00:04.
00:05Many Europeans have taken a blow from the latest global energy shock.
00:09Fuel prices have jumped.
00:11And for many families, paying for electricity and heating has become a real struggle.
00:18But here in eastern Germany, one small town chose a different path.
00:23This is Feldheim, a village that decided to just walk away from fossil fuels and global energy markets altogether.
00:38The 130 residents of Feldheim pay three times less for the electricity than the average German consumer.
00:46All thanks to a local decision to pursue what they call energy self-sufficiency.
00:51Siegfried Kappert, who was born here 86 years ago, believes the town made the right call.
01:24Kappert invites us to visit the wind park just outside the village.
01:28This is a 3-megawatt turbine.
01:31If we climb out, you can see a wonderful view with our turbine, the flaming Berlin, here something.
01:38The Feldheim is 150 meters above the sea.
01:42And that's why we are a wonderful wind flow.
01:47Bezins of wind turbines literally on their doorstep.
01:51There were some villagers against it.
01:53Kappert says there were questions but no real objections.
01:56Residents, farmers, and landowners all gone behind the idea.
02:08Kappert, a retired electrical feeder, is well used to giving wind park tours.
02:13Visitors come from all over the world.
02:16From curious neighbors to foreign heads of state.
02:18Here you can see the wind speed, which is the wind speed, which is the fluid movement.
02:25And at the moment produces 370 kW with this wind speed.
02:36We want to be a whole production production, like in Kraftwerk.
02:40And it powers far more than just this village.
02:56All these wind turbines produce 250 times the amount of electricity Feldheim actually needs.
03:05The rest is sold to the national grid.
03:08And it's not the only renewable energy source around here.
03:13Most of the heating for the town, for example, comes from the local fields.
03:19This field, right between the turbines, is being seeded with corn.
03:23Once it grows, it will be used as the main feedstock for Feldheim's biogas plant.
03:29Another pillar of the village's energy self-sufficiency, built by farmer Werner Schlünke.
03:43Corn silage mixed with rye and manure produces biogas that drives an electric generator,
03:49delivering electricity and providing affordable heating to every household in the village.
03:55The plant is co-owned by local residents.
03:58And for the farmers, it provides a welcome buffer when agricultural markets take a downturn.
04:08The price of our products, especially for potatoes and sugar.
04:14The price of our products are so much in the Keller, that it was to produce for us, it was
04:18to produce for us.
04:19And so we have said, we have to make it with the biogas plant.
04:23We need the Mais.
04:24On the free land can be built by Mais.
04:28And then we need the personnel.
04:30And come unterm strich, auch wieder in die Rentabilitätszone.
04:37But what if the biogas plant goes down for maintenance?
04:42The village has a backup, a modern wood-chip boiler.
04:46And nearby, a former Soviet military site has been turned into a large solar park.
04:55This flexible energy mix has become a textbook example of local-level energy transition.
05:02The town welcomes several school groups every week.
05:14The children come here, um to experience, what's special about in Feltheim is.
05:18And they can experience the renewable energy and experience through experiments and the facilities of the plant.
05:27Because it's interesting to me, because it's our future.
05:29Because it's just a new energy, it's just a very important thing, I think it's a very important thing at
05:34the time.
05:35A big step for a small village, but could it work elsewhere?
05:40The mayor of the municipality is confident it can, and that others, with enough open-mindedness, can follow suit.
05:47So, mayor, the energy independence of this place, what do you think of it?
05:52Is it real?
05:53Is it sustainable?
05:54Can it be reproduced?
05:55Yes, it's absolutely real.
05:57We can't fix it here.
05:58We can't fix it here.
05:59We can't fix it here.
06:00Wind, sun, biogas work together, and it's completely autark.
06:08It's really something to fix it here.
06:10It's real.
06:12Making it all work took some creative thinking, including building an entirely new electrical grid, when the big utility companies
06:19refused to play ball.
06:21But for Michael Rashman, the head of the energy company behind the project, it proves that at this scale energy
06:28self-sufficiency is not just possible, it's essential.
06:30These small villages, like Feldheim, live in a positive sense, if they can participate directly from this generated energy amount,
06:41other than large cities, which have no chance to protect themselves.
06:50Feldheim didn't stop there.
06:52It has since added a massive 10-megawatt battery storage facility, part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
07:00which helps keep the local grid stable, whatever the weather.
07:06It was important to us to set this point, that it is going and that it is also economic, to
07:12go this path.
07:13That you can get from the field directly to the houses, that the energy is immediately fast and very cheap.
07:23Feldheim's success was built on many factors.
07:26A good location, a small and close-knit community willing to think differently, visionary investors and support from national and
07:34European policy.
07:35It may not be a model that works everywhere, but it is a real living example of energy self-reliance,
07:42one that is well and truly made in Europe.
07:45For more, in Europe, for more, in Europe, the aviation companies like anderes, as well as the national and European
07:57policy.
07:57For more, in Europe, as well as the According to Europe, the university public-based Press was built on many
07:59levels of energy in Europe.
07:59It's another way, a possible way, the control of energy energy was built on many levels of energy.
08:00Obrigado.
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