Energy Transition and Community Resilience in Southwestern Germany

Germany's path-breaking energy transition, the Energiewende, has received much scholarly attention. The focus has been largely on national-level policy making and large-scale energy production. This paper brings attention to energy transition as a tool for community resilience. Resilience in this sense refers not only to responses to climate change, but also responses to demographic and economic shifts that have hollowed out traditional small farming and crafts trades in exurban regions. My paper is based on case studies of several semi-rural communities in the Freiburg area of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. This region was an early leader in small-scale solar energy production before there was a federal legal framework to promote renewable energy. Local entrepreneurs not only innovated in renewable energy technologies, but they also developed new models for community investment in the energy transition. On the basis of these cases, I examine how the local Energiewende has fared over time and evaluate its utility as a model for community empowerment in the era of climate change. Preliminary findings are that pursuit of "plus-energy village" or "bioenergy village" status has revitalized particular communities economically and socially, building local solidarity in the face of negative demographic trends. Changes in the federal energy law, however, pose new challenges to those communities that have staked their futures on local control of energy production and use.