The Power Shift Campaign is challenging Mauritius’ privately owned, non-renewable energy sector with a solar-powered, cooperative alternative, through which struggling farmers can improve local food production. Their actions have thwarted plans for a new coal plant, improved government transparency, and acquired land to produce solar power when they get the go-ahead.
In Spain, energy poverty is a very real and punitive phenomenon, affecting around 5.1 million people or some 11% of the total population. In recent years, the Alliance against Energy Poverty (Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética - APE) has brought about a paradigm shift in Cataluña by bringing this issue to public attention. This alliance of energy poverty-affected people, social movements, local residents and NGOs is showing for the first time that energy poverty is much more than a question of whether or not families can afford to heat their homes. For APE, access to basic supplies such as energy and water is a fundamental human right.
In May 2015, the party Por Cádiz Sí Se Puede (the local version of Podemos) took over the government of Cádiz, inheriting a situation of massive debt, widespread energy waste, severe unemployment, energy poverty, and a lack of public awareness around energy issues. In just a few years, however, Cádiz has celebrated a number of concrete results.
More than two thirds of the homes in Hungary are insufficiently insulated, and as a result millions of people are living in energy poverty. Straw bale insulation and construction offer a simple, inexpensive, environmentally sustainable and socially just housing solution.
Community members banded together in a show of solidarity, committing to collective ownership and equity, transparency, and direct participation in the development and management of their energy infrastructure. This impressive collective commitment has transformed a once-rural village of just over 3,000 residents in the 1980s into a thriving urban metropolis of more than 40,000 residents today.