I remember being astonished and delighted to see, as I rode through the countryside of Denmark on a tour bus in 2004, how every village had its own windmill. It reminded me of the tiny wooden windmills that powered watering troughs for cattle on farms in Idaho when I was a kid. And of all the windmills that dot the countryside on the island of Crete. I also saw a lot of government-sponsored solar panels on each house in certain neighborhoods on that same trip to Greece in 1990.
That was over 20 years ago! What’s our problem here in the “land of the free”? Why are we so backward? How have we allowed the corporatized centralization of everything to dominate our thinking and encourage us to feel like passive victims of outside forces?
In our (admittedly visionary) sustainability plan for the Green Acres Neighborhood back in 2007, we researched the highest point in the neighborhood and set an imaginary windmill there. Now that three houses within this neighborhood are joining together as the first cluster within what we are calling the Green Acres Neighborhood Ecovillage (one example of what’s being called a “urban retrofit ecovillage”), we’re again talking about community power generation.
Here’s an article about this movement. Thanks to www.care2.com
Community and Renewable Energy Picking Up Speed
by Gina-Marie Cheeseman
July 20, 2011
Community power and renewable energy are a good fit. Community power is described as “decentralized generation of electricity,” in Local Clean Energy Alliance’s recently released report, Community Power: Decentralized Renewable Energy in California. Electricity generated from local sources is usually at 20 megawatts (MW) or less. The Energy Collective describes the community power movement as aiming to “decentralize electricity generation, which provides benefits to communities beyond local, clean, and more affordable energy — though those benefits would be enough.” It is a “grassroots movement,” according to the Energy Collective, that is “picking up speed around the country.”
Community power has benefits, including the fact that it is “increasingly cost-effective,” according to the report, when compared to large-scale renewable projects. Other benefits include:
- Stimulating local economies
- Minimizing the environmental impact of renewable energy (cite large scale solar projects in the desert)
- It can be brought on line quickly
- There is less risk of power disruption because community power projects are close to electrical load
In order for community power to succeed, the report points out, municipal governments, local businesses and communities must work together to “democratize electric power.” In addition there are “three main energy policy legs” that are needed for community power to take off:
- Community Choice energy: California’s 2002 legislation, AB 117 allows a city, county or combination of both to contract with a commercial service provider to buy electric power for customers in the area. “Community Choice provides a new paradigm in which energy becomes a democratically controlled resource developed and used by a local community, rather than a commodity brokered by an investor owned utility (IOU) for the benefit of its shareholders.”
- Feed-in tariff programs: Regulatory pricing is one of the biggest barriers to expanding renewable energy, therefore price structures and policies are required that require IOUs and publicly-owned utilities to purchase wholesale renewable energy at standard competitive rates, also known as feed-in tariffs, or prices fed by law for energy fed into the electricity distribution grid.
- Accountability to public interests from regulatory agencies: State support is needed. The actions of state regulatory agencies will affect the success of community power.
California contains political incentives which encourage community power, according to the report. California’s renewable electricity standard (RES) mandates that all utilities get 33 percent of the electricity from renewable sources by 2020, and that serves as an incentive for developing community power.
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1 thought on “Local Action: Wake up! Create energy locally”
Good article, Ann. You are so right. Solar and wind power costs will go down and innovation up when we create a demand for it (and demand it!) as we believe that we no longer need to allow “the corporatized centralization of everything to dominate our thinking and encourage us to feel like passive victims of outside forces.” One of the ways to correct this victim-like mentality is through realization of the truth of a situation, and through the sharing of that truth, as you do often. When I read this article, for instance, at first I was going to write something in support of wind power but accompanied by the “fact” that wind turbines cause many bird deaths. I researched it and discovered that turbines indeed kill birds, however, in comparison to many other man-made structures, bird deaths are dramatically lower (130-174 Million are killed by power lines each year versus 10,000 to 40,000 by wind turbines). To decrease deaths, we could research painting the blades in bright (nature/danger) colors. I have also read that the direction and perhaps speed of the blades are important in risk reduction. Of course, this important risk to our feathered friends (and us!) pales in comparison to the damage by oil spills and nuclear explosions!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.