The town of Kisielice in Poland is a step ahead of everywhere else, being completely powered by Renewable Energy! The town has just been awarded a European Commission ManagEnergy Award 2014 for self-sufficiency. This makes it even harder to understand why the Australian government plan to gut the Renewable Energy Target in Australia. With successful towns such as the town of Kisielice showing that 100% Renewable Energy is possible and a working solution to coal, then why are we backtracking here in Australia? It makes no sense. The town is surrounded by expanses of open farming land. The town has two wind farms with a total of 48 turbines and 82 MW capacity. A central heating network has been built, fed by a biomass boiler with a 6 MW capacity and it runs on straw, heat is supplied to 85 percent of the town's buildings. In summer, waste heat from the plant supplies hot water to the town. In December 2013, the town also built its first biogas power plant. This produces one MW of heat and one MW of electricity and is fed by locally grown corn silage. The small rural commune of 2,300 people set the goal of abandoning dependence on coal, thus reducing emissions, improving air quality and making maximum use of local agricultural production capacity. As an incentive, farmers who have wind farms on their land are paid around 5,000 euros per year for each turbine. Also, Cereal straw that would otherwise go to waste is bought from local farmers as fuel, thus providing additional income and lowering emissions. A third wind farm is now under construction, also there is talk of a purchased and installation of photovoltaic panels for their first solar farm in the region. Each public building will also install three sets of photovoltaic panels with a capacity of 10 kW each. Hopefully they have set the benchmark for other towns around the world, and soon there will be more and more completely renewable energy run towns! Down here in Australia things are looking difficult, but if we rally hard enough we can change things!
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