BLUE ECONOMY: The sea is the limit

You're right to be angry about your power bill, how it's gone up and up.

And you're right to be angry about cost of living.

Like, just a cup of coffee now is $7 in many of the cafes.

But what I don't understand is, why don't you ask, who should I be angry at? Who is profiting from this? And who is laughing all the way to the bank at the moment? So we hear politicians trying to scare you about net zero, which is something they say is running our country down.

And they want you to believe that renewables are hooks.

and that it's just some sort of an expensive fantasy which is being pushed by inner-city latte-drinking elites.

But hey, let's just once more take a look at this claim.

Give me a moment, because I would like to talk about a small village in Germany called Feldheim.

It's a village of about 130 people.

And it's not some trendy city suburb with latte drinking greenies.

No, this is a rural village in Germany with farmers, local families, ordinary people.

And what did they do? They built their own renewable energy system with wind turbines and solar panels and a biogas plant, which is using the local farm waste.

And of course, some batteries, a local heating network, and they have their own electricity grid.

And what did they get out of doing that? These 130 residents in Feldheim now pay around 19 cents per kilowatt hour for their electricity.

19 cents.

That's about half of what most Australian households here pay for our electricity.

So next time you hear a politician tell you that renewables are expensive, how about you ask them, hmm...

How come the people in Feldheim pay half of what we Australians are paying? And what you should probably then be asking yourself is, why did those people in Germany choose to become energy independent? When someone tells you that local people get nothing out of this green energy transition, maybe you should ask them, who owns the system? And where does the money go? Who's benefiting? Because that is the real question to ask.

In Germany, in Feldheim, it's the local citizens who own the energy system.

The real choice we have is between an old energy system where we ordinary people keep paying our bills to large companies and a new system where we, communities, farmers, households, small businesses and so on, own the system.

And in that way, we are all becoming part of the solution.

That's what Feldheim shows us.

That's what happens when community is brought in rather than pushed aside as we see it happening here in Australia.

The energy is produced locally, the money stays local.

So the bills are half price and the supply is more secure.