Dear friends,

I was talking to my friend Walter Dujmovits at a graduation ball when he suddenly said, “Peter, why don`t you write a few lines in our newspaper about the latest development in Güssing?”
Well, indeed dear friends, quite a few things have changed in our little town over the past six years!
It all began in 1992 shortly after I had become mayor in Güssing. The situation I was facing then looked rather grim. We had a high rate of unemployment and an ever growing number of frustrated young people left town and migrated to the cities in search of a job. So at a workshop at town hall I assembled a panel of experts and ambitious young technicians and asked them to answer me one crucial question, “What kind of resources have we got in our region and how can we utilize them in order to create jobs?”

Soon afterwards we founded the EUROPEAN CENTER OF RENEWABLE ENERGY. The ambitious objective of this center was the creation of a model region which could supply energy in the fields of heating, biodiesel and electricity from its own renewable resources!
Today we have the largest district heating plant in the country and supply more than 70 percent of our family homes and public buildings. We fuel it with wood chips, bark and residue from saw mills. Since 45 percent of our region is covered by forests there is virtually no shortage of raw material!

We have constructed a biodiesel plant which produces biodiesel from rape seed and used cooking oil and, most notably, Güssing has a cogeneration power plant which produces heating and electricity from wood chips!

The result of our endeavour so far? Various companies have come to our town and created 400 new jobs up to now! Hundreds of visitors from all over Europe visit us every month. Our commitment to renewable energy begins to pay off. Maybe you are among those visitors who we can welcome in Güssing soon.

Sincerely yours,
Peter Vadasz, Mayor of Güssing