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.
When the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, a cloud of radioactive gas spread over much of Europe, including a town in the South of Germany at the border of France and Switzerland. In Schönau, in the Black Forest, the event sparked a response that would evolve into a cooperative that supplies 170,000 citizens with electricity, committing itself wholly to the phasing out of nuclear energy worldwide.
The liberalisation of markets ordered by the EU left the oligopolistic Spanish energy market basically unscathed. Endesa and Iberdrola alone have an 80% market share. Green energy suppliers are still scarce, and community-owned solar parks are not widespread. The cooperative Som Energia, founded by staff and students of University in Catalonia seven years ago, promises to change this. Its goals are – much like similar projects in other countries – to promote climate protection and the energy transition, in combination with an economically viable business model.
Why, in a world awash with “idle capital” and in desperate need of a just energy transition to a renewables-based system, are global investment levels in renewable energy so out of sync with climate targets? And why we urgently need to pursue public alternatives.