“Where will the government find the money?” is no longer a valid objection to providing an economic safety net for the people. The government can find the money in the same place it just found more than $5 trillion for Wall Street and Corporate America: the central bank can print it. In an April 9 post commenting on the $1.77 trillion handed to Wall Street under the CARES Act, Wolf Richter observed, “If the Fed had sent that $1.77 Trillion to the 130 million households in the US, each household would have received $13,600. But no, this was helicopter money exclusively for Wall Street and for asset holders.”

“Helicopter money” – money simply issued by the central bank and injected into the economy – could be used in many ways, including building infrastructure, capitalizing a national infrastructure and development bank, providing free state university tuition, or funding Medicare, social security, or a universal basic income. In the current crisis, in which a government-mandated shutdown has left households more vulnerable than at any time since the Great Depression, a UBI seems the most direct and efficient way to get money to everyone who needs it. But critics argue that it will just trigger inflation and collapse the dollar. As gold proponent Mike Maloney complained on an April 16 podcast:

Typing extra digits into computers does not make us wealthy. If this insane theory of printing money for almost everyone on a permanent basis takes hold, the value of the dollars in your purse or pocketbook will … just continue to erode …. I just want someone to explain to me how this is going to work.

Having done quite a bit of study on that, I thought I would take on the challenge. Here is how and why a central bank-financed UBI can work without eroding the dollar.

In a Debt-Based System, the Consumer Economy Is Chronically Short of Money

First, some basics of modern money. We do not have a fixed and stable money system. We have a credit system, in which money is created and destroyed by banks every day. Money is created as a deposit when the bank makes a loan and is extinguished when the loan is repaid, as explained in detail by the Bank of England here. When fewer loans are being created than are being repaid, the money supply shrinks, a phenomenon called “debt deflation.” Deflation then triggers recession and depression. The term “helicopter money” was coined to describe the cure for that much-feared syndrome. Economist Milton Friedman said it was easy to cure a deflation: just print money and rain it down from helicopters on the people.

Our money supply is in a chronic state of deflation, due to the way money comes into existence. Banks create the principal but not the interest needed to repay their loans, so more money is always owed back than was created in the original loans. Thus debt always grows faster than the money supply, as can be seen in this chart from WorkableEconomics.com:

When the debt burden grow so large that borrowers cannot take on more, they pay down old loans without taking out new ones and the money supply shrinks or deflates.

Critics of this “debt virus” theory say the gap between debt and the money available to repay can be filled through the “velocity of money.” Debts are repaid over time, and if the payments received collectively by the lenders are spent back into the economy, they are collectively available to the debtors to pay their next monthly balances. (See a fuller explanation here.) The flaw in this argument is that money created as a loan is extinguished on repayment and is not available to be spent back into the economy. Repayment zeros out the debit by which it was created, and the money just disappears.

Another problem with the “velocity of money” argument is that lenders don’t typically spend their profits back into the consumer economy. In fact, we have two economies – the consumer/producer economy where goods and services are produced and traded, and the financialized economy where money chases “yields” without producing new goods and services. The financialized economy is essentially a parasite on the real economy, and it now contains most of the money in the system. In an unwritten policy called the “Fed put”, the central bank routinely manipulates the money supply to prop up financial markets. That means corporate owners and investors can make more and faster money in the financialized economy than by investing in workers and equipment. Bankers, investors and other “savers” put their money in stocks and bonds, hide it in offshore tax havens, send it abroad, or just keep it in cash. At the end of 2018, US corporations were sitting on $1.7 trillion in cash, and 70% of $100 bills were held overseas.

Meanwhile the producer/consumer economy is left with insufficient investment and insufficient demand. According to a July 2017 paper from the Roosevelt Institute called “What Recovery? The Case for Continued Expansionary Policy at the Fed”:

GDP remains well below both the long-run trend and the level predicted by forecasters a decade ago. In 2016, real per capita GDP was 10% below the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) 2006 forecast, and shows no signs of returning to the predicted level.

The report showed that the most likely explanation for this lackluster growth was inadequate demand. Wages were stagnant; and before producers would produce, they needed customers knocking on their doors.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the gap between debt and the money available to repay it was corrected with periodic debt “jubilees” – forgiveness of loans that wiped the slate clean. But today the lenders are not kings and temples. They are private bankers who don’t engage in debt forgiveness because their mandate is to maximize shareholder profits, and because by doing so they would risk insolvency themselves. But there is another way to avoid the debt gap, and that is by filling it with regular injections of new debt-free money.

How Much Money Needs to Be Injected to Stabilize the Money Supply?

The mandated shutdown from the coronavirus has exacerbated the debt crisis, but the economy was suffering from an unprecedented buildup of debt well before that. A UBI would address the gap between consumer debt and the money available to repay it; but there are equivalent gaps for business debt, federal debt, and state and municipal debt, leaving room for quite a bit of helicopter money before debt deflation would turn into inflation.

Looking just at the consumer debt gap, in 2019 80% of US households had to borrow to meet expenses. See this chart provided by Lance Roberts in an April 2019 article on Seeking Alpha:

After the 2008 financial crisis, income and debt combined were not sufficient to fill the gap. By April 2019, about one-third of student loans and car loans were defaulting or had already defaulted. The predictable result was a growing wave of personal bankruptcies, bank bankruptcies, and debt deflation.

Roberts showed in a second chart that by 2019, the gap between annual real disposable income and the cost of living was over $15,000 per person, and the annual deficit that could not be filled even by borrowing was over $3,200:

Assume, then, a national dividend dropped directly into people’s bank accounts of $1,200 per month or $14,200 per year. This would come close to the average $15,000 needed to fill the gap between real disposable income and the cost of living. If the 80% of recipients needing to borrow to meet expenses used the money to repay their consumer debts (credit cards, student debt, medical bills, etc.), that money would void out debt and disappear. These loan repayments (or some of them) could be made mandatory and automatic. The other 20% of recipients, who don’t need to borrow to meet expenses, would not need their national dividends for that purpose either. Most would save it or invest it in non-consumer markets. And the money that was actually spent on consumer goods and services would help fill the 10% gap between real and potential GDP, allowing supply to rise with demand, keeping prices stable. The end result would be no net increase in the consumer price index.

The current economic shutdown will necessarily result in shortages, and the prices of those commodities can be expected to inflate; but it won’t be the result of “demand/pull” inflation triggered by helicopter money. It will be “cost/push” inflation from factory closures, supply disruptions, and increased business costs.

International Precedents

Critics of central bank money injections point to the notorious hyperinflations of history – in Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc. These disasters, however, were not caused by government money-printing to stimulate the economy. According to Prof. Michael Hudson, who has studied the question extensively, “Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate. The problem almost always has resulted from wartime foreign currency strains, not domestic spending.”

For contemporary examples of governments injecting new money to fund domestic growth, we can look to China and Japan. In the last two decades, China’s M2 money supply grew from 11 trillion yuan to 194 trillion yuan, a nearly 1,800% increase. Yet the average inflation rate of its Consumer Price Index hovered between 2% and 3% during that period. The flood of money injected into the economy did not trigger an inflationary crisis because China’s GDP grew at the same fast clip, allowing supply and demand to rise together. Another factor was the Chinese propensity to save. As incomes went up, the percent of income spent on goods and services went down.

In Japan, the massive stimulus programs called “Abenomics” have been funded through bond purchases by the Japanese central bank. The Bank of Japan has now “monetized” nearly half the government’s debt, injecting new money into the economy by purchasing government bonds with yen created on the bank’s books. If the US Fed did that, it would own $12 trillion in US government bonds, over three times the $3.6 trillion in Treasury debt it holds now. Yet Japan’s inflation rate remains stubbornly below the BOJ’s 2% target. Deflation continues to be a greater concern in Japan than inflation, despite unprecedented debt monetization by its central bank.

UBI and Fears of the “Nanny State”

Wary critics warn that a UBI is the road to totalitarianism, the “cashless society,” dependence on the “nanny state,” and mandatory digital IDs. But none of those outcomes need accompany a UBI. It does not make people dependent on the government, so long as they can work. It is just supplementary income, similar to the dividends investors get from their stocks. A UBI does not make people lazy, as numerous studies have shown. To the contrary, they become more productive than without it. And a UBI does not mean cash would be eliminated. Over 90% of the money supply is already digital. UBI payments can be distributed digitally without changing the system we have.

A UBI can serve the goals both of fiscal policy, providing a vital safety net for citizens in desperate times, and of monetary policy, by stabilizing the money supply. The consumer/producer economy actually needs regular injections of helicopter money to remain sustainable, stimulate economic productivity, and avoid deflationary recessions.

Republished from EllenBrown.com

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As the European Elections unfolded last week, many activists and progressive forces around the world paid particular attention to the municipal elections taking place at the same time in Spain. For years, Spain has been a beacon for the possibilities of progressive change at the municipal level. This explains the shock that came with reading headlines or tweets announcing the electoral defeats of political projects built around a new form of municipalism. The defeat of these political projects, known as Fearless Cities or Cities of Change, was particularly painful in Madrid, and in Barcelona, where Barcelona en Comú had put a lot of effort in building an international movement and network of Fearless Cities.

However, this defeat is mainly a perception for now, as the tight results mean that complex negotiations will happen, where the new municipalists will have a strong voice, even with possibilities to keep the mayor’s office, albeit with less power than four years ago.

Still, in light of these developments, we need to ask: what went wrong with the municipalist project in Spain? This text aims to give some insight into these electoral results. It attempts to unpack what happened in Spain for those aiming to better understand the context, and to draw some lessons for their own similar, or comparable projects.

The three souls of the new municipalist projects

The new municipalist platforms that came to power in 2015 resulted in one of the more remarkable political successes of the “left” forces of the last decade. This was achieved right when Podemos as a political party was on the rise in Spain, Syriza was at the height of its influence in the midst of the negotiations with the Troika to end austerity in Greece, and social democratic parties were in free-fall in the EU. Their success was presented by Podemos as the first stage of a major assault on state-level power. However, that picture was not completely accurate. Podemos had a strong influence in the constitution of the municipalist projects, but the new municipalists were much more than that.

There are a few good texts about what elements define the new municipalist practices, particularly from the Barcelona en Comú perspective. However, in this text I propose an alternative angle to understand their success and their apparent defeat last week. I argue that we must focus on which forces made a victorious dynamic possible under the umbrella of the new municipalism in record time. Only then can we better understand last week’s outcomes.

The new muncipalist projects enabled the convergence of three main groups: first, traditional “left” forces – understood as mainly Izquierda Unida (IU) and the old Communist party; second, grassroots activist veterans of the anti-globalisation movements of the 2000s, hardened by the massive mobilisations and action as part of the anti-austerity 15M ; and third, the mass of unmotivated social democratic voters that were looking for a left and progressive alternative to the status quo in the aftermath of the Troika-driven policies. The first two were the core organizers of the new municipalist movement, with various degrees of influence depending on the municipality. The latter was an important mass of voters whose influence would be decisive in the elections. When these three souls were dancing together, a process of “desborde” (overflow) would unfold, meaning that the political campaign would escape the control of its protagonists, and be appropriated by the general public who would in turn re-shape it to their own image and wishes. A comparable process happened with the Mayoral Campaign of Manuela Carmena in 2015.

One of the most important theoretical and dialectical debates within Podemos the last years has been to what extent the political project had to build a discourse closer to one of these three groups. One of the main reasons behind the current crisis facing Podemos has been an inability to articulate itself around all three consistently. There were passionate and deep differences of opinion among the most politicised sectors of the party, and the tendency to make these tensions public exacerbated the internal crisis. For those looking in from the outside, the debates were confusing. This was used strategically by the party’s opponents, and likely contributed to the loss of support. The new municipalist projects, thanks to their focus on local politics and day-to-day problems instead of grandiose debates about political theory, were best suited to face these tensions. As we will see, those places that were able to hold the “three souls” together have been the most successful ones.

What happened?

The best way to sketch the current landscape is to look a bit closer at each of the most paradigmatic cases.

Barcelona and its mayor Ada Colau have deservedly garnered most of the attention globally. Barcelona en comú developed a solid campaign. Its project included all three souls. It included the traditional left and Podemos – with Pablo Iglesias joining the campaign. It incorporated grassroots activists, who brought enormous imagination, and PR successes like public support for Colau from Bernie Sanders and Naomi Klein among others.

The movement deployed a successful political message centred on how to make the city a better place for all, and a process of desborde, which attracted many social democratic voters and others, unfolded. Last week’s outcome only appears to be a defeat because out of a total of 756,000 they got 4833 less votes than, and the same number of city councilors (10 each of a total of 41) as, their main rival, the Republican Independent Left (ERC). The ERC was the only rival capable of getting more votes in the city, and for very particular reasons. The ERC based its campaign on attacking Colau, and on the need for a capital for an eventual Catalan republic. The imprisonment of their leadership in Madrid as a consequence of the push for independence only dramatized their message. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, Barcelona en Comú is calling to form a government together with the ERC and the social democrats.

Madrid is a complex story. Here the defeat is also only relative. Manuela Carmena’s party, Mas Madrid, has obtained 19 out of 57 council seats and 31% of the vote. Her party’s main rival, Partido Popular, garnered 15 council seats and 21% of the vote. Carmena’s mayorship is in trouble only in the case of a tenuous alliance between the conservative right and the liberal right who are ready to form a pact with the new far right party Vox. An alliance of this kind would be unthinkable in France or Germany, but not in Spain. However, the division of the three souls explains why Madrid is in this situation.

Carmena came to power with Ahora Madrid, the new municipalist platform that in 2015 gathered the three souls of the movement. However, an internal split with the grassroots activists and traditional left, who for instance advocated a default on the huge public debt of the city, led Carmena (a former judge and vocal against institutional disobedience) to create her own municipalist group under her direct control – Mas Madrid. IU Madrid, Anti-capitalist Madrid and a number of the grass roots municipalists created their own party outside Mas Madrid, Madrid en Pie Municipalista. To make things more complicated, regional elections in Madrid were conducted at the same time, exacerbating the internal crisis of Podemos as regional, local and national allegiances were tested to their limits. The perceived infighting and bickering undermined momentum.

In sum, a cohesive municipalist project uniting the three souls was not possible in Madrid. Some would call it the typical division characteristic of the left, but here the issue is not about a mere aggregation of the votes of the different groups, since they would be enough to form a majority. The problem here is that when there is no synergy among the “three souls” the dynamics of desborde (overflow) do not happen. This translates into passivity on the part of a significant number of people. When you feel you are part of the something big and open, you go the extra mile to make another call, another meeting, another meme, the next tweet, a drawing that captures the feeling of your neighborhood, as was the case in 2015. These small bites do make a difference, especially in left and progressive groups who vote based more on conviction and ideals, than those on the other side of the spectrum. Lack of motivation can explain how the poorest neighborhoods of Madrid had less participation this time, while the richest ones did mobilize and made a difference by voting for one of the three right wing candidates.

Cadiz is the only relevant municipality with a municipalist candidate that has kept its leading position, even winning more seats. Its representation grew from eight to 13, of a total of 27. Four years ago, the charismatic leader José Maria Santos, known by all as Kichi, was the only one from the new municipalist platforms that came directly from the Podemos rank-and-file, although from the Anti-capitalist arm and not the “central” headquarters. The leadership of Kichi has been able to keep the three souls of the municipalist project together, under the flag of Adelante, the brand of Podemos in Andalucia under the control of the Anti-capitalists. Cadiz was the “poor” southern cousin of the municipalist projects, with an inheritance of huge debt from the previous mayors, and much smaller capacity to address it. Kichi´s management reduced Cadiz´s debt with suppliers from 265 to 44 million Euros, and average payment occurs now in 30 days instead of 130. These changes might seem small from a broader revolutionary perspective, but they do change people’s lives, especially small businesses that depend on their deals with the administration. Kichi has consistently defended the need to remain humble and close to the people. He was at the center of the heated debate within Podemos after Iglesias bought a villa worth 600.000 euros. In the midst of the media scandal that unfolded, (exacerbated also by the many opponents of Podemos), Kichi wrote a letter expressing that “the ethical code (of Podemos) is a guarantee to live like the common people”.

Zaragoza. The new municipalist platform that was created in 2015, Zaragoza en Común has plummeted from nine to three out of 31 council seats. Here, the main reason is that Podemos and IU presented a different platform than Zaragoza en Común, obtaining two councilors. Social democrats grew substantially, capitalizing on the charisma of the new President of Spain, Pedro Sanchez. Unfortunately, similar to Madrid, an anticipated pact amongst the three right-wing parties would mean the end of a progressive mayor in the city.

Valencia was a special case because Compromís, an older party, holds office. Compromís is a left progressive party from the Valencia region with a nationalist character although not pro-independence. Before the creation of Podemos and the new municipalism, Compromis was the main voice against corruption in the institutions run by the governing Popular Party. Compromis’ leader, Monica Oltra, was expelled from the Regional Parliament on several occasions, due to her interventions about the corruption scandals there. These interventions made her very popular. The new municipalist platform Valencia en Comú, with three councilors out of 33, together with the support of the social democrats, was key to giving Compromís the mayor´s office in 2015. Valencia en Comú decided to disappear and join Podemos and IU this time round, but they did not get enough votes for a council seat this time. However, Compromis keeps the mayor´s office due to higher support and its alliance with the social democrats. Despite its different nature, Compromís has employed strategies and tactics that municipalist projects have used elsewhere; like reducing its debt by half, reducing the number of cars in the city, welcoming refugee ships, and increasing social spending. Compromís Municipal will govern for four more years.

Have these projects been transformative?

We can define transformation as the process of a cocoon becoming a butterfly; this is a process that cannot be reversed. After learning the election results Ada Colau declared that they had “broadened the horizon of what is possible”. Indeed, the seed of the new municipalist projects will continue to grow. Amsterdam plans a Fearless Cities Conference in 2020, Belgrade will host one in a few days.

Cities are slowly gathering more power and influence. A week before the latest G20 in Buenos Aires, for instance, the first Urban20 gathered. There, the leaders of the 25 largest and most influential cities came together to put city agendas on the global map. Cities are demonstrating that they are capable of raising the minimum wage, reducing emissions or enforcing more accountable business practices on firms like AirbnB and Uber, even better than states. This dynamic can only grow. Colau’s administration in Barcelona created the biggest public energy utility of Spain, focusing on renewable energy. It is hard to imagine that a future administration would try to undo this. Carmena has reduced the debt of Madrid by almost half, a staggering 2.14 billion Euros. Similar dynamics happened in many other new municipalist governments. This puts paid to the myth that left and progressive administrations hurt the economy, or that they create debt that efficient right-wing administrations then have to solve. The inverse has been proven. If others after them create new debts, the population will take note. The last financial crisis ensured that voters know how dangerous debt is.

The results of Spain’s municipal elections were not what progressives around the world expected. We must wait and see how the political field will reconfigure itself, an open process at the time of writing, in Barcelona and Madrid. We must, however, examine the details so that we can draw the lessons needed to expand progressive political influence at the local level in a way that can tackle global issues such as unaccountable financial power and global warming. We live in a moment of crisis and opportunity, and the Spanish experience shows that it is possible to incorporate veteran left parties, grass roots activists and disfranchised social democratic and progressive voters into broader transformative processes. How to do that sustainably will depend enormously on the local context, and it is the task of the new municipalists to create the tools and narratives to accomplish it.

Do not forget that ¡Si se puede! It is possible!

Republished from OpenDemocracy.net.

Header image: Fearless cities: Ada Colau with Manuela Carmena | CC BY-NC 2.0

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The following article was written by Jenny Andersson and is reposted from the RSA’s Website.

The globalisation of business has brought many positives, especially where increased trade has helped to bring millions out of poverty. But it has significantly increased negative impact on planetary ecosystems and stability. In developing global business systems, we have lost our sense of connection to the ‘bio-uniqueness of place’. The products we consume may have some sense of origin but their component parts and their production, shipping and distribution triangle is a global one.

Could we expect to see a move towards ‘regional production for regional consumption’ in the future? Re-regionalisation or localisation of business, social and environmental strategies is currently in early stages. So what are the options? And how could we redesign to refocus on locality? Here are four options:

1. Fully Bioregional ReDesign

An innovative product design and manufacturing experiment by Ecover in Majorca looked at designing cleaning products for the local market – tourism – from local waste streams. The objective for Ecover was to see if it could become an international knowledge holder and work with other organisations in the future to emphasise the power and potential of glocal business and product development. To achieve this, the innovation department attempted to see if it could produce detergents and floor cleaners from material sourced in the local environment  in a non-toxic process— such as waste streams like lemon peel – and then sell the end product to local businesses in the 500,000-bed tourist industry. The group worked with the local chemical industry, which had already shown an interest in greener chemistry, to try to create greener products.

One of the key learning outcomes of the experiment was to see that when you try to work with bioregional organic waste streams,  the by-products of fossil fuels will also decline in use; the result was shrinking the industrial material cycle of the circular economy diagram in order to help to grow the biocultural resources.

The opportunity of regionalised innovation could help shift to a biomaterials-based circular economy, which could in turn improve the social, economic, environmental health of the region in which the business system is embedded.

2. Local regeneration with global distribution

Founded as early as 1991, ethical brand People Tree focused its organisational design on raising the quality of life and share of voice for smallholders, artisans and craftspeople in developing nations. Founder Safia Minney’s goal was to find a business model that helps create a voice for the people who have the lightest economic footprint in the world and who have no capacity to negotiate a CDM programme to bring them the tiny economic benefit that exporting their goods could do. By putting Fairtrade farmers, artisans, garment workers, producers at the heart of the brand it was able to drive economic and environmental benefit to localities.

In their selection, they ensured there was fair pay for workers, but also integrated the wider community. Designing creches to help women work, making sure workers and families had access to clean water or had bank accounts and also gave literacy training. This was a very early approach to regionalised development by weaving the social, environmental and cultural development of the area into the product story. Of course People Tree still exports product around the world but it is a viable business model in the current economic system.

3. People-Centred Regeneration

A great example of people-focused regional experiment is healthcare startup Wellbeing Teams. Wellbeing Teams in the UK is redesigning social support for people through locally hired teams; these teams work solely on the wellbeing needs of their own locality with a key diversity approach.

Typically in home care, employees would be likely to be older people, often over-50s. Wellbeing Teams intentionally brought in people of all ages and groups, but also made very clear that they should come from the locality they are going to work in, so as to best reflect the values, customs and ethnicity of the area. Helen’s vision is that Wellbeing Teams should offer an opportunity for young people to explore whether or not working in a self-managed business is for them, where the fact that it’s a care business happens to also be part of the equation.

4. Regenerative Innovation

Innovation is rapidly gaining pace in many areas of manufacturing, not least food, land and fashion. Ethical footwear brand PoZu uses fabric made from pineapple leaves to replace animal leather for example. These leaves are an unused by-product of pineapple farming and can be used to manufacture fabric that mimics all the properties of leather, locally to the pineapple fields. It’s possible to produce a leather-like fabric from mushrooms. Currently it’s not possible to both produce materials and have footwear production in one locality at costs which are commercially viable for smaller businesses like PoZu.

ReGen Network is a global community and platform focused on ecological monitoring and regeneration. Using state of the art satellite and on the ground technology to improve understanding of the state of land, oceans and watersheds, ReGen enables farmers and land stewards to accurately measure the improvement of land and soil quality. Using Blockchain, it enables farmers to earn additional financial rewards for verified positive changes, which generates a second income in addition to their crop – an experimental way to catalyse the regeneration of ecosystems worldwide.

Jenny Andersson FRSA curates and hosts global discussions on regenerative strategies and works with business leaders and teams to craft conversations that catalyse innovation inside businesses and organisations.

The post From Global to Glocal: How to shift from extractive to generative entrepreneurship appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Let me make the theory more palpable by relating it to aspects of the long-term project to promote transformative innovation and the transition towards a regenerative culture on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, where I live.

Clearly, even at the relatively small scale and within the defined boundaries of the island, I cannot predict — much less control — all the possible parameters that will affect whether the transition towards increased resilience, sustainability and a regenerative culture will be successful, nor can I force the speed of the transition. Yet I firmly believe that systemic interventions through processes that involve diverse stakeholders will contribute to this deeper culture change.

One useful entry point is the issue of local food production and the link between food and wellbeing, as well as food production and ecosystems health and societal resilience. I can’t control to what extent the transition towards increased local organic food production will result from the systems interventions I engage in. Yet working with unpredictability and emergence rather than against it, I can facilitate the interconnections between certain parts of the system that were previously not talking to each other. The degree of interconnection and the quality of connections (what kind of relationships are established) do affect the behaviour of complex systems and the emergent properties they exhibit.

For example, facilitating meetings between the island’s agricultural cooperatives and a large commercial kitchen that supplies hospitals, schools, business canteens and some hotels helped to initiate a dialogue about how this kitchen could include more local produce in its meal plans. This offered the kitchen and its clients an opportunity to support the local economy and will help to increase sales and eventually even the production of local foods. Since the kitchen has multiple customers, the project initiated a cascade of conversations that in many cases are the first step towards educating the people responsible for procurement about the systemic benefits of choosing regionally produced products.

A relatively small intervention can thereby affect the information flow in the wider system, via the newly facilitated connections and relationships and through the existing networks of the different stakeholders. What kind of information the system relies on crucially affects emergent behaviour. So, to stay with the example, educating farmers, hotel owners, local government, permanent residents and multipliers (like educators, academics, activists and journalists) about the potential impact of rapid increases in transport costs and food price — due to spiking oil proces, climate chaos, terrorist scenarios, food price speculation or economic crisis — will make the system as a whole more aware of its vulnerability to anything that affects cheap imports. Once these possible scenarios are — even only hypothetically — accepted, it will be easier to spread memes like the need for increased local food production and the advantages of an increased level of ‘food sovereignty’ as a risk management strategy.

Different actors in the system might pick this information up in different ways and for different reasons. Some might favour the idea of increased local self-reliance, while others might want to protect the profitability of their local tourism operations from being overly dependent on the availability of cheap imported food. Yet others might become motivated by the overall reduction in environmental impact that comes with increased local production of organic food, including the positive impact with regard to the protection of the beauty of the Majorcan countryside (which tourism also depends on). Local politicians and economists might see the multiple opportunities for generating more jobs through such a shift towards local production.

Entrepreneurial opportunities, protection of cultural heritage, local resilience building, and the link between local organic food, health and education are all additional reasons why the memes ‘let’s decrease dependence on cheap and low quality food imports’ and ‘let’s increase the production of locally generated organic food’ could spread through Majorcan society.

I cannot control exactly how people will respond to my systems interventions — or those of many others like me, but I can aim to work as a ‘bridge builder’ between different factions who previously thought that they had nothing to do and explore with each other. I can illustrate to them the potential for win-win-win solutions and systemic synergy. Once they understand this principle based on the easy ‘entry issue’ of food quality, food security and health, I can expand the learning and this ‘whole-systems thinking approach’ to other aspects of the island system.

For example, this can be done by exploring the benefits of decreased dependence on the importation of fossil and nuclear energy and the shift towards regionally produced, decentralized renewable energy. Apart from keeping the money spent on energy in the local economy and enabling Majorca to become an international example of a renewable energy and transport system, such a shift would help to diversify the local economy away from its almost exclusive dependence on tourism and generate new jobs, while protecting the beauty of the island and the integrity of its ecosystems.

In many ways, the most powerful act of transition design was simply to plant and distribute the seeds of a conversation by asking the following questions: What would a sustainable Majorca look like? How could Majorca become an internationally respected example for regional (island) transition towards a regenerative culture? Why is the current system deeply unsustainable, lacking resilience, and in danger of collapse? How can we co-create a better future for everyone living on Majorca and visiting the island?

By spreading these questions, I begin to work for positive emergence through connecting previously isolated parts of the system and affecting the quality of information in the system. Clearly, I am only one expression of an emerging culture. Some people before and many around me are also spreading their visions of a sustainable Majorca. As these people start to collaborate, we begin to live the questions together.

Education and communication are vital in any attempt to design for positive emergence. Outdated education systems and a media increasingly subservient to corporate interests propagate limited and biased perspectives of the complexity we participate in. The narrative of separation and specialization without integration engender narrow perspectives that can’t do justice to the complexity we are faced with. These valid, yet severely limited, perspectives are influencing the solutions we implement and how our behaviour changes, thereby driving what systemic properties emerge. Regenerative design solutions are informed by a participatory systems view of life that is capable of integrating multiple perspectives. One of the design interventions with the highest leverage potential for the transition towards regenerative cultures is widespread education in eco-social and systems literacy.

Another important influence on the behaviour of complex systems is the way ‘initial conditions’ (like the dominant worldview, value systems or economic system) and ‘iterations’ (the unquestioned repetition of certain systemic patterns of organization and interactions) affect the system. It is important that as ‘transition designers’ or ‘facilitators of positive emergences’ we also take a closer look at the dominant patterns that impede positive systemic change and the emergence of systemic health.

Many of these patterns have to do with established power elites, insufficient education and the dominance of the ‘narrative of separation’. Working with culture change in this way requires patience. One effect of the narrative of separation is to make individuals believe they do not have the power and influence to change the system, but the narrative of interbeing reminds us that every change at the individual level and every conversation does in fact change the system as we are not separate from it.

In my own work on Majorca, I have chosen a place to make a stand and do what I can do to contribute to positive emergence in a well-defined bioregion. Islands everywhere offer special case study opportunities for the regional transition towards a regenerative culture. Many share similar problems, for example their economies tend to be heavily dependent on tourism and their consumption tends to be largely based on imports. While there are limits to the possibilities of localizing production and consumption on an island, these limits can act as enabling constraints that challenge our imagination and drive transformative innovation. They also challenge us to think in a scale-linking, locally adapted and globally collaborative way.

Since local self-sufficiency in an interconnected world is a mirage not worth chasing, these island case studies can serve as experiments that show us how to find a balance between local production for local consumption promoting increased self-reliance and resilience, and local production of goods, services and know-how that forms an economic basis for trade, which in turn allows the import of goods that cannot be produced locally or regionally.

Before moving to the island, I spent four years living at the internationally acclaimed Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Northern Scotland. I also worked with various transition town initiatives to understand how we can create increased sustainability and resilience as well as a deeper culture change at the community scale. In doing so, I realized that while local communities, whether rural or urban, are the scale at which the change towards a regenerative culture will be implemented most immediately, many of the systemic changes necessary require a larger (regional) scale and regional collaboration between communities.

I moved to Majorca to explore how to facilitate a scale-linked approach to transition design, by linking local communities within a regional context, and by connecting them with the support of an international network of sustainability experts and green entrepreneurs. I firmly believe that islands can serve as excellent case studies for the kind of regional transformation towards circular bio-economies that will be necessary everywhere.

…

[This is an excerpt of a subchapter from Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]

Here is a report of a recent SDG Implementation workshop I organized and co-facilitated on Majorca.

This article reports on the recent conference on circular economy and entrepreneurship I spoke at.

The post Designing for positive emergence (Majorca as a case study) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We’re delighted to be able to distribute the free-to-view copy (embed above) of The People’s Spring, a 2018 documentary made by Ryslaine Boumahdi and her team of supporters. (This post is an update of an earlier post.)

Here’s the blurb from Ryslaine:

In the 20th century, public life revolved around government; in the 21st century, it will center on citizens.

— Matt Leighninger, The Next Form of democracy  

“The People’s Spring” explores a world where Democracy is being transformed to be a better fit with our times.  New ideas and new capabilities have collided with a public that has begun to reject traditional political representation of the people.

Argentina, Iceland, Spain, France, the USA… throughout the world we enter the heart of democratic innovation. Seeing the different solutions that are being experimented with, and listening to the young innovators who suddenly found themselves at the center of a major shift in politics. The documentary explores the many ways to improve our democracies, currently undermined by a disengaged public, lack of transparency, and new modes of discourse.

“The People’s Spring” provides an accessible, wide-ranging view of the different solutions that are emerging. The film investigates the concrete projects, new technologies, and people that are reshaping our democratic systems.

The protagonists: simple citizens, activists, elected officials, technologists, academics – all of whom are using the sparks of innovation to re-boot our concepts of the relationship between citizens and power. 

“The People’s Spring” is above all a message of hope and action. It shows that many people out there agree that it is possible to do politics differently, and that we can build a system in which we want to live. We are more than just a ballot paper.

Speaking in the documentary:

Armel Le Coz, Designer & cofounder of the organization Démocratie Ouverte, France

Loïc Blondiaux, professor of political sciences, Sorbonne, France

Ada Colau, Barcelona’s Mayor, Spain

Águeda Bañón, head of the Communication Department at Barcelona’s City Council, Spain

Pablo Soto, councilor for Citizen Participation, Transparency and Open Government of the City of Madrid, Spain

Miguel Arana Catania, Director of the Madrid City council participation project, Spain

Arnau Monterde, Doctor in Information Society and Knowledge by the Open University of Catalunya, Spain

Pere Valles, CEO Scytl, Spain

Lawrence Lessig, activist, professor of law at Harvard, United States

Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir, MP Piratar, Iceland

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, MP Piratar, Iceland

Katrín Oddsdóttir, Assembly member of the Constitutional Council, Iceland

Gunnar Grímsson, co-founder of Citizens Foundation, Iceland

Róbert Bjarnason, founder Citizens Foundation, Iceland

First Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, Laywer in charge of the International Relationships at the Piratar Party, Iceland

Bergþór Heimir Þórðarsson, member of Piratar, Iceland

Kristín Elfa Guðnadóttir, member of Piratar, Iceland

Hrannar Jónsson, member of Piratar, Iceland

Santiago Siri, founder of Democraty Earth, Argentina

Ana Lis Rodríguez Nardelli, member of the Network Party, Argentina

Stephania Xydia, co-funder Place Identity, Greece. 

More here.

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Southern European countries were among the hardest hit by the 2008 economic crisis. In response to the economic pressure, declining public services and drastic unemployment situation generated by the crisis and the corresponding public policies, the Southern regions of the continent became terrains of experiments in self-organisation and gave birth to new forms of the civic economy. In this contribution, Tiago Mota Saraiva analyses the consequences of austerity policies on Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, focusing on how people tried to create networks of solidarity and resistance.

n his brilliant book about the history of Latin America – “Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina”, (The Open Veins of South America) originally published in 1971 – Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) starts by writing that the international division of work consists of defining that some countries specialise in winning and others in losing. Galeano describes a history of the region that is made by its own People, a history that does not depend on the greatness and the richness of the Country. A system where development deepened inequalities and popular sovereignty had to be bonded because There Is No Alternative. “It’s a problem of mindsets”, would declare the canny eurocrat after reading Galeano’s introduction. But the system is not far from what is now happening in Europe. This article is about the PIGS, the continental countries of Southern Europe.

The PIGS

This racist acronym has never been claimed by any author. Some sources refer to its use during the end of the 70’s, but it definitely started to be used more often after the 2008 financial crisis as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to refer to the five countries that were considered weak economies and possible threats to the eurozone. After 2013, with the Irish exit of eurozone bailout program, PIGS became four again as they were before. While each of these countries had different political and historical contexts and scales, over the last five years they have shared the similar financial impacts of EU austerity measures.

The PIGS countries. Image (cc) Eutropian

The People

From 2001 (the European economic and monetary union fully started on 1st January 2002) until the 2013 crisis peak, Southern Europe’s employment situation changed drastically according to Eurostat. In Portugal (unemployment increased from 3,8% in 2001 to 16,2% in 2013), Italy (9,6% to 12,1%), Ireland (3,7% to 13,0%), Greece (10,5% to 27,5%) and Spain (10,5% to 26,1%) unemployment rates increased dramatically. In the same period, unemployment increased in other European countries, more or less following the EU average, besides Germany and Finland where unemployment decreased, respectively, from 7,8% to 5,2% and 10,3% to 8,2%. These rates assumed an impressive impact on youth unemployment. The April 2014 Eurostat report unveils that one month prior to the official census in unemployment in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain the figures were, respectively, 35,4%, 42,7%, 56,8% and 53,9%.

Poverty in Europe. Image (cc) Eutropian

Despite the brain drain (for example in Portugal the emigration numbers were higher than in the 60’s peak, when the country was living under a fascist regime and fighting several wars in its former colonies), this data shows the massive number of people with no jobs and more free time. If we add to this those people living from precarious labour, with low salaries or low pensions, we may find a number of people that are in need of support to barely survive. Always according to the Eurostat it is in Southern Europe that we find the countries with the largest part of the population in risk of poverty with Greece (36,0% in 2014) and Spain (29,2%) at the top of the ranking.

The Politics

In opposition to what is happening in almost all other parts of Europe, the nationalist and far right parties in Southern European countries are not fighting in order to win elections or lead the opposition towards EU policies. The Greek Golden Dawn, probably the most exuberant party, is far from winning national elections. On the other hand – in Italy, Greece and Spain – there are social movements and local activists gathered in so-called anti-systemic parties/political movements, all with different characteristics, but presenting themselves as the face for the change. Although Syriza – the only one of those parties that, until now, has won national elections – is being severely criticised for its acceptance of the very strong EU austerity policies against which it once was established, in Spain, civic movements won local elections in large cities with a diverse set of new public and city policies that are being implemented.
In Portugal, the massive demonstrations during the Troika’s official period of intervention, did not translate itself into a significant change in the architecture of national parties. However, despite the primacy of the coalition of right wing parties at the 2015 national elections, it did not achieve the majority of MPs to form the government. Instead of a right wing government, the Socialist Party was invested with the parliamentary support of the Left Block, the Communist Party and the Greens, under the agreement of progressively reversing the cuts on wages, pensions and the Social State. For the first time since 1974, when the long fascist dictatorship of Portugal was defeated, the Socialist Party is now leading the country, only backed by the left wing parties in the Parliament.

The State

Even though with different characteristics and at different levels, all these four countries have been witnessing the dismantling of the State. Privatisations of fundamental public sectors and the decrease of the public presence in economy have never been as evident as nowadays.
In Greece and Portugal the situation was extreme. The Troika’s program forced governments to quickly sell the most powerful and profitable public companies at low prices. On the other hand, the Welfare State has proven to became an Assistentialist State only programmed to act in desperate situations and not working on people’s emancipation from poverty. With the increase of sovereign debt, states have increasingly lost their independence in a process that inevitably damaged the democratic system. The “oxi” vote at the Greek referendum and the following reaction of the EU leadership, forcing on the Greek government an even more severe agreement, constitute a historical event we should never forget when analysing the growth of anti-EU feelings and the rising popularity of sovereignty movements among the working classes and poorest urban areas.

Esta es una plaza, self-organised garden in Madrid. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Self-organisation

Despite the high proportion of people unemployed and retired, people in Southern European countries do not have more time left to participate in common or community issues. Precarious and low-wage jobs, the insecurity of personal futures, longer daily commuting, or the family assistance of children and older people are some of the new issues that overload working days. These may be some of the reasons why people tend to participate more in initiatives that start from a will of reaction or resistance to a specific problem – either locally based or humanitarian – than from a global and theoretical ambition of structural and global societal change.
Whilst, on the one hand, PIGS are living under the described extreme economical pressure where people generally think the future will be worse then the present and focus their energies on everyday issues that require immediate responses, on the other hand, locally based self-organised initiatives are flourishing as a consequence of specific and local problems as illustrated by many examples:

Coop57 is a financial services co-op that started in Catalonia, emerging from workers’ fight to keep their jobs at Editorial Bruguera, during the 1980s. Over the last decade, the action of the cooperative spread all over Spain. Its main declared goal is to help the social transformation of economy and society, assuming that money and the Coop57 cannot do it on their own, but that they can play a role in helping people, organisations, collectives and groups that promote policies for investment and quality jobs in food and energy sovereignty, inclusion and spaces for culture and socialisation.

Sewing workshop in Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Carrozzerie | n.o.t is a theatre space in Testaccio, a former working class neighbourhood in Rome – now in the process of gentrification. The space was renovated in 2013 and it hosts dance, theatre and performative projects of younger generations of artists. It defines itself as a space for slow time, courageous and far-sighted projects. Carrozzerie | n.o.t works in the same artistic areas as Largo Residências, in the Intendente neighbourhood of Lisbon. Until 2012, Intendente was seen as one of the most dangerous areas in the city centre and an area to be renewed on a large-scale urban operation. Largo Residências started in 2011, renting a building on the square, and assuming the goal to fight against the gentrification of the area. The cooperative that organises all of Largo’s activities is now running in the building a floor of artistic residences, a hostel, a café open in to the square and a massive cultural program developed with and for the inhabitants of the area. Portugal is a good example of the unbalanced states of civic initiatives, whose development depends on the political approaches of local governments. Whilst in Lisbon, these initiatives have been flourishing over the last few years, in Oporto they have been under attack by the former authoritarian and conservative mayor Rui Rio. Lisbon’s local government created a program (BIP/ZIP) that, each year, finances around 30 different projects in priority intervention neighbourhoods/areas (Largo Residências was also supported by this programme) At the same time, projects like “es.col.a,” held in a squatted school with a very important social and cultural program at Fontinha (one of the poorest areas of Oporto) have never had any political or financial support from the municipality: es.col.a was evicted and consequently eliminated by the municipality’s decision.

Navarinou park, a self-organised garden in Athens. Photo (cc) Eutropian

The consequences of austerity were the most severe in the Greek context,. where state structures were partially destroyed. Nowadays, local and national governments tend to be involved with citizen initiatives even though with almost no resources, since the funds are all being directed towards structural or emergency goals. Almost everywhere in Greece, the exodus of refugees to Central Europe appears to be one of the most important challenges of the present and near future. Mostly addressing people who aim at crossing the country, EU policies has turned Greece into Europe’s buffer country before nationalist walls. Even though the walking routes are not passing through Athens, when I visited them last July, both the Elionas and Piraeus camps – the first one organised by the government, the second set up informally by a local citizen initiative (now, apparently dismantled) – accommodated thousands of people, waiting. In these camps, local or national governments are not receiving any direct support from EU funds for refugees.

Parco delle Energie, self-organised sports facility in Rome. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Probably more than other PIGS countries, Italy has already had, since the 1980-90s, a very strong and politicised structure of self-organised movements and local citizen initiatives. During the last decades, those initiatives worked as a kind of a blow-off to political institutional collapse. However, the lack of strong national networks and, probably, the missing ambition to upscale local initiatives has prevented the initial energies from unfolding.

Despite the deception of the June 2016 national elections, Spain, where the networks of citizen initiatives and protests created strong networks, now face their second stage: disputing power. Local movements that emerged from the 15M movement succeeded in winning elections in the most important cities in Spain – Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia. Even though Podemos. in coalition with other political forces, did not achieve the expected share of votes at the last elections, city governments are already networking, organising new forms of decision-making and empowering citizenship initiatives. However, it is still too soon to measure the results of these new cooperations. A country or a society in crisis is not a “time of opportunities“ as we often hear when stock markets are translated into real life. From what I could see and live, during the last years in these four countries, crises are thrilling times of resistance, but also desperate moments of destruction. The decisive question for these initiatives is how to move from the idea of resistance, within this society frame, towards construction. This will be the only way to step forward from precariousness to resilience.

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For decades, citizens in the Spanish city of Valladolid had endured poorly run and expensive water provision. But in 2015, municipal elections ushered in a new three-party coalition government – and though each of the three had differing platforms, all included the remunicipalization of public water management in their electoral programme. As the contract (held by private company Aguas de Valladolid) was about to expire, water management emerged as a key political topic for the first time in 20 years.

Valladolid Toma La Palabra (VTLP), the municipalist movement running the environment department of the new City Council, held lectures and open debates, and, once the decision to remunicipalize through a public enterprise was reached, the 100% Public Water Management Platform (PWMP) was set up. Its member organizations were ecologists, neighbourhood associations and others.

Despite lobbying by the private sector, and laws restricting local government from ‘indebting’ itself by investing in water infrastructure, a new public company was set up and is now successfully managing the water supply in Valladolid. The management has been democratized through the composition of the board, new investment will start soon, and charges to customers remain frozen. The new public company will apply low tariffs according to income levels, resulting in a higher number of beneficiaries.

Other big Spanish cities such as A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela, Vitoria, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Madrid and Barcelona have requested information about the Valladolid case in order to start their own processes.

“ This reflects a well-focused and politically engaged approach. The initiative saw collective action concentrate on water ownership and access in cooperation with political parties to identify and seize a ‘window of opportunity’ politically.”

– Evaluator David Sogge

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit  valladolidtomalapalabra.org/

The post Valladolid, Spain: Residents regain public control of water appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Large digital technology corporations offer “free” tools to help make their data useable but only if those companies can control the data, and to use it for their own commercial ends. All this led Juegos del Común – a project designed by the Arsgames Association and launched in Barcelona in 2017-2018 – to research and develop mechanisms to transform open data into clear, accessible information.

This in turn gave rise to the development of an interactive experience based on game dynamics, with the aim of promoting citizen empowerment and participation and encouraging critical thinking about the function and value of data and information in our society.

Screenshot from Last Hope, a simulation of homelessness

Juegos del Común developed four game prototypes and an online service providing access to open data sets about the impact of tourism on housing in the city. These prototypes aim to encourage reflection based on real data provided by Barcelona City Council, and the processing of this data.

The online service aims to provide access to open data with a focus on housing and tourism issues through game drivers such as Construct2, Godot, Unity, Gdevelop, GameMaker.

Four video game prototypes have been developed: Rambla Rush: a run along the Rambla in Barcelona based on the average cost of rented accommodation and the city’s many cultural festivals; Flatsweeper: a minesweeper in search of rented flats in Barcelona; PimPamPom: A pinball game that you have to win in order to be able to pay the rent; and Last Hope: a simulation of the everyday life of a homeless person.

These four prototypes have helped forge links between different local communities, and are enabling Barcelona City Council’s open data to be used in a creative and impactful way.

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit arsgames.net/blog/

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Barcelona, Spain: Juegos del Común – Asociación Arsgames appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In 2014, citizens aiming to “win back” Barcelona from its long-standing, right-wing council formed a movement to stand for election, backed by a collaboratively produced manifesto centered on four fundamental rights: to guarantee basic rights and a decent life for all citizens; boost the economy based on social and environmental justice; democratize institutions; and assume an ethical commitment to its citizens.

It also proposed eradicating economic speculation, improving access to decent housing, and reducing dependence on tourism. All this was underpinned by an ethical commitment to citizens, and a policy of no debts to financial institutions.

In September 2014, 30,000 people signed and validated the manifesto. Candidates were selected to represent Barcelona en Comú in the elections, and a crowdfunding project was launched to fund the campaign. Barcelona en Comú won the city elections.

Barcelona en Comú’s remunicipalization plans for its water supplies have been strongly attacked by right-wing neoliberal parties, but the movement’s coalition-building with water activists and other cities (that successfully remunicipalized the water supply service) has helped withstand this.

In stark contrast to water, there has been no political opposition to the movement’s energy proposals, and a municipal electricity company is set to be launched to start generating electricity for self consumption and to be sold to an increasing number of citizens. The municipality wants to achieve energy self-sufficiency by installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly-owned buildings, such as libraries, markets and civic centres.

And on housing too, victories have been won: a limit on the number of licences for tourist apartments; fines for owners of multiple properties who leave them empty; reform of municipal buildings in the city centre to create public housing, and authorization for municipal land in the city centre to be used by housing cooperatives.

“This citizen political platform has a clear vision for the city, that it was able to present to win the elections despite the pressure of traditional conservative political parties, strong private sector interests and aggressive corporate media. It is truly impressive the massive support they mobilized and how much they managed to accomplish in a very short period of time.”

– Lorena Zarate

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Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit barcelonaencomu.cat

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Barcelona, Spain: Barcelona en Comú, a movement-party wins the city appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/barcelona-spain-barcelona-en-comu-a-movement-party-wins-the-city/2018/10/01/feed 0 72786 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/girona-spain-cooperative-breaks-the-mould-to-provide-renewable-energy/2018/09/24 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/girona-spain-cooperative-breaks-the-mould-to-provide-renewable-energy/2018/09/24#respond Mon, 24 Sep 2018 08:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=72721 In 2011, a professor at Girona University set his students an assignment – to come up with a cooperative business model. A small group of friends and students used the challenge to address the lack of action on generating green energy, and thus Som Energia was founded. Today it has 45,000 members and 70,000 clients... Continue reading →

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]]> In 2011, a professor at Girona University set his students an assignment – to come up with a cooperative business model. A small group of friends and students used the challenge to address the lack of action on generating green energy, and thus Som Energia was founded. Today it has 45,000 members and 70,000 clients across Spain.

In Spain, two private energy companies account for 80% of the country’s energy market, and green energy suppliers are scarce. In December 2010, 157 people decided to try to produce their own renewable energy, and set up Som Energia.

Some members signed up with the aim of doing something to create a post-fossil fuel economic order and experiment with new forms of democracy. Some were not happy with their electricity supplier, and many were already involved in other cooperatives or other political initiatives and were interested in the energy issue.

In January 2011 Som Energia started to apply for the necessary permits and soon after entered the market as a non-profit cooperative committed to producing 100% renewable energy from hydroelectric, solar, biomass and wind power. Its first project was a 100 kW solar project on an industrial building in Lleida. The installation started in early 2012 and by April it was fully functional. Eight more projects then got underway. Around 5000 members invested €11 million. At present the cooperative produces 10% of all its supplied energy, while the other 90% comes from certified green energy producers.

Board members and members of the technical team.

Today Som Energia collaborates with over 300 municipalities – 160 of them contracted it directly as their electricity supplier. Every member can share their membership with five others so that they do not have to pay the deposit fee of €100 – helping provide green electricity to people on lower incomes. Som Energia also collaborates with villages with less than 500 inhabitants, which can contract Som Energia without paying the €100 entrance fee.

Seven years after the cooperative started it has 44,600 members throughout Spain and 69,619 clients receiving 100% renewable energy – figures that continue to increase. In May 2016 through its project Generation kWh, a collectively owned solar field was set up – the first of its kind in the country – currently supplying 1,300 households. Its revenue amounted to €30 million in 2017.

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“Som Energia is clearly a successful energy cooperative with a promising future. It has kept a sharp focus and built a solid reputation, spread not by costly advertising but mainly by face-to-face meetings, social media and some regular media. It is a worthy enterprise gaining a place in a market influenced by conventional business interests tied to conventional political forces. scale of the cooperative, the speed with which it’s been established and scaled up, the success of the initative, and the democratic innovation in its management”

– David Soggie

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Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Girona, Spain: Cooperative breaks the mould to provide renewable energy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

]]> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/girona-spain-cooperative-breaks-the-mould-to-provide-renewable-energy/2018/09/24/feed 0 72721