farm country brings much to the village of Sprakebuell: fog and rain from the sea, the occasional migrating stork, the faint smell of manure in the newly fertilized fields.
The dividends from citizen-owned wind parks don’t make the recipients rich. Instead, the money is a little extra jingle, a financial buffer “that’s very important for us because it gives us a certain freedom,” said Astrid Nissen, 44, who with her husband manages a 150-cow dairy farm on the village's outskirts.
Interest rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and others have economists at University College London warning of “green collateral damage” and calling high borrowing costs meant to fight inflation “terrible news for the green transition." Not everyone takes part, but all residents see benefits. There’s a shared electric car in the middle of town that anyone can book by smartphone app for 2.50 euros an hour. A small grocery store has opened with an attached cafe, and a restaurant serves lunch daily — signs of new purchasing power. Some similar-sized villages in the region have neither.
High interest rates hold back renewables far more than fossil fuel projects. Most of the cost for renewables is up-front in the price of buying the wind turbines or solar panels, while costs to operate them going forward are negligible — the wind blows and sun shines for free. Those were some reasons Danish company Orsted cited when it canceled two large wind installations off New Jersey. Swedish utility Vattenfall also halted an offshore project in the U.K.