One Model for Equitable Energy: The Energy Democracy Social Movement
On potential strategy for creating more equitable energy in Massachusetts is community-ownership. The idea of community-owned renewables has been popularized as “Energy Democracy” through social movements. This post provides information on how the Energy Democracy frame emerged from organizing in Europe and highlights a few successful campaigns.
Conceptually, “Energy Democracy” means communities coming together to own, generate, and control their own energy. It is a system that extends the potential of renewable energy to be more than just distributed generation; with energy democracy, there is distributed wealth creation. With the right policies in place, it is possible for households, public municipalities, and cooperatives to own and control a substantial amount of power generation and grid distribution capacity as renewable energy is scaled up.
According to the book Energy Democracy — Germany’s Energiewende to Renewables, the term “energy democracy” first emerged from the German anti-nuclear energy movement. The Germans have a long history of pushing for local control over energy choices, dating back to community victories against proposed nuclear power plants in the early 1970s. The book explains that the beginning of the Energiewende movement was motivated not by global environmental concerns, but by a desire for German communities to actively shape their respective energy futures. The climate change motivations for the movement came later, after scientific evidence revealed the threat posed by fossil fuels.
While the broad idea of Energy Democracy has existed for decades, only recently have movements defined defined the concept. A report called Strategies for Energy Democracy from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation says that a number of groups convened at the 2012 Lausitz Climate Camp in Germany agreed to the following definition:
“Energy democracy means that everybody is ensured access to sufficient energy. Energy production must thereby neither pollute the environment nor harm people. More concretely, this means that fossil fuel resources must be left in the ground, the means of production need to be socialised and democratised, and that we must rethink our overall attitude towards energy consumption”
This emphasis on the “means of production” sets energy democracy apart from other efforts focused on decarbonizing the energy sector. Community ownership and control matter. In a system of Energy Democracy, people are not just consumers of energy provided by a corporate utility. Even the new word “prosumer,” which combines producer and consumer functions, is not enough. Instead a system of energy democracy, people become “Energy Citizens,” making empowered private choices for their household energy provisions and collective choices for the energy needs of their community. These collective choices can be made through cooperatives, supporting local small businesses, or through city or state policy choices. But regardless of structure, ownership and active participation are key.
To better understand the concept of Energy Democracy, here are three additional definitions:
- The Institute for Local Self-Reliance writes that “energy democracy implies an energy system that is democratic, where decisions are made by the users of energy.”
- The Center for Social Inclusion writes “energy democracy means that community residents are innovators, planners, and decision-makers who use and create energy that is local and renewable.”
- Trade Unions for Energy Democracy believes that “Energy democracy will require a transfer of resources, capital and infrastructure from private hands to public entities.”
Energy Democracy is already flourishing in many countries, particularly in Europe. The active practice of Energy Democracy is most advanced in Germany, where German citizens own nearly half of all renewable energy generation capacity in the country. Denmark also is a strong example of energy democracy in action, as national law requires that all new wind projects offer at least 20 percent of ownership stake to surrounding local communities. The entire European Union aims to promote energy democracy policies, stating in an update to its Energy Union strategy that “For the transition to be successful and socially fair, citizens will have to take ownership of this process by actively participating in the energy market.”
Energy Democracy is still a fairly new concept in the United States, but some organizations like the Democracy Collaborative, the Institute for Local Self Reliance, and the Local Clean Energy Alliance have aggregated and analyzed policy options to support community-owned energy. Groups like the Emerald Cities Collaborative, Green for All, and the Center for Social Inclusion have made progress advancing equitable green jobs programs. Cooperatives like Co-Op Power in the Northeast and Cooperative Energy Futures in Minneapolis have made progress on new forms of ownership of local energy technologies.
Thus far, most energy democracy victories in the United States have been won by local coalitions pushing for city-level policy changes. For example, organizers in Boulder Colorado won a ballot initiative to form a city-owned municipal utility to take over the existing electricity distribution grid. Similarly, organizers in Minneapolis won a campaign to gain the right to form a municipal utility, which they are using as leverage to demand greater renewable energy from Xcel Energy. There are also some examples of state victories. The California Environmental Justice Alliance won a major victory through passing state legislation to create the “Transformative Climate Communities program”, which will provide $140 million to fund community energy projects via revenues collected from California’s cap and trade program. And the New York Renews Coalition came close to passing the Climate and Community Protection Act, which would have required 40% of all revenues generated from climate policy to be spent on projects that provide benefits to environmental justice communities.
While there has been a good deal of work around the conceptual frameworks for energy democracy and some successes through local organizing, there is not much literature on the total potential economic value for communities through the ownership of renewable energy infrastructure. The study that comes closest quantifying the potential value created for communities through the transition to renewable energy is by Energy Democracy is a recent report from CE Delft called “The Potential for Energy Citizens in the European Union.” The study shows that 187 million households in the EU (83% of all households) could take actions that meet 45% of the total European Union energy demand by 2050. The study also quantifies the amount of energy that could be produced by these energy citizens. However, it does not quantify the value of the energy assets or the potential net income for communities.
Through “Equitable Energy for Massachusetts,” I will attempt to quantify the amount of potential community wealth available from the transition to clean energy in Massachusetts. My hope to is build on the social movement foundations of energy democracy and provide some basic analysis of the choices available for distributed infrastructure and community ownership.
