Greenzone Online

When national leaders discuss the implementation of renewable energy sources to power the entire country, we’re always hit with the problem of scale. It would take wind turbines overrunning the whole of Nevada, chopping up a Thanksgiving worth of birds each day. Or it would take a garden of solar panels covering the entire southwest, supplemented by a million gerbils running in a million gerbil wheels a million hours a day.

Perhaps we should be focusing on smaller scale operations (maybe only 50 gerbils to start). Concerning other methods, individuals can often supply their own energy using a series of batteries and solar panels. This is easily affordable to the richest among us, the same who own the largest homes and consume the most electricity (ten-person hot tubs can’t power themselves on sexual tension alone).

Freiamt, Germany, has taken the same small scale approach to cover its own energy use. All of the town’s energy comes from locally-owned renewable sources. It then sells the surplus. It’s been working for five years to become completely self-sufficient. By utilizing small hydroelectric and biomass stations, as well as four wind turbines and 800 solar panels, the town powers its homes and earns a profit from its setup.

One person or one small town cannot change the world, but if each community were as committed as Freiamt, the world as a whole would be closer to becoming more reliant on renewable sources and less reliant on our ever shrinking supply of fossil fuels.