Robbing the Emperor's Clothes

D'Peoples Voice

Does Anything else think this town in Austria robbed the ideas from the FF's Green Paper on Energy Efficiency?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aE4Zugflz_FA&refer=europe

`Dead-End' Austrian Town Fuels Boom With Green Energy (Update1)

By Jonathan Tirone

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- For decades, the Austrian town of Gussing was a forgotten outpost, 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the rusting barbed-wire border of the Iron Curtain.

Now it's at the edge of a greener frontier: alternative energy. Gussing is the first community in the European Union to cut carbon emissions by more than 90 percent, helping it attract a steady stream of scientists, politicians and eco-tourists.

``This was a dead-end town and now we're the center of attention,'' says Maria Hofer, 55, a lifelong resident, as she buys organic vegetables at a farmer's market. ``It seems like every week we read about new jobs from renewable energy.''

Gussing's transformation started 15 years ago when, struggling to pay its electricity bill, the town ordered that all public buildings would stop using fossil fuels. Since then, Gussing has spawned a whole renewable energy industry, with 50 companies creating more than 1,000 jobs and producing heat, power and fuels from the sun, sawdust, corn and cooking oil.

Signs reading ``Eco-Energy Land'' greet people entering the town, located 130 kilometers southeast of Vienna. Visitors are as diverse as Scottish farmers, Japanese investors and a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

``The town is combining growth in tourism revenue with being in the vanguard of environmental sustainability,'' says Bernard Snoy, economic director at the Vienna-based OSCE, who brought a group of 50 diplomats from 30 countries to Gussing in June.

Gussing used to rely on agriculture, with farmers selling their corn, sunflower oil and timber. As for tourism, the main attraction was a 12th-century castle built by Hungarian nobles.

Power Sales

The town could hardly afford its 6 million-euro ($8.1 million) fuel bill when Peter Vadasz, 63, was first elected mayor in 1992. The turnaround started after he hired Rheinhard Koch, 46, an electrical engineer and Gussing native, to assess how the town of 4,000 people could benefit from its natural resources.

Today, Gussing generates 22 megawatt hours of power a year, including an 8 megawatt surplus that is sold to the national grid, says Koch, who now runs the European Center for Renewable Energy, based in the town and funded by Gussing, the EU and the Austrian government. Sales of excess power generate about 4.7 million euros in annual revenue and a 500,000-euro profit that is plowed back into alternative energy projects.

``Just to turn to renewable energy brought advantages we didn't dream of before,'' says Vadasz, a former schoolteacher. ``A lot of money that left before, now stays in the region.''

Wood-to-Gas

Gussing began building its energy network in 1992 with a wood-burning plant that provided heat for 27 homes. The second step was a facility that made car fuel from rapeseed. By 1996, Gussing had started to generate electricity and expanded its heating system to the whole town.

The breakthrough came in 1998, when Koch and Vadasz saw a presentation by Viennese scientist Hermann Hofbauer about a technology he'd developed to make synthetic fuel from wood.

They asked Hofbauer and Vienna's Technical University to build a pilot project. A local company later licensed the technology, which uses steam to separate carbon and hydrogen from scrap lumber, then recombines the molecules to make a form of natural gas. The gas in turn fuels the city's power plant.

Gussing has reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by 93 percent from 1995 levels, according to the renewable energy center. Vaxjo, the Swedish town that won the EU's ``Sustainable Community'' award this year, has cut emissions by 25 percent during the past decade.

Gore's Target

Former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore last month called for 90 percent cuts worldwide by 2050.

The European Environment Agency, which tracks renewable energy projects in the 27-member EU, doesn't know of any other town that has achieved similar reductions in carbon emissions, says Copenhagen-based spokesman Brendan Killeen.

Still, Gussing must protect the surrounding forest land to maintain its supply of renewable energy, says Raphael Rindler, a Franciscan priest who has preached in the town for four years.

``People here take the forests for granted, the way people thought about oil 50 years ago,'' he says.

Rindler says he's more hopeful about the solar power that will start being produced in Gussing next year when Germany's Solon AG Fuer Solartechnik finishes its 50 million-euro plant.

Meanwhile, Gussing is preparing for more tourism, building new sidewalks and widening the road to include parking spaces.

Eco Hotel

Guests stay in hotels such as the 60 euros-a-night Com.Inn, with its simple, unpolished steel furniture. Gussing's 30 kilometers of thermal heating ducts feed warmth into the rooms, where wall-sized windows overlook a blue box that houses its own electric generator powered by Hofbauer's technology.

``Everybody lives from renewable energy here,'' says Elisabeth Astl, 42, a manager at the hotel. ``There's more tourism now that we use it.''

Vadasz, an ethnic Hungarian who will run for a fourth term in October, expects record oil prices and increasing dependence on imported Russian gas will drive more people to look for the kind of energy security his town has achieved.

``People here feel less vulnerable because they know their energy's coming from renewable sources and not imports,'' Vadasz says. ``This should be the top priority of anyone who goes into politics, anywhere in the world.''

drunken_munky52

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Does Anything else think this town in Austria robbed the ideas from the FF's Green Paper on Energy Efficiency?
]