Schönau im Schwarzwald is a town in the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

It is situated in the Black Forest, on the river Wiese, 35 kilometres (22 mi) northeast of Basel, Switzerland, and 23 kilometres (14 mi) south of Freiburg.

After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a small group led by Michael and Ursula Sladek founded the Parents for a Nuclear Free Future group, to research how they could limit the community's dependence on nuclear power.

[4] After ten years of campaigning and raising awareness, they founded the first German green power utility, the Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS), in 1994.

[5][3][6][7] With a system that combined efficiency and power-saving strategies, it became possible to satisfy the power consumption of the community.