“This was a structure that grew slowly over time. More wind turbines were added, but the residents were always kept informed and involved,” Herbst told DW.

Cows are vital to Feldheim’s biogas plant, linked to a local heat and power grid =Image: McPHOTO/blickwinkel/picture alliance

Feldheim’s renewable energy expansion

Feldheim’s energy infrastructure has since grown beyond the wind farm. Herbst’s agricultural co-op joined forces with Energiequelle in 2008 to open a biogas plant. At the time, European farmers were struggling with low produce prices, and this was a way to diversify their income.

“That allowed us to secure our workforce and offer prospects — new jobs,” said Herbst.

The plant now converts livestock manure, corn and crushed grain into electricity and heat, capturing the greenhouse gas methane that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere, and turning it a more climate-friendly fuel for heating.

A wood-fired backup heating system, a solar installation and a large battery storage unit round out Feldheim’s setup.

The village now produces hundreds of millions of kilowatt hours annually — far more than Feldheim’s small population needs. Less than 1% of the energy produced here is consumed locally. The rest feeds into the national grid.

That small local share turned out to be the key to Feldheim’s green energy transition.

Cheaper energy bills mean higher local acceptance

Frustrated by a system that forced residents to buy back their own locally-generated electricity and pay grid fees and surcharges, Energiequelle tried to buy the village’s section of the power grid.

When that failed, they partnered with the local government to build an entirely new grid from scratch in 2010.

But the residents went further. Each household invested €3,000, alongside state and EU funding, to create their own heating network. Out of Germany’s 180 bioenergy villages, Feldheim is the only one with a fully independent renewable electricity and heating system.

That independence is why energy is so cheap in the village. While Germans pay around €0.35 per kilowatt hour on average, Feldheim residents pay just €0.12.

The residents of Feldheim have cheap energy and are largely insulated from global oil and gas price shocks – Image: DW

What can Feldheim teach the rest of the world?

But there are specific circumstances that helped this approach thrive in Feldheim. The village is tiny and tightly knit — organizing residents is easy, and the power lines connecting wind farms to homes are short. The farmers’ cooperative holds significant community trust and was a willing partner from early on.

Similar renewable microgrids exist on the Isle of Eigg in Scotland and Kodiak Island in Alaska. But scaling the concept to larger towns, or communities without Feldheim’s specific geography and social cohesion, would be much harder.

Yet Feldheim does hold lessons. Studies show that communicating effectively — from the beginning — makes a huge difference. And that locals need to see that it’s making them some money. Or at least helping them to save it.

“It’s incredibly important to use this one small fraction of energy — about one million kilowatt-hours — locally, in order to gain acceptance to feed the remaining 99.5% into the grid,” said Raschemann.

Yet even Feldheim is not immune to wider policy pressures.

The biogas plant’s subsidies are expiring. And though there is a new program available, Herbst says it doesn’t offer enough funding. Because the plant has to remain profitable. In addition, there will soon be a need for a new generation of more powerful wind turbines. Here too, Raschemann says community involvement will be key.

“Once again, it’s important to bring Feldheimers along — to understand this change and to be willing to accept it,” said Raschemann.

DW.com/NAN 20-3-26

You might also like: