Michael Sladek

Last updated
Michael Sladek. Michael Sladek.jpg
Michael Sladek.

Michael Sladek (born 1946 in Murrhardt) is a German doctor and bearer of the Federal Cross of Merit.

Contents

Life

He became famous by realising a grid-independent system for producing electricity, [1] [2] by distributed little power plants. For this he was awarded 1996 by the German magazine Capital with the Capital/ WWF - Umweltpreis. In 1999 he and his wife Ursula Sladek were awarded with the Nuclear-Free Future Award. In January 2004, the Sladek couple was awarded the highest order in Germany, the Federal Cross of Merit, for their great engagement for the environment. [3]

After the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, he became known for his idea of a system independent of nuclear power plants for generating electric power through distributed mini power plants. With his system that combines an efficiency-strategy with a power saving strategy it became possible to satisfy the power consumption of the community Schönau in the Black-Forest. [4] [5] Following his engagement supported by his wife and many friends the first German green power-provider came into existence, the EWS Schönau. The community of Schönau was the first community on Earth in a Western civilised country that became independent of the national power grid and could decide how the power will be produced.

Honors

See also

Related Research Articles

Amory Lovins American energy policy analyst

Amory Bloch Lovins is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011 to 2018.

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Federal decoration of Germany

The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only federal decoration of Germany. It is awarded for special achievements in political, economic, cultural, intellectual or honorary fields. It was created by the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, on 7 September 1951. Colloquially, the decorations of the different classes of the Order are also known as the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz).

Freimut Börngen was a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets. A few sources give his first name wrongly as "Freimuth". The Minor Planet Center credits him as F. Borngen.

Claus Spahn

Claus Spahn is a former TV programme editor of Germany's Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) broadcasting corporation, a presenter, producer and author. He was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2001.

Diablo Canyon Power Plant Nuclear power plant in California

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Since the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon is the only operational nuclear plant left in the state, and the largest single power station in the state. The facility was the subject of controversy and protests, during both its construction and operations, including nearly two thousand civil disobedience arrests in a two-week period in 1981.

Reinhold Würth is a German billionaire businessman and art collector. In 1954, at the age of 19, he took over his father's tiny wholesale screw business and built it into the Würth Group, which posted €14.4 billion in sales in 2020.

Xcel Energy Inc. is an American utility holding company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, serving more than 3.7 million electric customers and 2.1 million natural gas customers in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico in 2019. It consists of four operating subsidiaries: Northern States Power-Minnesota, Northern States Power-Wisconsin, Public Service Company of Colorado, and Southwestern Public Service Co.

Didier Reynders Belgian politician

Didier Reynders is a Belgian politician and a member of the Mouvement Réformateur (MR) serving as European Commissioner for Justice since 2019. He held various positions in public institutions before becoming a member of the House in 1992. He was a minister without interruption from 1999 to 2019, until resigning to become Belgian European Commissioner.

Wind power in Germany Overview of wind power in Germany

Wind power in Germany is a growing industry. The installed capacity was 55.6 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2017, with 5.2 GW from offshore installations. In 2019, a quarter of the country's total electricity was generated using wind power, compared to an estimated 9.3% in 2010.

Peter Schmidhuber was a German and European politician from the Bavarian CSU party.

Hans-Josef Fell

Hans-Josef Fell was a member of the German Parliamentary Group Alliance 90/ the Greens from 1998 to 2013. He served as spokesman on energy for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group, a member of the Environmental Protection Committee, substitute member of the Committee on Economics and Technology and substitute member of the Defence Committee. Together with Hermann Scheer, he authored the 2000 draft of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, establishing the foundation for the technology developments in photovoltaic, biogas, wind power and geothermal energy in Germany. Fell is founder and president of the Energy Watch Group and an internationally renowned energy and climate change advisor, author and speaker.

Energy in Germany Overview of energy in Germany

Energy in Germany is sourced predominantly by fossil fuels, followed by wind, nuclear power, solar, biomass and hydro.

Nuclear power in the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates is installing nuclear-powered plants to meet their electricity demand, which is estimated to increase from 15 GWe to over 40 GWe in 2020. In December 2009, US and UAE signed a Section 123 Agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation. UAE has also signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), along with the additional protocol.

Ursula Sladek owns a small local power company, Schönau Power Supply, located in Schönau im Schwarzwald, Germany, that provides electricity from renewable energy sources to the German electricity 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.

<i>Energiewende</i> Ongoing energy transition in Germany

The Energiewende is the ongoing transition by Germany to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable, and affordable energy supply. The new system intends to rely heavily on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy demand management. The last nuclear power plant will shut down in 2022, all existing coal-fired generation will be retired by 2038. Legislative support for the Energiewende was passed in late 2010 and included greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions of 80–95% by 2050 and a renewable energy target of 60% by 2050.

Felicia Langer

Felicia Langer was a German-Israeli attorney and human rights activist known for her defence of Palestinian political prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She authored several books alleging human rights violations on the part of Israeli authorities. She lived in Germany from 1990 and acquired German citizenship in 2008. In July 2009, President of Germany Horst Köhler awarded her the Federal Cross of Merit, First class, which is the fifth highest of Germany's federal order of merit's eight ranks. The bestowal triggered a public controversy because of her attitude towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1990, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "the exemplary courage of her advocacy for the basic rights of the Palestinian people."

The orders, decorations, and medals of the German states, in which each states of Germany has devised a system of orders and awards to honour residents for actions or deeds that benefit their local community or state, are in turn subsumed within the German honours system. Each state sets their own rules and criteria on eligibility and also how each medal is awarded and presented. Most of the orders allow for the recipient to wear their orders in public.

Daniela Ludwig German politician

Daniela Ludwig is a German politician of the Christian Social Union (CSU) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since 2002.

Lisa Federle German physician (born 1961)

Lisa Federle is a German doctor and emergency physician. In 2015, she introduced a "mobile doctor's practice" in the Tübingen district to treat refugees in their emergency shelters as well as homeless people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became a mobile fever and diagnostic clinic. With the test strategy she had initiated, she adapted the Tübingen model for targeted pandemic control. In 2020, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for her commitment.

Ursula Schleicher is a German Christian Social Union in Bavaria politician and harpist who served two terms in the Bundestag from 1972 to 1980 and five terms in the European Parliament between 1979 and 2004. She served as state chair of the Paneuropean Union in Bavaria between 1988 and 1994 before becoming its deputy federal chair in 1995 and was a Vice-President of the European Parliament from 1994 to 1999. Schleicher was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, the Bavarian Order of Merit and the Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2001.

References

  1. Eckardt, Andy (May 20, 2011). "World Blog - German couple make greenbacks in anti-nuke battle". MSN . Archived from the original on 2 June 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  2. "Peaceful Rebels". The Atlantic Times . November 2008. Archived from the original on 19 August 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  3. "energieverbraucher.de | Rebellen bekommen Bundesverdienstkreuz". www.energieverbraucher.de. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  4. "Community Energy Cooperative: Schönau, Germany". Centre For Public Impact (CPI). Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  5. Mistiaen, Veronique (2011-05-20). "Ursula Sladek: Power behind a green revolution". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
  6. "energieverbraucher.de | Rebellen bekommen Bundesverdienstkreuz". www.energieverbraucher.de (in German). 2004-01-15. Retrieved 2021-07-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. Colell, Arwen (2021). Alternating Current - Social Innovation in Community Energy. Berlin: Springer. p. 245.
  8. Janzing, Bernward (2014-06-29). "Rebellenwechsel in Schönau". klimaretter.info (in German). Retrieved 2021-07-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)