MORGANTOWN — Three leaders of a German foundation tied to the German Green Party included Morgantown on a recent tour of three Appalachian-area university towns.
The Heinrich Boll Stiftung (Foundation) maintains an office in Washington, D.C., but they don’t want to limit their contacts to the D.C. area, said President Ellen Ueberschar. They want to reach out to the whole country to learn how to deal with communities on their issues of interest.
“As we try to foster international dialog, can we find partners here in this area?” she asked, to foster an exchange of ideas and problem-solving approaches.
With the election going on, she said, it’s “an especially interesting time to come here to listen.”
The foundation’s progressive mission, it says, is “fostering democracy and upholding human rights, taking action to prevent the destruction of the global ecosystem, advancing equality between women and men, securing peace through conflict prevention in crisis zones and defending the freedom of individuals against excessive state and economic power.”
It works with 160 project partners in over 60 countries and maintains 29 international offices. One of those is the D.C.-based Heinrich Boll Stiftung North America, and Ueberschar was joined by North America Executive Director Bastian Hermisson and Energy and Environment Program Director Nora Lohle.
The trio toured the community with Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia. Much of their conversation during their stop at The Dominion Post focused on energy issues and the foundations’s interest in pursuing green projects and a transition to a carbon-free energy mix and economy.
Following the 2001 Fuku-shima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany began aggressively phasing out nuclear energy, they said.
This was linked to the 2010 decision to pursue “Energiewende” (energy transition) from fossil-fueled electricity to renewables.
Here, in the heart of fracking country, cleaner-burning natural gas is viewed as a long-term transition to more carbon-free fuels, as renewables remain marginal. That’s not an option for the foundation, Ueberschar said.
“In general, we think that it’s necessary to phase out all fossil fuels,” she said. “It’s a matter of time.” According to various media reports, renewables now make up about 30 percent of Germany’s power mix and about 50 percent of its installed capacity.
The foundation is aware that energy transition causes structural changes that upset communities dependent on the fossil fuel economy, Ueberschar said. In the past, they organized educational exchanges between coal communities in the U.S. and Germany. “We think that the same is necessary for gas.”
Considering how to increase the number and mix of renewable appropriate to an area raises various questions, she said. One: “This brings along the notion of, ‘Do we have a centralized energy supply system or do we have an energy supply system where energy is produced where the consumers are?’ ”
Lohle explained that the Energiewende feed-in tariff helped stimulate what she termed “energy” democracy, with residents getting personally involved in ren-ewables via small things, such as rooftop solar panels, and bigger things, such as energy co-ops.
The feed-in tariff is a tax on residents’ utility bills used to guarantee an above-market-rate return to renewable energy providers, reports on the German energy economy explain. There are more than 800 retail energy providers in the country.
Some German communities, Ueberschar said, own part of local wind power parks that produce energy for them. “So the acceptance is higher when people are involved. … It strengthens their commitment to the change, and it helps to keep up with economic development, and it opens more chances.”
Germany’s anti-nuclear movement played a role in the founding of the Green Party, she said. “We are convinced that we don’t need it.” The answer is renewables and energy efficiency.
While the nuclear industry argues that it should be preserved for base load, Hermisson said, base load is really a thing of the past, of a centralized energy system.
“The fluctuation of renewables can really be balanced in an integrated system extremely well where base load is simply not necessary anymore. It’s a question of the scale and diversity of the renewables that you have.
“If we integrated a functioning European-wide elec-tricity system with a lot of hydro that exists in especially in Scandinavia in the north,” he said, “with the solar potential that southern Europe has to offer with the wind that is along the coastlines and you had an integrated, functioning system, it would make it yet more stable. … In the U.S., you have a very segregated energy system.”
Fleischauer commented afterward in an email exchange, “It is flattering that the Heinrich Boll foundation is interested in learning more about West Virginia. Their strategy of fostering a dialogue between people in Germany and those in other countries dealing with similar issues seems promising.
“As someone interested in good public policy,” she said, “I am always looking for ideas that have been tried somewhere else — why reinvent the wheel if they have done things that made their communities more vibrant and sustainable. Hopefully, we have good ideas to share, too.”
The trio’s three-day tour started in Pittsburgh and concluded in Charlottesville, Va.
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