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| | | #REDIRECT [[Energy Cooperatives]] |
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| =Source=
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| * Report: The energy transition to energy democracy. Power to the people. Final results oriented report of the REScoop 20-20-20 Intelligent Energy Europe project. By Dirk Vansintjan.
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| URL = https://rescoop.eu/system/files/REScoop%20Energy%20Transition%20to%20Energy%20Democracy%20-%20English.pdf
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| =Text=
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| By Dirk Vansintjan:
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| "Looking back over the past century, we see numerous
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| examples of people working together in difficult circumstances or in response
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| to a crisis, also for providing energy.
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| We have already described how rural and remote areas with large distances
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| between scarce residents and businesses could not count on the interest of
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| private investors: there was no profit to be made. The same also occurred in the
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| United States. In Europe, World War I destroyed not only the dreams of millions
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| of people, but also much infrastructure.
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| The world economy declined substantially from 1929, and private investors
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| were scarce or very cautious. In the first decades of the 20th century, we see local
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| governments or cooperatives of citizens filling in the electricity supply gaps
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| throughout Europe. Also in Germany.
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| ==Wave of electricity cooperatives in Germany after WWI==
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| Interestingly, Germany not only experienced a wave of hundreds of new energy
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| cooperatives in the past decade, but already in the first decades of the 20th
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| century there was a veritable tidal wave of ‘electricity cooperatives’.
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| One of the surviving German electricity cooperatives is EGR: Elektrizitätsgenossenschaft
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| Röthenbach. Founded in 1918 and still active. (www.eg-roethenbach.de)
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| A thorough study from 2012 28 shows that between 1895 and 1932, no less than
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| 6.000 electricity cooperatives were created in Germany. They were mostly operators
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| of their own electricity grid in rural areas. Note that the growth occurred
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| mainly in the difficult years after the end of World War I: 1918-1925.
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| Their number has steadily decreased since 1930 to around 50 today.
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| According to this study, this is due primarily to the following:
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| • Intensive concentration under pressure from the Nazi regime in the 1930s;
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| • Forced stoppages;
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| • Change of legal status;
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| • Dissolution because of diseconomies of scale, particularly financing problems
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| • Nationalisation in the GDR and Poland after World War II;
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| • Concentration in the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II;
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| • Liberalisation of the energy market and increased bureaucracy due to legislation
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| on renewable energy and distribution networks.
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| Between 1895 and 1932 no less than 6.000 electricity cooperatives were created in
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| Germany. For many reasons, only about 50 are still in existence.
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| ==The rise of wind cooperatives after the 1973 oil crisis==
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| The 1973 oil crisis was caused by a decision of the Arab oil-producing countries
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| in OPEC to raise prices by 70%, scale back production each month by 5%, and
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| boycott the sale of oil to a number of Western countries that had supported
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| Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
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| This made it painfully clear to the people of Europe how dependent they had
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| become on oil imports. Car-free Sundays and schools without heating left a
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| deep impression on several generations. From then on, alternatives and diversification
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| were sought. Renewable energy became a political issue and an area
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| of scientific research.
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| But citizens too went to work. Enthusiastic do it yourself builders constructed
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| their first wind turbines in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark…
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| Associations of self-builders were established such as the Energofielen in Belgium
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| and the Windmolengroep in Amsterdam.
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| From these first initiatives emerged the first wind cooperatives in the 1980s in
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| Denmark and later in the Netherlands and Germany: citizens working together
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| to install and operate ever-larger wind turbines. And professional manufacturers
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| of wind turbine technology followed.
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| The most impressive example of what citizens
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| could do together was given by the
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| Danes. In the Danish town of Ulfborg, on
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| grounds belonging to the Tvind school
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| centre, from 29 May 1975 more than 400
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| people worked together for 3 years to build
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| the (then) largest wind turbine in the world:
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| Tvindkraft. This wind turbine is still running
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| today and continues to attract visitors.
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| Tvind was so groundbreaking that the full
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| story deserves a place here.
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| ...
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| The world has since seen an explosion in the number of really big wind turbines
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| in many countries. The Windmill Team was the group of people who built the
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| windmill. It consisted of some teachers from the schools at Tvind together with
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| different people from all over the country and from abroad, who had come to
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| build the windmill. They all worked under the same conditions. They did not receive
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| a salary, but board and lodging and pocket money. Some of the students
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| joined in from time to time.
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| The building of Tvindkraft served from the outset several purposes:
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| • to produce the energy needed for the schools in Tvind;
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| • to be a very solid argument in the popular debate at the time for and against
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| introduction of nuclear power;
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| • to show the strength and the power of people who have come together to
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| work together to build Tvindkraft – the power of self-reliance;
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| • to show that the power from the wind in the long perspective will be rather
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| cheap, because the wind cannot be monopolised.
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| Hundreds of people cooperated to carry out the wing. The entire windmill was built by
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| teachers at the schools in Tvind, with different people from all over the country and from
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| abroad. (Tvindkraft)
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| ==The rise of energy cooperatives after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986==
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| The nuclear disaster in Chernobyl (Ukraine) served as a wakeup call for many citizens
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| and caused them to act. This new wave of citizen initiatives sometimes led to the
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| creation of REScoops, like Ecopower (1991, Belgium) and EWS (1991, Germany).
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| ===The story of ElektrizitätsWerke Schonau===
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| German Netzkauf EWS eG (ElektrizitatsWerke Schonau, EWS) was
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| established as a GbR in 1991 and transformed to a cooperative
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| in 2009. As of 2015, they have 2000 members and their REScoop
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| invests in all renewably energy sources. This story starts with their
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| attempts to buy the local grid.
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| When ElektrizitätsWerke Schonau (EWS) decided to buy the grid in 1991, the
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| energy market was not yet liberalised and financial support systems were absent.
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| EWS purchased the grid in order to reorganise it according to sound ecological
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| principles. To transform the grid and energy production, EWS encouraged
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| citizens to install renewable energy production units by facilitating their connection
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| to the grid and by paying special feed-in tariffs. Presently the energy
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| produced by citizens is exported to the grid and the citizens are compensated
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| via the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG). EWS proves that by taking the grid
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| and the sale of energy into your own hands, you can change the business model
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| to suit the needs of members. It also demonstrates the resilience of REScoops
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| and their strength: social power, the power of volunteers contributing their expertise
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| for free.
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| '''Grid operator not interested in energy saving campaign'''
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| In 1987, ‘Parents for a nuclear-free future’ began organising energy saving contests.
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| ‘The idea was to show that we can do without nuclear power by saving it
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| ‘away’.’ They asked grid operator KWR, which had the contracts to run the grid
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| from 1974 through 1994, for support. KWR was not interested: their policy was
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| to sell electricity, not to save it. The group realised that operating the Schönau
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| grid based on ecological principles would be impossible with KWR.
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| In 1990, four years before the permission contract was to end, KWR offered the Schönau
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| town council a new permission contract that would extend to 2014: KWR would pay
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| 25,000 DM to Schönau to sign the contract, with a total contract value of 100,000 DM.
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| In an effort to prevent a new contract with the grid company, the citizens’ initiative
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| founded Netzkauf Schönau GbR to compete with KWR. 282 citizens of
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| Schönau made a counteroffer to the town council of 100,000 DM to not sign the
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| contract. Despite the offer, the council extended the contract with KWR. In July
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| 1991, the citizens’ initiative called for a referendum to rescind the decision: the
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| referendum took place on 27 October 1991 and the citizen’s initiative won with
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| 55% of the votes.
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| The citizens’ initiative had bought itself four years’ time for 100,000 DM, four
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| years they would need to develop a company capable of operating the grid.
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| Fortunately, the German media picked up on the activities of the ‘electricity
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| rebels’ in the rural Black Forest. After winning the first referendum, many
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| energy experts from throughout Germany contacted the citizen’s initiative to
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| offer their help. By 1994 all the necessary documents had been prepared and
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| Elektrizitätswerke Schönau GmbH (EWS) was founded, with the new company
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| being granted permission to take over the grid just four days before the deadline.
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| But now opponents in the town to the new arrangement called for a second referendum,
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| to be held in March 1996. A very intensive campaign was conducted
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| during the four weeks prior to the referendum date. Local industry warned the
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| inhabitants of Schönau of unaffordable energy costs; the members of the citizens’
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| initiative made home visits to every inhabitant. Schönau was divided into
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| opponents and proponents. On 10 March 1996 more than 80% of all citizens of
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| Schönau voted, and EWS again won the second referendum with 52.5% of the
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| votes.
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| '''Support from all over Germany'''
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| While EWS was now authorised to operate the Schönau electricity grid, the grid
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| itself was still owned by KWR. According to German law, KWR had to sell the
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| grid to EWS. The price of the grid was estimated at approximately 4 Million DM,
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| a price EWS could afford. However, KWR asked 8.7 Million DM, which presented
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| EWS with two problems. ‘We knew the price was excessive, but going to court
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| to determine the right price would take years, which we could not survive as a
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| group.’ So they decided to pay the price under the reservation of pending court
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| proceedings. They still needed around about 4.7 Million DM extra to buy the
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| grid, money that could not be brought in as shares due to the economic viability
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| it had to guarantee as a grid operator. The additional money could only be
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| brought in as donations.
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| EWS wrote to the 50 largest marketing agencies in Germany and requested a
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| free donation campaign. 15 agencies were interested. The chosen agency created
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| the ‘Störfall’ campaign for EWS. Störfall refers to a technical incident or disturbance
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| that creates a failure or change in the normal operation of a technical
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| system. In relation to nuclear energy, a Störfall is sequence of incidents. When a
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| Störfall takes place, the nuclear plant must be shut down for safety reasons. The
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| campaign showed a picture of the members of EWS saying ‘Ich bin ein Störfall’,
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| or ‘I am a disturbance.’
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| Thanks to this campaign, support was received from throughout Germany, and
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| after 6 weeks, the first two million DM had been donated. ‘KWR then became
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| worried, since it knew about the impending court proceedings and that their
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| price wasn’t realistic.’ KWR offered the grid for 5.7 million DM, and EWS accepted.
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| On 1 July 1997 it took over the Schönau electricity grid. EWS still went to court
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| in 1998, and in 2004 the court ruled that the Schönau electricity grid was worth
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| 3.7 million DM.
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| EWS continued to expand after this initial success, and is now also the proud
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| owner of the gas network in Schönau and Wembach. In the following years,
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| grids in eight neighbouring villages were also bought.
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| At the middle of 2014, EWS was providing electricity that they buy on the European
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| markets to about 150,000 households. They currently own various installations
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| that produce about 1% of the energy they provide.
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| '''A business model that fits demand'''
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| The EWS story demonstrates that by taking matters in their own hands, REScoops
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| can develop new business models that suit the needs of their members
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| and the ideals of their organisation. The EWS pioneers wished to focus on saving
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| energy and the production of renewable energy. In the 1990s, energy producers
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| were strongly dependent on grid operators. There was no German Renewable
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| Energy Act (EEG) with its fundamental aspects of a guarantee of bringing the
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| energy to the grid and a guaranteed feed-in tariff. Before liberalisation in 1998,
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| grid operators could refuse to accept energy into their grid; and if they were
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| willing to take the energy, they could dictate the price. There was no security for
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| the kind of investments EWS had to make.
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| ‘So this was one of our major aims: as the grid operator for Schönau, we wanted
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| to make it possible for every citizen to produce energy. And we wished to cover
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| the investments made by citizens by paying guaranteed feed-in tariffs. The
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| two main aspects of the EEG mentioned above (which came only in 2000) had
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| already been realised in Schönau in 1998.’
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| Another reason to purchase the grid was the tariff arrangement. Previously, the
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| more people consumed, the lower the price. To deal with this problem, EWS
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| changed the tariff structure for their consumers. There would be no monthly
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| cost, but high prices per kWh. This gave consumers a financial incentive to save
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| energy.
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| '''Bureaucracy and regulations'''
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| The biggest hurdles EWS had to clear were bureaucracy and regulations. As a
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| local citizens’ initiative, it was not yet aware of the necessary regulations. Thanks
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| to the help of many volunteers from throughout Germany, it persevered. While
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| this was a success at the time, ‘the EU and the German government are now
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| moving in the opposite direction. There are more than 900 grid operators in
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| Germany, including some very small ones like EWS. The EU has been asking Germany
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| for years to minimise the number of grid operators in its energy market.
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| Which is why the German regulatory agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, has been
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| increasingly expanding the bureaucracy required by grid operators.’ Many small
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| grid operators have been forced to give up because they were financially unable
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| to fulfil these requirements. ‘Bureaucracy is the major enemy of small grid operators,
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| and at the moment this hurdle is only becoming bigger.’
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| (https://rescoop.eu/system/files/REScoop%20Energy%20Transition%20to%20Energy%20Democracy%20-%20English.pdf)
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| =More Information=
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| * [[Energy Cooperatives in Germany]]
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| [[Category:Energy]]
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| [[Category:Cooperatives]]
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| [[Category:History]]
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