In this city of 126,000, solar panels adorn the roofs of homes, kindergartens and schools, municipal buildings, and factory halls. The co-op, founded by 46 anti-nuclear energy activists in 2010, today boasts 1,150 members who collectively own two wind turbines and 48 solar farms, large and small, that spill out across city limits into surrounding towns and villages. The combined output of the co-op and other collectively owned, clean energy sources supplies the electricity for about a third of Heilbronn’s households.
The Heilbronn initiative is part of a nationwide network of roughly 900 community energy co-ops that sell renewable energy to German households or businesses. Across northwestern Europe, experts estimate that more than 10,000 community energy associations now exist, mostly in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. Members invest their own money — usually supplemented by bank loans to the co-op — in solar generation, wind power, small hydroelectric plants, bioenergy, and even combined heat and power plants.
Under the new European Green Deal, the European Union has become a champion of community energy, with an EU directive stipulating that all member countries enact laws that make community energy not only possible but also profitable. “Community energy is a way to open the clean energy transition happening across Europe to more players,” says Dirk Vansintjan, president of the European Federation of Citizen Energy Cooperatives. “When renewable energy is generated where people live, revenue is kept in the locality rather than going to out-of-town utilities or foreign countries.” The goal, he says, is to turn tens of millions of Europeans into “prosumers” — namely people who both produce and consume energy.
