I decided to take a walk through the Black Forest. I had been told that deep in the woods, there was an observation tower from which one could look down upon the entire city. I set off in search of the tower and as I walked, I recorded these images.
Success! I found the tower!
And record the view from the top:
With that video taken, I climbed down the tower and wended my way through the woods back toward civilization as the sun set and the forest dimmed.
Having spent my first day in Freiburg exploring nature, I wanted to spend my second day exploring the city. I was particularly interested in visiting the Vauban Quartier, a portion of the city home to an innovative sustainability focused community. The most notable buildings in the quarter are the fifty-nine PlusEnergy homes designed by the German architect Rolf Disch. These homes have a positive net energy balance due to their low energy consumption and solar energy utilization. In fact, not only are these houses ecologically beneficial, but they are economically beneficial. The homes' owners are paid by the utility company for every kWh of electricity that is produced by their solar panels and put onto the electricity grid for use by others.
The day following my exploration of the Vauban Quartier, I walked across the city to visit the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. I began my visit by meeting with Mr. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp, the director of energy policy. Mr. Stryi-Hipp gave me a presentation regarding the institute’s structure and its many areas of endeavor, and then discussed Germany’s solar energy technology subsidy programs. Following this, I received a tour of the institute’s solar thermal system test facilities from Mr. Stefan Fortuin.
Everyone at the institute was quite excited at the news of the previous day: Germany would be phasing out the use of nuclear power and shutting down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. At lunch, this was the talk of the table. Mr. Stryi-Hipp, Mr. Fortuin, Mr. Gerhard Willeke, Coordinator of PV, and Mr. Stephan Schindele, a master’s student working on a comparison of the energy policies of California and Germany, all commented on how they could not believe that it had actually happened. In a shocking move, the conservative government had altered its stance on the issue and made its decision on the matter in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
Finally, all of these posters that I had seen throughout the city could be taken down.
The decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants was yet another in a series of policy decisions which have made and will continue to make Germany a world leader in the use of renewable energy in general and in solar energy specifically. Everyone at the institute was, understandably, very pleased about this.
Following lunch, Mr. Schindele gave me a presentation regarding his masters thesis, "Photovoltaic dissemination regulations in California and Germany: Why the German PV market developed remarkably faster than the one in California". It was a fascinating analysis of the effects of different incentive programs on the development of renewable energy technology markets. According to Mr. Schindele, renewable energy portfolio standards, as implemented in most US states, will tend to grow the market for the cheapest renewable energy sources and will have little effect on the market for more expensive renewable energy sources. In contrast, feed-in tariffs, as implemented in Germany, if structured properly, can be used to grow the markets for renewable energy resources across the full cost spectrum. One of the results of the US renewable energy portfolio standards has been a tremendous growth in the wind energy market. However, the US has experienced very little growth in the photovoltaic market. As a result of its feed-in tariffs, Germany has successfully become a global leader in the development and use of solar energy technology and has brought down its cost significantly in the process, while simultaneously making great strides in the use of wind power.
My final meeting of the day was with Dr. Eicke Weber, the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Dr. Weber emphasized the urgency of the work being done on renewable energy technologies at Fraunhofer ISE and around the world. According to Dr. Weber, the development and application of these technologies is key to humanity's continued success on this planet. As our conversation came to a close, Dr. Weber expressed his hope that the US would begin to play a greater leadership role in the use of renewable energy technologies and in dealing with the real global problems of the 21st century.
Dr. Eicke Weber, Myself and Mr. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp
After a brief tour of a laboratory investigating systems for intelligent automated management of residential electrical generation and load supply, my visit to the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems came to a close and I returned to the hostel to pack for my departure from Freiburg the next day.
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