According to a short article (or rather a “viewpoint”) published in Energy Policy last year (Walker and Devine-Wright, 2008), the term “community renewables” has recently been incorporated heavily in the UK’s energy policy. The term, they claim, echoes advocacy of local, small-scale and collective energy generation advocated by 1970s alternative technology activists in their heyday. This is seen as a significant change in UK energy policy, a move away from the dominance of large-scale centralized technical systems.

In Norway we seem to be experiencing a similar trend. We are reluctant to build more large-scale hydroelectric powerplants, we are skeptical towards other highly centralized solutions (e.g nuclear power) and many speak of distributed energy solutions as the next big thing. Walker and Divine-Wright points out, however, that just because an energy-solution is small and located closer to (some of) the user(s), this does not make it a  “community”-project.

To separate community projects from “other” types of projects, the authors construct a very simple tool, a four-by-four table [1] consisting of two axes. One axis describes the process of energy generation (central questions: who developed the project, who runs the project), the other describes the outcome (who benefits from it). The process-axis ranges from “closed and institutional” to “open and participatory” while the outcome axis stretches from”distant and private” to “local and collective”.

With this in mind we can conduct case studies, and projects can be categorized according to where they fit in the scheme. The most ideal-typical “community renewables”- projects would be placed at the top-right. The authors suggests a number of benefits related to implementing schemes like these. A typical non-community scheme would be a utility developed wind-farm with minimal direct involvement of local people, developed by a distant, closed institution, generating energy for the national grid, producing economic rewards for distant shareholders

Their research suggests that community projects could contribute to acceptance and support for renewable energy more generally, affecting what the authors call “the heart and minds” of locals, while non-community projects might, in the worst cases, lead to alienation and resistance towards the project and worse, towards renewables in general. On the downside, of course, community-projects are rarely large enough to have serious impacts on emission reductions.

Their framework is hardly revolutionary, but I think it’s a nice and very practical way to conceptualize differences between different projects, schemes and companies along some dimensions that are probably fruitful also in the Norwegian setting. Whether or not their (preliminary)  conclusions about the up- and downsides of community renewables  are valid in Norway, however,  remains to be seen..

[1] The guilty pleasure and wet dream of any sociologist..