The municipality of Neuerkirch-Külz provides a good example for joint local action by citizens and municipalities realising a district’s goals: using income gained from leasing local land to windpark operators, the municipality built a combined solar thermal and biomass district heating plant and network that supplies 150 households with heat from regional wood waste and solar energy – and by doing so, locally, it already fulfils Germany’s 2050 targets for the heating sector today.

• Further reading: CLEW dossier Towns and cities central to heating and transport transition, CLEW factsheet Bioenergy in Germany – facts and figures on development, support and investment, CLEW factsheet Combined heat and power - an Energiewende cornerstone?
• CLEW research tour: Investors, troublemakers: Citizens & local powers of the Energiewende
• Date of publication: April 2018