District of Gießen (DE)
The District of Gießen is in the North of the metropolitan region Frankfurt/Rhein-Main. There are approximately 278,000 inhabitants living in 18 cities and municipalities on an 855 km² area. Industry there mostly consists of middle-sized companies. Many of which are family-run, highly innovative and global leaders in specialised areas in the sectors mechanical engineering, systems engineering, electronics, and life sciences. SHAREs support the district of Gießen via Mr Manfred Felske-Zech, head of Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Development of the District. With the help of Dr. Felske-Zech, contact to the existing energy community has been established. Furthermore, administrative representatives of several municipalities of the district have been included in the SHAREs Workgroup Gießen. These representatives inform us about inter alia renewable energy related collective actions of the region. Except for the expansion of the Sonnenland EG (currently the district’s only energy community), none of these planned actions have been implemented, yet. However, these pieces of information give a good indicator of the individual needs, visions and challenges and can be used for the mentoring scheme to help the district expand in renewable energies and citizen empowerment.
Testimonial
"A requirement for the acceptance of renewable energy plants, especially wind power stations is the participation of the neighbourhood and an added value for the involved municipalities. On several solar and one wind power station, Gießen District made good experiences with local energy cooperatives. We want to extend this model and look forward to exchanging experiences with other regions. For future projects we will be happy about inputs by the experts of the SHAREs project.”
- Dr. Manfred Felske-Zech
Factsheet
| Location | Municipality Buseck, Germany |
| Used energy generation technologies / implemented energy efficiency measures | PV and expanding to wind energy |
| Installed capacity | - |
| Number of members | 1,074 |
| Regional scope | regional |
| Activities in the energy community | expanding (from 700 to 1,074 members since 2021) |
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