Bio-Energy Village in the Black Forest

We will visit a Black Forest community, which produces three times as much electricity from renewable energy sources than the 4,200 inhabitants consume. The surplus electricity feeds into the grid.

We visit a farm of 80 hectares, which following the BSE, or “mad cow disease“, crisis in 2000, abandoned cattle and pig breeding due to declining meat prices to become a pioneer in biogas production. Today, the farmer supplies a small settlement, the school and spa house with a swimming pool with heat from his own cogeneration plant and feeds about 1 million kWh of electricity into the power line.

This tour will then take you to an organic family farm with 10 mother cows and 20 young animals and 1,500 laying hens in free-range husbandry. In the surrounding fields, grain is grown for the homemade spelt-rye breads for market sales. The farm family has set itself up as a self-marketer and also relies on various renewable forms of energy such as wood chips and solar power.

To conclude this excursion, we will visit two different large-scale citizen-owned wind power plants and their financing model will be presented.

If anyone is hungry after recieving so much information, you can satisfy this hunger and thirst in the historic Black Forest mill which uses local and regional products (not included in the price).

Group rate: 550€ (up to 30 people)

Duration: approx. 4.5 hours