Community energy: A practical guide to reclaiming power

When thinking about the future energy market, we have to consider electricity, heat and transportation jointly. Transport is the sector in Europe that accounts for the biggest source of emissions: about 30% of the EU’s CO2 emissions. Transport is also the only sector that has seen emissions rise instead of drop since 1990. Don’t forget transport when you’re thinking about transforming our energy system.

To reduce its emissions, the transport sector will have to dramatically reduce individual car use and switch to electricity. Community projects can help tackle both challenges. You can set up an electric car sharing scheme in your community, a great activity for an existing community energy project to branch out into. A cooperative can invest in a fleet of electric cars that people can book and use, cars are owned by the community instead of individuals.

The idea is also to create more community around transport. Today, people go from their front doors to their personal vehicle, sitting alone in metal boxes without meaningful interactions with their surroundings or people in their community. Car sharing is a more communal experience, you walk or cycle to the nearest car, passing or greeting people on the way. The whole experience allows us to break with the individualist mentality of personal car ownership, in a spirit of sharing.

In 2018, REScoop.eu facilitated international collaboration between three e-car sharing cooperatives who eventually decided to set up a new European cooperative society called The Mobility Factory (TMF). It includes a European platform enabling energy communities across Europe to share e-cars within their communities. The online platform allows projects to offer apps, web interfaces, online payments, and the software needed to set up a car sharing service in your own community, like tools to open cars without keys.

Every cooperative enterprise engaged in sharing electric cars can become a member to benefit from the services of TMF. Energy communities make decisions on how they want to operate, colours, logos, which cars to include, the pricing model — without having to deal with setting-up and maintaining an IT platform. As a member you can also adjust code to your needs: cooperatively owning and developing IT code is called “Platform Cooperativism”.

Once you have built something, share it! This is a key value of cooperatives and part of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) principles.

Cooperatives help other cooperatives!