We are living in a transition time. The biggest part of energy production today is still controlled by a relatively small number of big corporations. The future will be different. In a decentralized energy democracy each citizen can become an energy producer. The following argument can still be heard often: ‘it will be difficult to […]

As a doctor I face situations where only one action is needed, individually and globally, for example, if a patient suffers from an arterial bleed there is only one thing that has to be done immediately – stop the bleeding, 100 per cent. If somebody has a cardiac arrest the life saving measure is to […]

In 1999 I walked from Konstanz, Germany, to Santiago de Compostela, Spain; in 2003 from Basel, Switzerland, to Jerusalem. The motto was ‘There is Enough Sun for All of Us’. I walked through the US, from Los Angeles to Boston. Walking is a very simple way of travelling with renewable energy fuelled by food. I […]

On 1 April 1975, the construction machines arrive in Kaiseraugst – 9 miles from the centre of Basel, Switzerland – for the construction of a nuclear power plant. Hundreds, later thousands of people – from all age groups, professions and political parties – become involved in the non-violent resistance against this project. The territory was […]

Martin Vosseler Crossing the Atlantic with 100% solar energy Imagine – waking up in a narrow hull of a solar catamaran, in a cove of the Rhine River near the German/Dutch border, on a foggy October morning. The air is filled with bird voices. When I crawl on deck I see thousands of wild geese, […]

There is a part of our energy consumption that we could not calculate and com­pare to a German reference family: embodied energy. This means energy that is needed for the production of goods that we use, for instance, for the installation of our house. A modern low-energy house consumes about one third of its life­cycle […]

In the transport energy sector, we consume about half the energy for our private mobility needs of the German reference family. Here, we profit first of all from the fact that we live in a large city with a well-developed public urban transport network. In particular, the sustainable urban development of the Messestadt Riem quarter […]

We may not heat our apartment by other than inherent and solar heat sources (body heat, waste heat from electric appliances and direct solar radiation through the windows), but we do not renounce the copious use of hot water. We do take showers as often as ‘normal’ people do! In fact, we do not save […]