RENEWS SPEZIAL NO. 89 / DEC. 2019 COMMUNITY ENERGY IN GERMANY MORE THAN JUST CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION INHALT 1 Introduction .............................................4 4 Stadtwerke: municipal utilities as community energy ................................32 1.1 What is community energy? .............4 4.1 From early micro-grids to AUTHOR 1.2 Why does community energy current utility buybacks .................. 32 matter? ....................................................5 Craig Morris 4.2 Traditional and new roles for Dec 2019 municipal utilities ............................. 34 2 Main laws for community energy ..........8 ISSN 2190-3581 2.1 National Climate Protection 5 Citizen energy: best practices .............36 Initiative (NKI) ........................................8 5.1 Two villages collaborate 2.2 Market incentive program (MAP) ....9 for district heat .................................. 36 2.3 Feed-in tariffs (FITs) and 5.2 Smart heat in Dollstein ................... 36 FIT premiums ..................................... 10 Agentur für Erneuerbare Energien e. V. 5.3 Jühnde: Germany’s first Invalidenstraße 91 2.4 Coöperatives Act ................................ 11 10115 Berlin “bioenergy village” ........................... 36 2.5 Comparing auction prices Tel.: 030 200535 30 5.4 Wildpoldsried: the tourist magnet Fax: 030 200535 51 and FITs ................................................ 13 of energy communities .................... 37 E-Mail: [email protected] 2.6 Effect of auctions on community 5.5 Feldheim: a village on the edge PV and biomass ................................. 16 of a wind farm ................................... 37 2.7 Attempts to accommodate 5.6 Saerbeck .............................................. 38 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS community wind in auctions .......... 18 5.7 Rhein-Hunsrück county .................. 38 The author would like to thank the following people for their useful input: Malte 2.8 The 18 MW limit for wind ................ 21 Zieher (BBEn), Ryota Kajimura (AEE), Josh Roberts (RESCoop), Helen McHenry and Orla Nic Suibhne (Western Development Commission, Ireland), and Silva 2.9 Possible improvements to 6 Lessons learned ...................................42 Hermann (Jokkmokk Municipality). Any remaining errors are the author’s alone. community energy definition ......... 21 This paper was written for the LECo (Local Energy Communities) project funded 2.10 Mieterstrom: tenants purchase 7 Recommended reading ........................43 by the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme of the EU. power from their own roofs ........... 22 3 Community energy and “acceptance” .24 3.1 Community payments from renewable projects ........................... 26 3.2 Danish participation model German states are copying ............ 28 3.3 NIMBY: a label that undermines public trust .......................................... 28 4 RENEWS SPEZIAL RENEWS SPEZIAL 5 “community energy” to include municipal utilities. Some German legislation has directly 1 INTRODUCTION targeted local governments, making this inclusion all the more appropriate. “The way you turn a disparate people into a community The examples given below are not exhaustive. This paper aims to make German experience is you give them a project to build together.” – good and bad – available to the international audience. Further details are available in the literature listed and linked to, much of which is in German, however. New York Times commentator David Brooks on God tasking the divided Jewish people with the creation of the tabernacle in the Bible (Source). 1.2 WHY DOES COMMUNITY ENERGY MATTER? Communities are where abstract political targets become concrete infrastructure projects – 1.1 WHAT IS COMMUNITY ENERGY? where adaptation to climate change takes place, but also where these actions detrimentally affect locals, leading to opposition. There is no single definition of “community energy.” In fact, the term in German is “citizen energy” (Bürgerenergie). It can thus cover both groups and individuals – homeowner roof On the one hand, more than half of all people now live in urban arrays and parent-funded school roofs, for example. areas, a figure expected to rise to two-thirds by mid-century Kümmerer: the local who “takes according to the UN. Already, roughly two thirds of all energy care of everything” Germany has become known for its history of community energy. Surprisingly, it lacked a is consumed in cities. On the other hand, rural areas that legal definition of Bürgerenergie until 2013. These projects need not be coöperatives, in which The role of the Kümmerer has become might otherwise fall behind during globalization can become each person gets a vote regardless of their share of invested equity capital. Bürgerenergie widely noted in the success of community energy suppliers to urban areas, thereby not only creating projects originally got started as limited liability projects, such as the wave of early wind energy projects in Germany. Translated economic opportunities in the countryside, but also fostering farms in rural areas of northern Germany in the 1990s. literally, a Kümmerer is a “care-taker”; more respectful and regular interaction between urban and generally, such people are trusted Furthermore, community energy can go beyond renewable energy. Efficiency is one of the rural areas. community members perceived as being main policy aims in Germany. Community energy groups can not only put solar on a school not merely motivated by profits, but also Community energy therefore matters in three encompassing roof, but also renovate the building to save energy costs. And communities also express genuinely concerned about the community. ways commonly referred to as co-benefits: their political will via municipal governments. Throughout Europe, municipalities have They flexibly take care of whatever needs been the driving force behind a transition in transportation, with car-free areas and cycling • Local economic returns: investments flow back into the addressing and often go beyond their strict infrastructure appearing from London to Oslo and Seville and – electric-car sharing cropping local economy. Often, however, these benefits are not job description so the project can address up in small Black Forest towns. Furthermore, from Berlin’s new Mobility Act to the people- clearly known or, when they are known, not communicated issues that simply make its impact on the centric cities in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, numerous municipal efforts started off as a well. To fill this gap, the AEE helped create a local value community better. In English, such people bottom-up citizen protest against top-down urban planning for car-centric cities. calculator. are sometimes called “champions.” This paper presents the German experience with community energy, however, so it refers • Political trust: community energy is a way of instilling in For instance, in the village of Larrieden mainly to projects for renewable energy and efficiency and less to urban planning aspects. people the trust that the state, in all of its official functions, biomass needs to be taken from the fields One main point of criticism in recent years has been that Germany’s energy transition can be made to work for them. A citizen group getting to the biogas unit. The transport soils (Energiewende) is only an electricity transition (Stromwende), not a mobility or heat transition a permit for a project is more likely to have productive roads, so the farmer sweeps the streets (Verkehrswende / Wärmewende). Though the criticism of the Energiewende as a mere suggestions about how the process could be improved afterwards. There’s no financial incentive, electricity transition is not unwarranted, it can also be overstated. Much of the progress than complain about an allegedly corrupt, elite system no agreement at all for him to do this in heat and mobility has come from community projects. Heidelberg’s Bahnstadt district that doesn’t care about them. cleaning. “It’s not enough really, but the currently being built will be the largest Passive House community in the world, offering public perception is tremendous—people • Social cohesion: community energy brings together space for up to 6,000 people; the homes are so well built, they can make do with small really appreciate the effort,” he says. neighbors otherwise increasingly separated from each backup heaters. Likewise, Freiburg’s Vauban neighborhood (video and PDF) is largely car- other. Not surprisingly, numerous community energy free because citizens forced the city government to find ways around the rule – still generally groups say most people got involved to meet their in place today – requiring one parking space per new dwelling. neighbors and “save the village first, the planet second”.1 “Community” could thus also include the local public sector, though the EU’s current Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) does not do so. However, recent Danish and German legislation discussed below requires projects benefiting from special treatment as “community energy” to offer ten percent of shares to the local municipality. This paper therefore broadly defines 1 Energy Democracy, Morris & Jungjohann, Palgrave 2016. 6 RENEWS SPEZIAL RENEWS SPEZIAL 7 While EU legislation now promotes community energy (and governments, such as the UK’s, are increasingly taking social isolation seriously2), it often speaks of “consumers” (not “citizens”) Parents funding energy-renovations in schools becoming “prosumers”. The