Publications on Energy Democracy

Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions,
October 2017
A reader that captures the historical and conceptual framework, as well as the underlying values and principles of the emerging energy democracy movement, as told by its leaders. Assembles in one place the current and growing body of renewable energy strategies and practices for shifting the extractive, U.S. fossil fuel economy towards a decentralized renewable energy economy, one that is equitable, sustainable, resilient and democratic..

Building Community Capacity for Energy Democracy: A Deck of Strategies, August 2016 An inventory of some of the tools in the energy democracy toolbox presented as a deck of strategies to encourage advocates for a equitable green transition to identify new possibilities and tactical combinations? [The Democracy Collaborative]

Beyond Sharing: How Communities Can Take Ownership of Renewable Power, April 2016
The electric utility monopoly is breaking up, but will new companies make renewable energy become another form of wealth extraction or can community renewable energy enable communities to capture their renewable power? [Institute for Local Self Reliance]

Toward a Climate Justice Energy Platform: Democratizing Our Energy Future, December 2015
Lays out a vision, political framework, strategies, and principles of democratized energy development as the basis for a proposed platform to advance energy democracy in the U.S.  Includes model policies and programs and snapshots of climate justice energy advocacy from around the country. [Local Clean Energy Alliance and Center for Social Inclusion]

The Our Power Plan: Charting a Path to Climate Justice, January 2015
Locates the EPA's Clean Power Plan within the broader context of what is needed to achieve real solutions to the climate crisis: that the solutions to the climate crisis are present in the creativity, innovation, resourcefulness and determination that can be found in frontline, environmental justice communities. Urges federal and state decision-makers to assure that frontline environmental justice communities and workers be primary stakeholders in the implementation process of the CPP. [Climate Justice Alliance]

The Leap Manifesto, September 2015
In September 2015, Naomi Kleain released this manifesto, signed by more than 100 actors, musicians, labour union leaders, aboriginal leaders, environmentalists and other activists. It's a political agenda that urges the next federal government to wean Canada off fossil fuels in as little as 35 years and, in the process, upend the capitalist system on which the economy is based. "The time for energy democracy has come: we believe not just in changes to our energy sources, but that wherever possible communities should collectively control these new energy systems." [Leap Manifesto]

Power to the People: Toward Democratic Control of Electricity Generation, June 2015
Discusses the main “fronts” on which the struggle for democratic control of power generation is currently expressing itself: cooperatives in the renewable energy sector  and recent attempts to reclaim electrical power generation at the municipal level. It also examines the historical experience of the “public works” approach to energy transition during the New Deal in the U.S. and proposes that a “Renewable Energy Administration” is needed today. [Trade Unions for Energy Democracy]

Beyond Utility 2.0 to Energy Democracy, December 2014
Why a technological transformation in the electricity business should unlock an economic transformation that grants power to the people. The report explores key strategies to ensure that the transformation of the electricity system is both a technological marvel and an equitable economic engine. [Institute for Local Self Reliance]

Climate Change and the Great Inaction: New Trade Union Perspectives, Sept. 2014
Provides historical background on the international labor movement's engagement in the UN climate talks and makes the case for a 'programmatic shift' away from market-based approaches and toward expanding the public sphere. [Trade Unions for Energy Democracy]

Expressions of Energy Democracy: Perspectives on an Emerging Movement, August 2014
Looks at a few of the explicit expressions of energy democracy, some of the related programmatic approaches, and some of the leading proponents of democratizing energy in the U.S. [Local Clean Energy Alliance]

Energy investment Districts - A Racially Equitable Solution, June 2014
Policy concept paper on how communities, particularly communities of color can develop local renewable energy generation and energy efficiency programs that are accountable to the community and produce healthier neighborhoods, reduce energy costs, create good jobs, build the local economy, and combat climate change. [Center for Social Inclusion]

Energy Democracy - Community-Led Solutions: Three Case Studies, October 2013
A compilation of three case studies highlighting the work of communities of color developing community-scale renewable energy projects to improve their neighborhoods. The case studies identify obstacles that these projects encountered and recommend policies that would help bring all of our communities into the renewable energy economy. [Center for Social Inclusion]

Community-Scale Energy: Models, Strategy and Racial Equity, October 2013
From superstorms like Katrina and Sandy to wildfires across Colorado, we are losing homes, businesses and lives. In the face of these threats, how are communities, particularly frontline communities, innovating, adapting and mitigating the impacts of climate change? We created this scan of community-scale energy projects to document strategies and models that communities are using to fight climate change by reducing our reliance on dirty energy. [Center for Social Inclusion]

Resist, Reclaim, Restructure: Unions and the Struggle for Energy Democracy, Nov. 2012
This paper served as a framing and discussion document for a 3-day global trade union Energy Emergency Energy Transition roundtable in October 2012. It frames the struggle for a global energy transition as an issue of democracy, and lays out a strategy for democratizing energy built around the need to resist the agenda of the fossil fuel coprporations, to reclaim parts of the energy economy that have been privatized, and to restructure the global energy system. [Trade Unions for Energy Democracy]