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]]>Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Christopher Mitchell, the director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks initiative, interviews Hannah Trostle and Karlee Weinmann, research associates for the Community Broadband Networks and Energy Democracy initiatives, respectively. The three discuss the cooperative model of ownership and how this model can enable investment in gigabit internet connections for their member-owners, but also how they are subject to a low participation rates in their elections.
The trio details the challenges of cooperative ownership and the myriad of benefits for active and engaged cooperative boards and administration structures. “There are co-ops out there that are finding ways to…have their members understand how solar can work for them,” says Weinmann on the benefits of cooperatives for renewable energy. “[They’re] finding ways to implement solar in a way that is financially feasible and financially beneficial.”
For full transcript of this episode of the Building Local Power podcast, click here.
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Audio Credit: Funk Interlude by Dysfunction_AL Ft: Fourstones – Scomber (Bonus Track). Copyright, 2016.
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]]>The post Remunicipalisation of energy systems – Part 2 appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>In Germany, there is a strong movement to claim the gas, electricity and heating networks back from private corporations. Initiated by civil organisations, they are pushing the political arena to take action towards a remunicipalisation of the energy system. After setting the theoretical background (in part 1), we will look into two cases: Hamburg and Berlin. These examples provide crucial insights into the interplay between civil initiatives and the political arena and allow to draw important conclusions.
As we saw in the first part, the referendum in Hamburg pushed the municipality to buy the electricity, gas and heating networks back from Vattenfall. Therefore, things seem to be on the right tracks there. However, a more careful observation shows that the model is missing a crucial part: the democratic governance.
In order to understand where the step was missed, we have to go back in time. During the phase preceding the referendum, several local actors created an energy cooperative, which aim was to apply to the concession for operating the electricity grid. It’s name is Energienetz Hamburg. They made a deal with a Dutch TSO, Alliander, which pulled out at the last moment.
Unfortunately, although Energienetz succeeded to attract a large number of members who commited to a common capital of 50 million euros, the municipality did not include them in the deal for the concession.
This is a missed opportunity, which could have seen a new type of civil-public partnership and the implementation in a state-run company of the cooperative decision-making model: one member (one user) = one vote.
On the brighter side, this energy coop. is now playing an important role in Hamburg, by organizing debates (called Wärmedialogue) to promote and push the municipality to investigate alternative sources of district heating. One solution for instance would be to recuperate the heat from a copper furnace on the South East side of the city instead of using fossil-fuel power plants. As mentioned in this video (to watch absolutely if you have 12 minutes to spare!), district heating is crucial because this represent a large number of homes (>450 000), which generally do not have other choices (e.g., renters who de facto have district heating). Therefore, prices and heating sources become central issues.
In Hamburg, an advisory board was created and adjunct to the Energy Agency of the city. As explained in this article: “Members of this new Board include a broad range of 20 representatives from society, science, business, industry and most importantly all local grid companies, also including Vattenfall and E.ON, which still remain main shareholders of the district heating and gas distribution grid until the purchase options has been exercised.” However, the board exert a mere advisory function and has limited decision-making power. As the article states, this is one of the main challenge that Hamburg faces: “avoid [that] the board becom[es] a toothless tiger”.
In Berlin, the story started in a similar fashion as in Hamburg but developed very differently. A dynamic campaign to remunicipalise the networks was launched in 2013, orchestrated by the civic initiative Berliner Energietisch. The referendum attracted more than 600 000 people but unfortunately, failed short of 20 000 “Ja” votes.
The actors are pretty much the same as in Hamburg:
Interestingly, everyone though that the game was over after the failed referendum but this was forgetting the importance of the political game. Indeed, the municipal vote in 2016 saw the formation of a new “Red-Red-Green” (SPD-Die Linke-Die Grüne) coalition in Berlin, which put back the remunicipalisation process on the agenda.
And here are the different options that are being evaluated presently by the municipality. We find applicants like in Hamburg: In white, the fully municipal operators (Berlin Energie) and in grey, the fully privatised actors (NBB Netzgesellschaft and Stromnetz Berlin). But we also find more funky applications: in white-grey hashed, either classical public-private partnership for the gas networks or more a complex civil-public-private partnership for the electricity grid. A new field of possible has been open. We are all very curious what will happen now!
This is interesting as it points out the joint role of the civil society and of the political arena in creating new spaces. It starts by a strong civic movement and is enabled by a favorable political landscape.
To finish, here a second little video that we did with TNI at the occasion of the conference “Against the NAM”. I had to answer the question “Why should we treat energy as a commons?”.
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]]>The post Remunicipalisation of energy systems – Part 1 appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>In Germany, there is a strong movement to claim the gas, electricity and heating networks back from private corporations. Initiated by civil organisations, they are pushing the political arena to take action towards a remunicipalisation of the energy system. This is a very interesting process, which allows to explore key concepts such as the right to energy and democratic governance as well as the interplay between politics and the civil society.
I presented this story during a conference on about the potential remunicipalisation of the Groningen gas field at the beginning of January (see previous article). You will find here all the slides from the presentation, which you can download and reuse (but please, cite me!). All sources are indicated at the end of the post.
Firstly, I will quickly lay some theoretical foundations to the relationships between energy and the commons. The following slide is an illustration of the differences between energy used as a commodity or a common good.
When we think energy democracy, one thing that comes to mind are cooperatives. There are many throughout Europe, which can have very different financial structures and sizes. But they have one thing in common, which makes them very particular: their ownership and governance modes.
The infrastructure is owned by the members, who each have a vote. Decisions are taken on the model “one member, one vote”.
The other form of organisation that holds great potential for energy democracy are municipal utilities. They are known in Europe for the water utilities and used to play a large role for energy as well. But the wave of privatisations in the 1990s put them in the hands of private corporations. Since a few years, some cities are taking a reverse path and buy their networks and utilities back. This is very interesting because municipal utilities, which inherently belong to all, have potentially one crucial advantage over cooperatives: as all inhabitants/users can be considered as members, they might prove more inclusive structures. However, this is only true if the governance mode is copied on the coop one: “one member one vote”. We will see that it is not necessarily the case.
First, here are a few basics on the structure of the energy system in Germany:
On the one hand, there are the grid operators (TSO): they own and operate the local electricity, gas and heating networks. They get concessions of 20 years, given by the federal states: these are quasi-monopolies. They compete to get the concession but once the get it, they have no competitors.
On the other hand, there are the energy providers, who operate the power plants and commercialise energy (they are the users of the grid). Here it can be anyone producing energy, from the very big to the very small.
In Hamburg, the concession for the networks was hold by Vattenfall and ran out in 2013. People then decided to regain control on the grid. So the city of Hamburg grounded a municipal utility (called “Hamburg Energie”), as a daughter of the water utility. It is now an energy provider, which focuses on producing and selling local green energy (mostly electricity but also some gas).
Next to that, a collective of citizens founded the initiative “Unser Hamburg Unser Netz”. They ran a campaign and had a referendum, during which people voted in favour of a full remunicipalisation of the networks. Therefore, the electricity network was bought back in 2014 and the gas and heating networks should get back in the public hand by 2018/2019.
So things seem to be on a right track in Hamburg, and it was indeed experienced as a tremendous victory for the supporters of energy democracy. But… something is missing in the Hamburg model: the citizen participation, based on the cooperative model. Indeed, both the municipal energy utility and municipal TSO are run as companies and users are not taking an active part in decision-making (they are merely consulted).
That’s it for now. Next time, we’ll have a look at energy cooperatives in Hamburg and at the story in Berlin. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, you can watch the whole presentation, that was recorded by TNI (whom I thank very much!).
Photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – PNNL
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]]>The post Why does community energy matter? appeared first on P2P Foundation.
]]>Community energy refers to any kind of power plant using a renewable source of energy, that has been planned, financed and which is owned by a community of people (from the village to the house). And why would these energy communities matter? It is nice enough but sounds pretty irrelevant when we think about fighting climate change or fostering democracy… However, several recent studies highlight the crucial role of energy democracy in meeting these societal challenges.
Hereafter, I will distinguish energy communities (as defined earlier) from external projects, which involve private or institutional investors and a project developer who do not belong to the community where the power-plant is installed. If informed and sometimes a minor share-holder, the community generally does not take part in the design and the decision-making.
Some benefits of community energy can (and sometimes have been) quantified:
Out of a visit I made in the energy self-sufficient village Feldheim (I’ll relate that in a future episode!), I also got these two indications (which to my knowledge have not been quantified yet):
Other benefits are more difficult to quantify but are nonetheless tangible. A series of interviews from local stake-holders involved in community energy projects reported the following (see article & study in German):
Finally, there is a range of strategical benefits:
Glossary
*Renewable energy: energy produced from sources that will be renewed/replenished in a short amount of time. Typically, even if you use the wind, the sun-rays, the tides, the waves, the flow of a river, and in some cases biomass to make energy (warmth or electricity) today, that has no impact on their amount tomorrow. That does not mean that they are infinite (there is a finite amount of wind), but it means that their quantity won’t be depleted permanently if you use them. It is therefore clear that oil, coal and uranium (to make nuclear power) are finite and not renewable (or at least not on short time-scales): if you use them today, there will be less tomorrow.
*Appropriate technology: it describes the technology best adapted to the local conditions and needs of the community members. It is used in opposition to the race for “high technology” (or high-tech), which, although being technologically sound, is not always the best suited solution. High-tech also does not necessarily feeds the interests of the community, of the “common good” but rather that of external investors.
Originally published on Energy Commons
Lead image: Hepburn Wind, Flickr
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