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Background
Over the past few years, the city of Darmstadt, Germany, has been buying green electricity from NaturPur AG. Firstly this was to cover 80% of all power consumed in public buildings, but it was also designed to stimulate citizens and companies in buying green energy. Currently, 32% of the electricity need is covered by electricity from renewable energy sources.
The purchase of green energy is only one small part in the overall climate policy of the city of Darmstadt. "These are investments in the future", Darmstadt's City Councillor for the Environment Klaus Feuchtinger says. One of the main reasons Darmstadt started looking into green energy was the German government's decision to phase-out nuclear energy. "If you don't want dirty nuclear energy, you have to come up with something else. If you want to relieve the climate and you don't want any nuclear waste, you have to face the consequences. We did, up to the highest regions of the city's magistrate."
Some years ago, as a part of the general climate policy of the city, Darmstadt started with a considerable share of green power in meeting the electricity demand of its public buildings. Other initiatives in the climate policy field have been developed in the last twenty years. Feuchtinger, the city's "Stadtrat für Stadt und Ökologie" and member of the Green Party: "We have our zero-energy house. We are also keen on reducing the energy consumption in new building sites as much as possible and promote energy savings with our citizens and enterprises."
Mr Feuchtinger adds: "No, we haven't purchased green energy in our public lighting yet. But that is only marginal, partly due to efficiency measures we have taken there. 80% of all the power used in public buildings, swimming pools, schools, etc. is now covered by green energy. We'd rather raise the green share in public buildings to 100%, that is more interesting than greening the public lighting. In total we now buy 4.5 million kilowatt-hours at NaturPur AG, which saves us 2,600 tonnes of greenhouse gas CO2 emissions".
This is one of a number of case studies on Green Procurement available on the Procura+ website
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