How do you save energy - and where can you save?
Forstern - "Environmentally friendly energy supply is important, because nobody can live healthy on a sick planet.
Bavaria has done too little on this so far, so there's a lot of catching up to do, even on a small, local basis."
Laetitia Wegmann from Taufkirchen, 19-year-old direct candidate for the Greens in the state parliament, gave this warm-up before Dominik Rutz from Wartenberg spoke on the subject of "Energy in the village" at the Hirschbachwirt.
The meeting was organized by the local Greens association, and around 40 guests came.
The speaker, who is a market councilor in his home country, an expert in renewable energy and a passionate beekeeper, first asked the assembly what had changed in terms of energy in the past ten years and especially since the war in Ukraine.
"We currently have a share of renewable energy supply of around 46 percent for electricity, but only 17 percent for heat and only seven percent for transport," emphasized Rutz.
This result requires an urgent change in the use of energy sources, especially in heat production.
“Up until now, the heat transition has been largely neglected compared to the electricity transition.
But we have to get better insulated houses, we have to get away from oil and gas as heating media," he demanded.
“Our party has tried to apply for an energy agency in the district that could provide advice and support to anyone interested in energy conversion.
But this was initially rejected.” It is about organizing heating networks in the communities as quickly as possible,
borne possibly by residents' cooperatives.
Such a network is already being planned in Wartenberg.
Nor could he understand the aversion of some people to burning wood.
"I myself am a forest owner and see the conversion of our forests as urgent, after all, 99,000 hectares of forest in Bavaria should be structured differently in the future.
And it doesn't harm the forest to take wood there and burn it in winter," Rutz said, qualifying: "It really only makes little sense in summer."
It would also make no sense to "just talk nice about everything" in the event of the electricity turnaround in the district: A cadastral directory, for example, in which all possible photovoltaic surfaces on houses would be registered, would only cost around 12,000 euros cost - "but we still carry too many good ideas away".
Regarding the much-discussed possible wind turbine near Wartenberg, Rutz said that there were no final decisions on this yet.
A public survey is still pending, “because we want to get everyone on board.
Although the tiresome 10-hour regulation still applies in Bavaria, thanks to the new wind-on-shore law, we can give the Free State government a little something to do.”
Also, as far as open-space photovoltaics on agricultural land, which is controversial in some places, is concerned, there are sometimes unobjective discussions.
Firstly, there are now plants that do not require much space, and cattle can graze under agro-plants on stilts, for example.
"Some floors would even be grateful if they could recover after a long period of use"
And Rutz also made it clear to the guests that hydrogen cannot be a panacea for the energy supply of the future.
“Although hydrogen is a good energy carrier, it is not an energy source.
Its use only makes sense from fully renewable energy resources, and it only makes sense for our heavy industry because of its high producer price, but not for many cars,” he stressed.
In the ensuing discussion, thoughts on more storage capacities and the so-called heat networks were exchanged.
Here homeowners could get together in one place and decide on a common district heating source, the individual users would not have to accept any major conversions in their property.
However, as local association spokeswoman Maria Feckl explained, such an idea in Forstern has so far failed due to too little interest.
Perhaps, however, as one visitor mentioned, a future form of new building areas would be expedient through a mandatory specification of this form of energy, which other guests in turn rejected.
"Sometimes there may have to be an offer before demand arises," pointed out Feckl, who, like her party friend Alice Lorenz from Pastetten, is of the opinion that