Driven by a commitment to meet its climate goals, the city of Boulder first sought to push its private investor-owned utility, Xcel Energy, to embrace a radical transition to low-carbon energy. The reluctance and obfuscation of Xcel led the city to develop plans for a municipal energy utility, which the city has continued to push forward in the face of legal challenges and misinformation campaigns.
Bristol is the largest city in the south-west of the United Kingdom. It has a strong history of environmental and sustainable initiatives, and was awarded Green Capital of Europe in 2015. This award was won partly thanks to the richness of grassroots sustainability initiatives, including urban food growing projects and community energy projects.
In 2011 the non-partisan alliance Berliner Energietisch, roughly translated as Berlin Energy Roundtable, initiated a direct democracy campaign in which Berlin's citizens were asked to ‘reclaim’ the city's power. The coalition of 56 local civil society groups called for the remunicipalisation of Berlin's energy distribution grid by the new local grid operator (Berlin Energie) and for the establishment of a Berlin-owned local energy supplier (Berliner Stadtwerke). The demands were spelled out in a draft law that called for an ecological, social and democratic transformation of Berlin's energy supply.
Switched On London (SOL) is a campaign coalition uniting trade unions, environmentalists and grassroots campaigns from across the UK. SOL is demanding that the Greater London Authority (GLA) – the regional government authority responsible for Greater London – set up a new, fully public municipal energy supply and services company.
Summary The example of Lieberoser Heide shows how the public sector can become economically active at the local level in renewable energy projects. The former GDR used large parts of the country as military training grounds. Much like the Western allies, the Red Army did not care too much about protecting the environment. Worse still, …