The Gasometer

The Gasometer is one of several unusual structures that I have glimpsed repeatedly over the years while biking through Berlin.

the Gasometer

the Gasometer

Like the spherical water tower in Park Gleisdreieck, reminiscent of a WWI-era pickelhaube helmet,

water tower at Gleisdreieck

water tower at Gleisdreieck

Prussian Pickelhaube helmet

Prussian Pickelhaube helmet

and the giant pink pipe at the west end of the Tiergarten,

pink pipe in Tiergarten

pink pipe in Tiergarten

I have wondered about the Gasometer’s history, use, and future.  Last Friday my questions were answered when Annette, her cousin Katrin and I climbed 420 steps to the top of the 80 meter tall structure. Continue reading

Feldheim, an Energy Self-Sufficient Community

A version of this post appears at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

entrance to Feldheim

entrance to Feldheim

From a distance, Feldheim looks like many other rural villages in Germany: a cluster of buildings surrounded by farmland and forests.   The backdrop includes numerous wind turbines, but that’s not unusual in Germany’s breezy north.  What is unusual is that there are two signs welcoming visitors to Feldheim: the typical yellow sign that is found at the edge of every village, and another in blue and white announcing that Feldheim is an “Energieautarker Ortsteil,” or an energy self-sufficient district.  In 2010, Feldheim became one of the first villages in Germany to supply all of its own electricity and heat.

I visited Feldheim twice recently.  During my first visit I met with Michael Knape, the mayor of Treuenbrietzen, the adjacent town to which Feldheim belongs.  I had seen Mr. Knape give a presentation about Feldheim at a bioenergy village conference in Berlin, and I was eager to follow up with him.  He suggested that we meet “at the construction site” in Feldheim.  When I asked which one, he sounded surprised: “There’s only one.”

Finding the jobsite was not difficult.  Feldheim has just one main street, and most of the village’s homes are on it.  I pulled up to a two story building wrapped in scaffolding. Several masons were repointing brick and reproducing masonry moldings on the front of the building, while at the gable end, another crew was installing batts of mineral wool insulation on the walls.  A large sign out front announced the Neue-Energien-Forum Feldheim, or “New Energy Forum Feldheim.”   I noticed an electric vehicle charging station adjacent to the building.

New Energy Forum Feldheim

New Energy Forum Feldheim

As Mr. Knape and I settled into a temporary conference room that had been set up on site, I asked him “Why Feldheim? Why here?”

“In the early 1990s, ” he told me, “a graduate student named Michael Raschemann visited the village while looking for a location to install four wind turbines.”  The conditions in Feldheim seemed promising because the area is windy, and the land surrounding the village is relatively flat.  In his subsequent discussions with the villagers, Mr. Raschemann proved adept at addressing the villagers’ concerns and winning their trust.  He even offered local residents the opportunity to invest in one of the four wind turbines — a wise investment, as it turned out.  The story of Feldheim becoming energy self-sufficient is largely about the successful public-private partnership between Energiequelle, the company that Mr. Raschemann founded, and the village of Feldheim. Continue reading

Germany’s Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance

[A version of this post also appears at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com]

In mid October of last year, the German government approved amendments to its Energie Einsparung Verordnung (EnEV), the federal ordinance that mandates energy efficiency for buildings.  Negotiations about revisions to the EnEV were prolonged and heated. The ordinance that was passed is a testament both to the collaborative abilities of the government’s various factions, and to the importance the German public places on the country’s Energy Transition. This latest version of the EnEV reflects the government’s relevant energy policy decisions, and it brings the ordinance into alignment with the latest European Union Directive regarding building energy performance.

energy performance scale showing site (above) and source (below) energy demand

energy performance scale showing site (above) and source (below) energy demand

On May 1 of this year, the changes that were approved last October came into force. New requirements relating to building energy labeling and heating systems are now in effect, but a key provision of the so-called EnEV 2014 — tighter requirements for building energy efficiency — will not be in force until 2016. Continue reading

Germany’s Bioenergy Villages

Note: this article was originally written for GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

The notion that a village can produce as much energy as it consumes is not new in Germany, nor is it exclusive to this country that has set aggressive targets for renewable energy use. In the mid-1990s, for example, the Austrian village of Güssing began implementing strategies to use local biomass to produce electricity and heat, and the Danish island community of Samsø installed wind turbines to meet its electrical needs.

Biogas plant, wood chip boiler and PV array in bioenergy village Mauenheim

Biogas plant, wood chip boiler and PV array in bioenergy village Mauenheim

In recent years, however, the idea of Bioenergiedörfer, or “bioenergy villages,” seems to have captured the public imagination in Germany. Last month I attended a conference called “Bioenergy Villages 2014” that provided a great overview of the bioenergy village movement in Germany.

Continue reading

District Heating System in Flachau, Austria

[A version of this article was also posted at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com].

Annette, our daughters and I just spent a week in Flachau, Austria with Annette’s family. Flachau is not far from the Austrian city of Graz, where Annette lived until she was twelve years old. Over the years I have heard stories about Flachau, because it’s where Annette used to go skiing with her family when she was a child.  I was pleased that we could give our daughters a version of the ski experience that Annette and her sisters had as children. I say “a version,” because thirty years ago Flachau was a sleepy farming village, and today it’s a bustling ski town.  We had great conditions for skiing, and I am posting some photos in the Gallery section for anyone who might be interested.

district heating plant tucked into the landscape

district heating plant in the distance

2 close-up of buildingOne morning Annette and I looked after our two year old nephew Jonas so that his parents — Annette’s sister Doreen and her husband Stefan — could go skiing together.   We pulled Jonas in a sled along a cross-country ski trail that brought us by a large industrial building flanked by huge piles of logs and chips.

“Holzwärme Flachau” read the sign on the front of the building — Wood Heating Flachau.  The building is the heart of Flachau’s “Fernwärme Netzwerk,” or district heating system. Locally sourced wood chips are burned to create hot water that is pumped throughout the village to provide heat and hot water to residents.

A few days later I was back at the facility, asking for a tour.  What follows are notes and photos from that tour.

Continue reading

Energy Efficiency Conference in Berlin

In late November I attended a conference sponsored by the German Energy Agency, which goes by the acronym “dena” (Deutsche Energie Agentur).  I wrote about the conference for the website GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.  The article is available here.

Portions of dena’s website are available in English here.

dena conference logo

dena conference logo

conference venue

conference venue

Peter Altmaier, (then) Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety

Peter Altmaier, (then) Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety

Energetische Sanierung

[A version of this post was published at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com on 7Jan14]

I don’t know whether there are any building geeks reading this blog, but if so, here’s a post for them.  I am including more photos of insulation details than a normal person would find interesting.

2 stuccoed facadeA few weeks ago while biking back from a visit to Rani’s high school, I stopped at a job site that had previously caught my eye. Although the buildings were shrouded in the usual scaffolding and screening, I could tell that the work involved “energetische sanierung,” or energy retrofitting.

Two workers were installing rigid foam around newly-installed windows.  I asked if I could take some photos, explaining that I was a project manager from the US, and interested in energy efficiency.  As often happens in this situation, their initial reticence gave way to a quick tour of the work and informative answers to my questions.

While the materials and techniques used on this project are run-of-the-mill for Germany, and may be of limited applicability to projects in New England, I like to think that sharing them might contribute to innovative thinking in someone, somewhere.  The rest of this post contains photos and notes about the insulating skin being installed on the building.

Continue reading

Luxury Power?

Note: on 15Oct13, a version of this post was run as a guest blog at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

Der Spiegel is a weekly German news magazine whose gravitas I might have placed somewhere between Newsweek and The Economist.  However, a recent cover story about Germany’s “Energiewende” did not strike me as particularly impartial or objective.

Wind turbines in the windy, rural northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Wind turbines in the windy, rural northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Energiewende literally translates as “Energy Turn,” but it is more typically expressed as “Energy Transition,” “Energy Transformation,” or “Energy Revolution.”  The term refers to the German government’s 40-year plan to restructure its energy systems to achieve specific energy-related and carbon-reduction goals.

These goals include:

  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020, and by 80 percent by 2050 (as compared to 1990 levels)

  • Phasing out the use of nuclear power by 2022

  • Reducing primary energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020, and 50 percent by 2050 (compared to 2008 levels)

  • Expanding the use of electric vehicles: 1 million by 2020, and 5 million by 2030

  • Increasing the percentage of energy from renewable sources to 18 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050

A serious attempt at achieving these goals will require increasing the energy efficiency of all market sectors (housing, transportation, industry, etc.), dramatically expanding the use of renewable energy, and shifting energy-related attitudes and behaviors to a new paradigm.

One of my motivations for spending a year in Germany was to learn more about the Energiewende — to dig more deeply into the program specifics, and to find out how it is working.

Continue reading