Leuven 2030 is a 400-member network of local government, knowledge institutions, companies, and citizens working to make the Belgian city of Leuven carbon-neutral. The network’s diversity has been both a strength and a challenge, but its unity (preserved through consensus building and finding common ground) has led to significant steps towards carbon neutrality.
Since February 2018, Barcelona City Council’s public electricity distributor Barcelona Energia has managed the electricity market for all the energy generated by the city and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area – some 200 GWh/year. Barcelona Energia is one of the great triumphs of ‘Brave Barcelona’, which is standing up to corporate lobbies and achieving autonomy and power for its citizens.
In 2012, citizens from Highland Park, Michigan came together to form Soulardarity in response to the repossession of over 1,000 streetlights from their city. Their goal is to organise for community-owned solar street lights, energy production and equitable development. Since its formation, Soulardarity has installed seven solar streetlights and deployed over US$ 30,000 worth of solar technology in Highland Park and the surrounding communities through the PowerUP bulk purchasing programme. The group has also organised advocacy at the city and state levels for regulation, policy and local political leadership to support community ownership, transparency and environmental responsibility.
Soulardarity also advocates for a Community Ownership Power Administration (COPA) as part of the growing call in the United States for a Green New Deal to tackle climate change, economic inequality and racial injustice.
A global energy war is underway. It is man versus nature, fossil fuel versus clean energy, the haves versus the have-nots, and, fundamentally, an extractive economy versus a regenerative economy. The near-unanimous consensus among climate scientists is that the massive burning of gas, oil, and coal is having a cataclysmic impact on our atmosphere and climate, and depleting earth’s natural resources, including its land, food, fresh water and biodiversity.
Energy Democracy Greater Manchester was established as a campaign group in 2015 to advocate for a municipal energy supply company for the region. Our goal has been to create a democratic, fair and clean company that would be a true departure from the ‘Big Six’ energy company model that currently dominates the UK's energy supply. So far, we focused the majority of our campaign efforts on education and research activities in order to bring together a diverse group of Greater Manchester energy citizens, each with their own interest in changing the current system. Strategies for envisioning a just energy future that involved workers and citizens included a YouGov poll, creative meeting methods, mapping the current energy system and learning from international examples.