Not In Our Backyard: Popular Protests Put Brakes on Renewable Energy

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The kind of reflection Thomas Jacob is talking about began last fall in Timmaspe, a village in northern Germany near the city of Kiel. Things suddenly became very loud in Timmaspe, when the energy revolution descended on village life.

Suddenly trucks were roaring through the village day and night, disturbing everyone's sleep, says Jörg Bobsien. He is sitting in his living room, which has a view of Timmaspe's main street. Things have quieted down again, and the traffic has all but vanished.

The trucks were carrying corn waste to a field on the outskirts of town. They eventually left, at which point the farmer who owned the field announced that a biogas plant was going to be built there.

Soon a citizens' initiative was formed in Timmaspe, and Bobsien became its spokesman. The members of the group met, drank wine and produced a flyer. They talked to other residents in the area and discovered that "every community is currently worried about the issue." Biogas plants were in the works all over the area, often sparking protests from local residents.

The Timmaspe citizens' initiative distributed its flyers and collected signatures in the village. Its campaign was a success, at least for the time being. The operator of the planned facility apparently decided to build a new biogas plant in a nearby town, says Bobsien.

No Sensible Policy

"Of course, no one wants a thing like this," Bobsien says. For a spokesman, he tends to be on the taciturn side. He talks about the traffic, the stench and the industrialization of the local economy. A small plant already exists in Timmaspe, at the other end of the village, but Bobsien says he can live with that. But another plant, one that would be at least twice as big, is too much for a village of 1,100 inhabitants, he says.

Bobsien, 46, owns a parquet and interior decorating shop in Hamburg. He lives in a renovated farmhouse in Timmaspe. His windsurfing boards hang in the garage. Bobsien is the kind of person who is sensitive to his immediate environment, and he buys his milk and meat from local farmers. He is worried that farmers will be priced out of the area if local fields are increasingly used to grow corn for the biogas plants.

"And what kind of corn is it, anyway?" asks his wife, who has just walked into the house with the couple's daughters and joins her husband at their long wooden table. "And where does the electricity go?"

Bobsien nods. The traffic, the stench, the industrialization -- these are things he could live with if there were a plan. He is opposed to nuclear power and pollution from coal-fired power plants, But he says that he has the feeling "that no one bothers to think about a sensible energy policy."

Bobsien sounds a lot like Hans Fliege, the man who questions the usefulness of solar parks in Bavaria, and Thomas Jacob, the Brandenburg resident who is convinced that there is no real plan behind all the wind turbines.

Shouldering the Burden

If people have the feeling "that their region is expected to deal with the whole problem on its own," and that they are expected to shoulder the burden without seeing any of the benefits, it's understandable that they would want to fight back, says social scientist Dieter Rucht. One way forward, he suggests, would be if people in each region had to decide for themselves how to provide their electricity.

Perhaps it's a good thing that we now have to think about these things, says Jörn Bobsien, the activist in Timmaspe.

When the members of the Timmaspe citizens' initiative hold their next meeting, they decide that their village should produce its own energy in the future. And to achieve that goal, they say, they would even accept a biogas plant.

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• Part 1: Popular Protests Put Brakes on Renewable Energy
• Part 2: Taking on the Power Companies
• Part 3: Darkness on the Edge of Town