Ungersheim, a former mining town in the Alsace region, has successfully implemented a local socio-ecological transition strategy. Their success was based on the town autonomously designing its transition pathway, instead of following French government guidelines.[1] As the mayor, François Mensch, tells us, there are three dimensions to Ungersheim’s autonomy. The first two obvious dimensions are…
In 2003, Machynlleth, a small town in central Wales with 2,200 inhabitants and a small tourism industry, erected Wales’ first community-owned wind turbine. The path there was stony and only crowned by success thanks to the commitment of long-term volunteers.
Background The project Retenergie developed in the region of Piedmont in 2007. A group of friends and activists from various ecology movements decided to initiate a project and jointly invest in a set of PV panels. At first they called this project simply Solare Collettivo, solar collective. The commercial PV project “adopt one kilowatt hour” …