Ursula Sladek
Encyclopedia
Ursula Sladek owns a small local power company, Schönau Power Supply, that provides electricity from renewable energy
sources to the German electrcity grid. Her company "gets much of its energy from small local energy producers, including a handful of hydropower operations, solar panels, some wind turbines, and about 20 washing-machine-size co-generation plants in people’s homes that produce both heat for the home and electricity for the grid".
Sladek has also been interested in finding ways of rendering nuclear power unnecessary in Germany:
Sladek won a Goldman Environmental Prize
in 2011.
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
sources to the German electrcity grid. Her company "gets much of its energy from small local energy producers, including a handful of hydropower operations, solar panels, some wind turbines, and about 20 washing-machine-size co-generation plants in people’s homes that produce both heat for the home and electricity for the grid".
Sladek has also been interested in finding ways of rendering nuclear power unnecessary in Germany:
In 1986, she was a homemaker and the mother of four school-age children when some radioactive isotopes blown into the air by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plantChernobyl disasterThe Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
in the Ukraine landed around her town, Schönau, in the Black ForestBlack ForestThe Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
in western Germany. Her children could not play outdoors for two weeks; 25 years later, that forest’s mushrooms are still considered unsafe.
Sladek won a Goldman Environmental Prize
Goldman Environmental Prize
The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize includes a no-strings-attached award of...
in 2011.
See also
- EurosolarEurosolarEurosolar is the non-profit European Association for Renewable Energy that conducts its work independently of political parties, institutions, commercial enterprises and interest groups...
- Renewable energy commercializationRenewable energy commercializationRenewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power and heat...
- Michael SladekMichael SladekMichael Sladek is a German doctor and bearer of the Bundesverdienstkreuz.He became famous by realising a grid-independent system for producing electricity, by distributed little power plants....
- World Future CouncilWorld Future CouncilThe World Future Council is an independent body formally founded in Hamburg, Germany on 10 May 2007. "Formed to speak on behalf of policy solutions that serve the interests of future generations", it includes members active in governmental bodies, civil society, business, science and the arts...
- Hans-Josef FellHans-Josef FellHans-Josef Fell is a member of the Green Party in the German Parliament. Fell framed the German Renewable Energy legislation, together with Hermann Scheer...
- Anti-nuclear movement in GermanyAnti-nuclear movement in GermanyThe anti-nuclear movement in Germany has a long history dating back to the early 1970s, when large demonstrations prevented the construction of a nuclear plant at Wyhl. The Whyl protests were an example of a local community challenging the nuclear industry through a strategy of direct action and...