Because everybody wants to be independent

Being autarkic does not only mean to save costs for energy but also to be independent from electricity providers. The cause of the energy transition leads to the wish of households, cities, municipalities and companies.

The purpose of energy-autarkic is to be independent of third parties concerning energy consumption for living. This is based on resource-efficiency material, living space and energy. The consumptionist uses his own energy-sources. He is no longer independent from external suppliers. Setting up the industrialization networks for energy, this led to a sort of dependency, but made live “easier” than satisfying all basic needs by its own. Nowadays there can be seen a trend backwards what people want – being independent of coal, gas and oil, using renewable energy.

Autarky begins from small single devices and leads to independent zero-energy-households to completly autarkic regions. There are different examples worldwide where this works already quite well. In Germany i.e. there is the so called Freiburger Solarhaus for more than twenty years. In this house ectricity comes only from solar energy. In the rural area, in Uffenheim, a cooperative made up a plan to secure the local amenities. The concept can be seen as a model for other regions. Feldheim is the first autarkic municipal who supplies their inhabitants with electricity and calorific energy even more than they would need too. It began with a biogas plant which supplied at first only the pig farm and their offices. Later there came more and more interested residents who made an application for their households. Together with Energiequelle GmbH there was found the Feldheim GmbH & Co KG: This is a small municipal works which supplies over 37 households in the village. The inhabitants pay much less than before: Only 16,6 Cents instead of 28. Güssing is a small town in the Austrian Burgenland which runs completely independent since 1990 for more than 3770 inhabitants. European incentives financed the project and stopped energy imports. The powerhouse produces bio fuel similar to diesel.

More and more cities want to become autakic. The Austrian region Kärnten now uses half of its energy from sustainable sources – in 20 years it should be 100 % free of fossil-fired power plants.