Energy transition: A Swabian fairy tale that began near Tübingen in the late 1970s

2023-06-29 07:48:47

The energy transition is a Swabian fairy tale. It began somewhere east of Tübingen in the late 1970s. Young people, tired of theory, joined alternative cultures. They sought salvation in concrete utopia. Some founded rural communes, others tinkered with solar solutions to the energy problem.

The sun promised warmth in every respect. The energy problem was seen as interwoven with the coolness and rigidity of the bourgeois world. Patriarchy, exploitation, coal and nuclear power. Images of warmth and the power of the sun mingled into a more semantically promising tangle with ideas of a better life in groups.

Early failure was sometimes unavoidable. The rural communes brought…