The Grid

The Goldman Environmental Prize is perhaps the most important—and generous—environmental tribute of its kind with an annual financial award that goes to grassroots environmental heroes from each of the world’s six inhabited continents. In The Grid we meet one of the winners, Ursula Sladek of Germany, for whom the idea of 100-percent reliance on renewable energy by 2050 is not a hope or a dream, but simply a matter of time. Having led a successful 10-year effort to take over her regional power grid through a citizen’s collective, Sladek is accustomed to taking her time. Today, following deregulation of Germany’s electricity market, Sladek’s collective serves some 250,00 users throughout the country—paying those who feed the grid with excess power and rewarding those who save on energy consumption.